Rio Tinto Kennecott

Growth & Ventures

Investing to grow better together

We invest in start-ups, and create our own, to accelerate the growth of our industry but by doing it in better ways, aligned with our purpose.  Our Ventures team invests in start-ups to support founders and create further options for our business. Our Growth team develops new businesses by incubating our own ideas and technologies, commercialising intellectual property with inventors, or partnering with start-up to scale.

Ventures

We back exceptional founders and teams in areas where we can help accelerate their development pathway by leveraging our technical and commercial experts. 

We’re currently backing start-ups across 5 themes across pre-seed to Series B stages: 

  • Exploration and ore-body knowledge: accelerate the discovery of new resources, and enhance analysis of existing orebodies
  • Metals processing & recovery: Unlock new, or better recover existing resources with novel processes
  • Waste & water: Step changes in water treatment and mining waste valorisation
  • Mining redesign: Transformative approaches to mining with a focus on speed of development and minimising impact 
  • Novel materials: Discovering advanced materials for future growth and as enablers to above themes
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Accelerator program

Pre-seed & seed

Supports early founders by combining our commercial and technical experience with a methodical 4-month program.

For pre-seed and seed-stage start-ups, we’ve partnered with Founders Factory in a Mining Tech Accelerator. We run two cohorts of 6 start-ups per annum.

Applications for the accelerator program are open.

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Growth fund

Series A & B

Highly tailored support for founders approaching commercialisation, including for start-ups graduating from our accelerator program.

For Series A & B, we routinely invest and work together with investors and governments across North America, Europe and Australia to scale together.

Selected investments

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Artificial Intelligence

R&D and technology

We’re using new technologies, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence across our business
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Pioneer Portal

We want your innovative ideas and solutions to some of our current business challenges
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Partnerships and investments

We are striving for new ways to do things and deeper partnerships to solve problems, create win-win situations and meet opportunities