Remedy Metals raises more than €2M to validate a European process for rare-earth refining

Remedy Metals, an Illkirch-Graffenstaden startup founded in 2024 and built on a decade of collaborative research at the IPCMS (CNRS / Université de Strasbourg) and Trinity College Dublin, has raised more than €2 million in its first funding round. The financing mixes capital from two unnamed strategic investors and non-dilutive public co-financing; neither the exact total nor investor identities have been made public.

The company develops a magneto-electrochemical process to extract and refine rare-earth elements from two feedstocks: primary mining concentrates and end-of-life permanent magnets. The target outputs are high-purity oxides of neodymium and dysprosium — elements critical to the permanent magnets used in EV motors, wind turbines, and advanced electronics — at a purity of more than 99.5%. A patent covering the separation approach was filed in 2023, following research that combines expertise in magnetic forces and electrochemistry in an aqueous medium.

Rare earths: a refining gap, not a mining gap

Europe's rare-earth problem is frequently described in geological terms — insufficient domestic deposits. The actual structural constraint sits one step downstream: refining. More than 80% of global rare-earth processing capacity is concentrated in China, at the stage where ore concentrates are converted into separated, high-purity oxides ready for magnet production. Diversifying mine supply does not resolve the dependency if the conversion chemistry remains absent in Europe.

Remedy Metals targets that conversion step. Its process applies magnetic and electrochemical forces in an aqueous medium to distinguish rare-earth elements by their properties, then extract them with fewer process steps than conventional solvent-extraction routes. The approach is designed to handle both virgin mining concentrates and recycled permanent magnets, making it relevant to two supply chains simultaneously: primary production and the secondary-materials loop that the EU Critical Raw Materials Act is trying to build.

"Rare earths are at the heart of the energy transition and the digital economy — yet Europe remains heavily dependent on imports," says Peter Dunne, CEO and CTO. "We are building a credible alternative. This step gives us the means to prove it works at industrial scale."

TRL 6: the test that changes the financing conversation

The funds go toward a single objective: TRL 6, meaning a demonstration in a real industrial and mining environment, not a controlled laboratory. For a process that claims superior selectivity and a reduced chemical burden, heterogeneous real-world feedstock is the adversarial test. Mining concentrates vary in composition; recycled magnets carry contaminants; production cadence demands repeatability across batches. No commercial deployment timeline is stated.

Remedy Metals was propelled by CONECTUS (SATT Alsace) and accompanied by SEMIA and the Quest for Change incubator network, with additional support from Bpifrance and the Région Grand Est. For a deeptech industrial startup whose core asset is a physical separation process, the institutional scaffolding bridging academic research and investable company is not cosmetic — it funded the proof-of-concept and the early patent work that made this first external round possible. Emmanuel Poteaux, President of CONECTUS, describes the result as "a scientific innovation representing a national sovereignty challenge" reaching viability through that sustained institutional support.