August 2025

Leveraging Values to Drive Our Mission

I'm incredibly proud to be leading Still Bright. We're at a pivotal moment, on the cusp of proving the economics of our system and scaling up for on-site demo production. Our goal is to achieve a production capacity of about one million pounds of refined copper per year with each demo unit, which is a large step toward becoming commercially relevant. I am confident that with the support of our incredible investors, we'll be able to realize our intended impact and propel Still Bright forward. We have aimed to attract investors who can stick by our side as we continue to grow. The strategic impact of each investor is already being felt, and we are excited to continue fostering our partnership.

As we start announcing key achievements towards our goals in the coming months, it’s a critical time to reiterate our mission and share how my values are driving me as a person and driving my decisions as the CEO of Still Bright.

A Better Future, Made Together

My hope is to always be the best version of myself for everyone I interact with, whether that is being a highly productive member of society or being the best husband and father I can be. I hope to set an example for others to do the same. I truly believe that by maximizing our individual positive contributions to society, we can collectively shift the world toward a better future for everyone, especially for those that have been under resourced and overlooked.

At Still Bright, my outlook translates well into our collective mission. We are designing Still Bright to speak across worlds, from copper owners to disregarded communities and environmental activists, and to serve as a trustworthy bridge between them all. We are committed to ensuring our compelling technology has a positive impact and to maximize that impact around the world. Though we won't internalize all externalities on our balance sheet, we are devoted to moving with consideration for all stakeholders.

For many, a mining company might seem antithetical to these ambitions. This is emblematic of the industry's lost social license to operate. To many, metal mining, extraction, and refinement have a horrible reputation, and for understandable reasons. Thinking about mining can instantly evoke thoughts of toxic chemical leaks, displaced people, or destroyed sacred lands. Though mining companies are increasingly considering, compensating, and working with the communities in which they operate, these efforts have not been enough. The local communities have borne the brunt of the negative impacts of traditional mining and have continued the tradition of protests that have delayed or prevented mining projects throughout the world in the name of protection. Having personally experienced the negative environmental impact from a different industry growing up, I aim to help prevent such harm now. We must do better and we will.

The Copper Crisis and a Sustainable Solution

The damage to mining’s social license directly contributes to the global copper supply gap we are now facing. Large mines that could significantly contribute to the supply gap have been stopped in their tracks, from the Pebble mine and Resolution Copper in the US to Las Bambas, Cobre Panama, and Tia Maria internationally. Traditional metal processing is at odds with the needs of local communities, making it difficult to work responsibly with local communities and the environment. This, combined with the fact that we simply don't have enough copper in the pipeline, creates an unavoidable bottleneck, an insurmountable obstacle in creating a more resilient and intelligent future.

The stakes couldn't be higher. Forecasts from the IEA and others show that copper demand is surging, driven by economic growth, the energy transition, and the explosive growth of data centers for AI. Billions of pounds of new copper will be required, yet planned mines will only meet a fraction of this need. To close this gap, we must unlock new ways to recover copper from waste streams, low-grade or challenging ores, and resources long considered uneconomic.

This is exactly where Still Bright leads. Our technology is a viable pathway to increase copper production quickly and responsibly. In the coming year, we'll not only prove our process at the pilot scale but also define the case studies that show how we can bridge the supply gap while maximizing value and recovering the most possible resources from mined materials. This will drive Still Bright to be a portfolio-defining company for our investors as well as the driver of jobs and financial support for local communities. Our game-changing technology will create a future of copper that is efficient and generative without the toxic pollutants that have long plagued mine workers and local populations and necessarily slowed permitting and development. With these benefits, we can enable widespread adoption and help the US and other copper-rich nations to once again achieve copper independence and to secure energy dominance.

April 2026

Since writing my first letter to our stakeholders last year, Still Bright has continued to advance toward proving that better leveraging modern tools like vanadium electrochemistry allows for superior economics compared to the status quo. But as we’ve progressed technically, the world around us has reinforced a conviction I hold deeply: the copper supply crisis is, at its root, a trust crisis. The geological copper is there. The demand is undeniable. What’s missing is the environmental and social foundation required to bring new supply to market quickly.

In this letter, I want to address that trust gap directly, highlighting what’s driving it, why it matters for every stakeholder in the value chain, and how Still Bright designed to close it.

The Evidence Is Everywhere

Consider what the last twelve months have looked like for the global copper industry. In Peru, community protests shut down Hudbay’s Constancia mine for two weeks in late 2025, while informal miners blocked critical transport corridors serving multiple operations. Peru’s Ombudsman Office reports that roughly 42% of mining projects in the country face some form of community opposition. In Chile, workers at Capstone Copper’s Mantoverde mine launched a month-long strike in early 2026 over working conditions. And these are just the disruptions that made headlines.

Meanwhile, the consequences of broken trust continue to compound. In February 2025, a tailings dam at the Sino-Metals Leach facility in Zambia catastrophically failed, releasing approximately 50 million liters of toxic waste into the Kafue River, shutting off water supply to roughly 700,000 people and killing all life in its wake. Tailings failures in Indonesia and Bolivia in the same month added to the toll. These are not anomalies. They are the predictable result of an industry that has historically externalized its costs onto the communities and ecosystems closest to its operations.

Think of it like a bank account. Every tailings spill, every displaced community, every broken promise is a withdrawal. After decades of overdrafts, the account is empty and not refilling. Communities are no longer willing to extend credit to an industry that has repeatedly failed to repay it. And without that trust, even the most geologically promising deposits will remain locked in the ground.

Why the Trust Gap Is the Supply Gap

The numbers are stark. Copper demand is surging, with faster growth than even the first electrification, when we replaced whale oil with the light bulb. This is driven by the energy transition, the explosive build-out of AI data centers, and continued economic growth across developing economies. The IEA and others project that billions of pounds of new copper will be required over the coming decade. Yet even the most optimistic pipeline of planned mines will cover only a small fraction of this need.

Here is the critical link that is too often unspoken: copper production is not simply a function of geology or investment. Mines like Pebble and Resolution Copper in the United States, Las Bambas and Tia Maria in Peru, and Cobre Panama have been delayed or halted outright by community opposition. Peru’s copper output declined 12% in early 2025 largely due to social unrest. And these are not small projects. They represent tens of billions of dollars of investment and millions of tonnes of copper that the world urgently needs.

The pattern repeats because the underlying dynamic has not changed. The potential downfalls of copper sulfide processing manifest, creating real, measurable harm to local water, air, and land. Communities bear these costs while the economic benefits flow elsewhere. When people protest, they are not being unreasonable. They are responding rationally to a system that has failed them. Until the industry changes the system, no amount of corporate social responsibility spending will restore that trust.

A Technology Built to Regain Trust

This is precisely where Still Bright leads. Our RACER technology is not just a more efficient way to extract copper. It is a fundamentally different relationship between a mining operation and the community around it.

Our closed-loop hydrometallurgical process eliminates the need for traditional tailings storage facilities. This is crucial for regaining trust since these facilities represent the single largest source of catastrophic environmental failure in the mining industry. Our process eliminates the potential for acid mine drainage. It converts waste streams, including sulfides, into valuable co-products rather than liabilities. It operates at ambient conditions, meaning no smelter-like fugitive emissions and a fundamentally simpler permitting pathway.

If the old model is like burning a forest to create land for cattle grazing, in which one thing of value is extracted while leaving destruction behind, our approach is more like agroforestry: sustainably getting the initial value while increasing the value from lumber and other revenue streams that were previously lost. That is not just better engineering. It is the foundation for a new kind of partnership between mining companies, local communities, and the nations that hold copper resources.

When a community sees a processing operation that generates no acid runoff and creates local jobs built around clean technology, the conversation changes. The trust account begins to be replenished. And when trust is restored, the copper that the world needs can actually reach the market.

Join Us

We are entering a decisive period for both Still Bright and the copper industry. As we advance our pilot and prepare for on-site demonstrations, every step is designed to prove not only the economics of our system, but the viability of a trust-centered model for copper production. If this perspective resonates with you, I invite you to work with us. We are currently hiring. At Still Bright, we are building something that the industry has never had: a cost-effective way to produce copper that communities can actually welcome. The supply gap will only close when the trust gap does. Together, we can close both.