 Our keynote conversation will be with two very esteemed guests of ours Ellen Erin Pry a partner at Oric who is leading the starter division at her practice We'll be speaking with and interviewing Leave us Kumar the CEO and co-founder of Mitrachem a very innovative battery manufacturer based out of Mountain View, California Please welcome to the stage Hi everyone We're glad to see you're all here notwithstanding that it's hot that it's Halloween and that it's kind of getting late in the day So thanks for being here with us This is such a pleasure. We're delighted to be here Thank you to everybody here at Berkeley for inviting us and giving us the opportunity to have this conversation with you I have the great pleasure of not only knowing the of us personally, but being counsel to Mitrachem And actually having been counsel since its formation Divas I thought it would be a good starting point to maybe talk a little bit about how you arrived at a decision to spend your career Focused in the battery material space and maybe a few words about Mitrachem Yeah, sure and first Ellen. You're a very busy person. Thanks for taking the opportunity to come and interview me Only because this means I don't have to make slides, right? But no Ellen what Ellen is saying is true she's known me since the foundation of this company it was about three years ago now that Mitrachem as a company began in earnest when I was a graduate student myself at the other University in the Bay Area and Sorry, you know but I Was sitting the same seats as many of you are now as a graduate student my previous career However had been in the space so it wasn't that I just woke up one day and decided that I wanted to do battery materials as a Matter of fact my you know our family business in India where I come from has been a chemicals business And it's been active for decades and decades at this point My parents have worked in the oil and gas industry for 40 years And I've lived all over the world due to that and so for me doing something in chemicals doing something in energy It was a calling it was something that was inevitable if you ask me having studied engineering myself and Before I went to graduate school. I worked at Tesla at a very formative time in the company trajectory Right a company where Ellen has also been involved for you know a couple of decades of her own This is the company that has defined Electrification in the transportation space, but it's caused a revolution in multiple other industries Namely the topic for today's discussion in lithium-ion batteries so I was the senior manager for battery supply chain over there and Another one of my senior managers who I work closely with was Max Christian Lenhoff who's over here Who's a senior executive at Mitra Kim today and he is the Berkeley alum so he made the right choice in what school to go to in the Bay Area and at the time the Tesla Model 3 had not even come out yet and only then was the world transitioning away from EVs being a premium product To being a mass-market product and as a result the supply chains needed for batteries were also growing So after having seen that tremendous growth in the time that I was there I realized that there was an opportunity that was unfulfilled in multiple different Problems that were yet to be solved in the battery supply chain So I started Mitra Kim to tackle three of those problems The first is speed using an in-house AI advantage to significantly reduce the design bill test cycle time to bring a battery materials product from lab to market The second is a focus on iron rich battery materials, which are safer. They're cheaper They urgenate from cleaner supply chains in your traditional western nickel-rich solutions And finally it's building manufacturing scale in the USA to offset the overt geopolitical dependence that we have on assets for manufacturing in China and Which will be the prevailing topic of conversation for today to be inflation reduction act compliant Yeah, so let's let's get into that a little bit You know there are estimates that suggest that we're gonna need 300 net new mines to go online in order to meet and battery demand just in the EV space alone and a 20 to 40 times increase in our current capacity of critical minerals To stave off of one and a half more than a one and a half to two Celsius degree rising global temperatures, so Clearly a hot demand for critical minerals The inflation reduction act has obviously been an accelerant in creating additional demand But there's there's a mismatch between the acceleration of demand and the supply of critical minerals To fuel the growth that we're all hoping we can achieve to combat climate change How do you how are you experiencing as the leader and CEO of a early-stage startup company? The impacts of the inflation reduction act. What do you see as the pros and the cons for a company like yours? Well, when you throw out a stat like 300 net new mines are needed for critical minerals in the battery space To put that into context In the history of the industrial revolution there has never been demand growth this fast in any minerals ever Mining as an industry is thousands and thousands of years old. It's one of the oldest industries out there and Even in the history of mining as I went and did some research in The early stages of my career in the critical minerals industry. I could not find another example Where growth was happening this fast in the physical sciences The growth curve for EV's looks similar to the internet But there you were talking about digital resources, right and it's infinitely scalable especially now with things like Amazon web services But you can't just go and infinitely scale of mine first of all the minors were the minors and the minerals have been there for Hundreds of thousands of millions of years All right, and the second is discoveries are not happening fast enough and And discoveries of reserves not resources so resources means the metal is there Reserves mean it's economically viable to extract that material and use it at today's acceptable price point And I think when we hear a lot of statements out there of well There's a ton of material in the ocean. There's a ton of material, you know in places that we've never explored before Sure the material is there But it may not necessarily be at the concentrations that you need and even if you can get it at the concentrations that you need it may Not necessarily have the impurity profile that you need to be economically viable to made to make into the type of material that you used to make Batteries for example, but also other forms of you know clean energy technologies So the problem is not necessarily where do we find the mines, right? The problem is a whole of supply chain approach and at every single step of the supply chain new discoveries are needed New proliferation of technologies needed bringing down the cost curve is needed We at Mitra camera working on one specific part of the supply chain so instead of a battery cell you've got a cathode you've got an anode once the plus one's the minus and We work on the cathodes but in the same way that we are trying to solve the bottleneck of Cathode capacity for our downstream customers who are battery cell makers energy storage providers and EV makers We too are relying on the upstream and our upstream is an industry that moves generally very very very Very slowly Right slower than the traffic I encountered to get over here I mean it is like a decade plus to find an economic Reserve or to transform a resource into a reserve and then you add permitting on to it You add the fact of billions of dollars you add regime change you add technology change You add the fear that technology is going to just wipe out the demand for the product that you're looking for and Well on top of that community engagement Potential interaction and consultation with tribal nations that may be necessary to fuel the development of those minds It's one of the oldest industries in mankind It is also one of the hardest industries in mankind to tackle the upstream supply chain for critical minerals And I really applaud the people who are going on and doing the good work of which the current iteration of Mitra Camel be a beneficiary Yeah, so Given where we are in trying to solve for our current supply chain problems The the White House recently launched the American Battery Materials Initiative It really stemmed from three objectives that the government has the expansion of sustainable and environmentally responsible mining and availability of Recycling critical minerals the creation of partner alliances that may create more opportunity for international supply chain Opportunity and then the development of a faster and as you were just mentioning and more efficient Permitting process for mines. How do you gauge? Where we are and the government and the actions the government has taken so far to meet those objectives What do you think the holes are and where could we be doing better? You need three things? Three things from the government to effectively kickstart this industry legislation policy and funding For the first time in this industry we have a combination of all three so Ellen what you gave was a great example of policy legislation inflation reduction act is great example Funding by partisan infrastructure law which has put aside billions of dollars of grants for critical minerals build-up and for downstream critical minerals build-up This is the most comprehensive government effort. We have seen to tackle this specific issue If and when the United States succeeds on this it will be on the league of some of the other Huge infrastructure build-up. We've had in this country like the space race the national highway system Building the internet building global GPS. That is the level of consequential nature that we're talking about over here However, if you ask me it is still not happening fast enough. Why because once again, we're talking about a mismatch where the downstream EVs are growing at 25 to 30% per year in terms of consumption Every single electric vehicle that comes off an assembly line has a buyer today Every single one even if you doubled output there would still be a buyer and there'd still be demand The upstream is just not keeping up, but it's not their fault So what can be done to go faster other than the policy in the legislation and the funding? Well more policy less legislation and But the funding needs to be dispersed faster. So this is the other issue In order for government-related financing to be Consequential for the upstream supply chain there are so many hurdles that one has to jump through right at the federal level and If you compare that to other countries where resources are the lifeblood of the country Everything gets position put aside to get resources projects up and running So what the inflation reduction act tried to do was to create a walled garden around the United States and Around some of the ally nations with whom the United States has a free trade agreement right now to jump start the domestic industry growth by creating more addressable demand that cannot get supply sources that exist today Namely from China The demand is there though. We're solving the wrong problem if we keep trying to incentivize demand There's nothing more that we can do we need to incentivize more supply and I think you hit its spot on Ellen Yeah, well, and there's a natural tension to some extent between the focus of the inflation reduction act on the US and its free trade partners and our more historical approach to multinationalism and That tension is going there's going to have to be a break right because in order for us to solve the supply side We have to figure out where we're going to be able to source these Critical minerals to be able to fuel and continue the growth that we clearly need to drive To transition us away from traditional fossil fuels. Yeah, I mean that just has to be a priority How are you you know as you think about where you are today? You know leading a young startup company And where you were when you were at Tesla working at a you know very different global company What are the differences in how you think about for someone, you know in your position today versus someone You know at a global company. What are the? Opportunities that the inflation reduction act either affords or doesn't afford in those two different positions, right? Really different. It looks really different depending on where you are in the value chain. Well Let me let me correct one misconception over here Tesla at the time was an absolute nobody, right? Like what they've done is amazing and the rest of the team as well back in 2016 We were going and chasing suppliers to try to get them to build capacity for us. They just had no interest I mean they had well established customers that had been buying from them for decades specialty chemicals products that were applicable to markets outside of electric vehicles and What they saw was this crazy guy in, California, right promising this big vision and Chemicals conserve chemicals companies are very conservative, right? Mining companies are very conservative They're not going to bet on the new technology trend that easily Versus now The suppliers are going to Tesla and begging them for business, right? so that shift took many many years to happen and Personally when it comes to being an entrepreneur The battery materials knowledge is fine but it's actually the grit and the hustle that matters in terms of getting the company up and running and really what I'm doing now is not that different than what the job was in the very beginning of my time in the Battery materials industry where I had to just go convince a lot of people to take a bet on Tesla at the time, right? And now I get to point to that as a success story as a reason for why people should be betting on companies like mine all the way up and down the battery supply chain and even then Right if you put yourself in the shoes of chemicals companies or mining companies In their minds Startups come and go you can get acquired tomorrow, right? You could merge with another company tomorrow You may not be here in this company tomorrow But the brand that is this mining company this chemicals company that has existed for 120 years This mining asset that has existed and has had 20 presidents of the country where they operate in the time in which the company is operated, right? They just feel like they're gonna outlast you no matter what and so you have to incentivize them to come to you So how do you do that? So the way that you do that and things like inflation reduction Act really really help is there is nobody who can incentivize industrialization like governments and Number one in that is the United States government Which is why it was so consequential and so landmark that BIL and IRA and so many executive orders around Mineral security partnership critical minerals alliance between us and Japan all of this has happened just within the last three years This is more action on potentially new partnerships coming online between EU UK, but yeah I mean we're currently negotiating free trade agreements for critical minerals with the EU and the UK There's you know an MSP with the US and India right now this multilateral approach at this level and pace Which is comparable to what was done for NATO is happening on critical minerals This is really cool. It makes my life easier because I don't have to explain the trend as much right? If the US government is willing to stand behind the trend and willing to say we're gonna put our credibility We're gonna put our national security apparatus behind this We're gonna put our funding behind this to the Department of Energy We're gonna appropriate funding which by the way began with the Republican president has been strengthened with the Democratic president And we'll probably continue the test of time no matter what the 2024 election says That's amazing. It's never been a better time to do work Optimistic prognostication I like that To do work and critical minerals as well You know why we cannot mess this up now if there's this much government support and we do not deliver on the promise That is made on the support we will set the cause of electrification and climate back by decades So this is the burden that I bear as an entrepreneur in this space that a lot of my peers Bear in this space right it's not just about get the best battery material out there. It is this is a generational problem It's finally getting the attention that it deserves from the highest levels of governance in the world We cannot mess this up So given where we are and given where we need to go in order to solve The supply side to meet the increasing demand What are the what are the places where we can double down, you know, can you talk about replacement technology are there? Recycling technology, where do you think this is going in terms of trajectory trajectory to help solve right now we don't have enough free trade partners and we don't have enough capacity and We're convinced many many Companies are constrained, you know here in the US being able to actually fuel that growth. Where does it kind of come from? In the same way that we talk about how mining discoveries take a very long time Technologies that use critical minerals also take a very long time to reach a high level of readiness So if you take the lithium-ion battery the first battery research in The way of thinking about lithium-ion batteries was down in the 1950s The Nobel Prize work on lithium-ion batteries was done in the 1970s the first lithium-ion battery commercialization happened in 1991 with the Sony Walkman who owned a Sony Walkman here yeah, definitely you were super cool if you own a Sony Walkman, right and the first electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries happened in 2003 and Here we are today Lithium-ion batteries have reached a level of maturity to where you're not going to get blank stares if you talk about Betting behind lithium-ion batteries as the platform technology for energy storage So for some other technology to come and just suddenly replace lithium-ions It's gonna have to go through a similar learning curve as lithium-ion batteries have gone through doesn't have to be 70 years Right like the pace of technology growth is such that we want those cycles to shorten and shorten But we're not seeing anything that's just going to come through and crush lithium-ion batteries as the platform technology for energy storage in The short term there are other manifestations of batteries as energy storage platforms, right? You can always argue about solid-state versus conventional lithium-ion you can argue about you know Graphite anode versus silicon anode, but these are all tiny problems as Compared to the major problem of how do you feed the tremendous demand for critical minerals? For lithium-ion batteries as they are today, which are going to be hard to replace Okay, so let's just establish that as a basis. We need to live with the lithium-ion batteries So now let's take a more optimistic view Ellen, right? How do you actually solve this problem? Multilateralism with free trade agreement countries, which the United States has done very well, right? We have a tremendous track record of multilateralism. Let's keep doing this Well, what's happened in the wake of the IRA is a great example, right because it's it's forcing It's really been a forcing function to maintain that Preservation of multilateralism so that we can actually achieve where we need to go completely agree. Yeah, although the Conceptually, I think there was a really a home focus But conceptually there was a home focus But if you look at if you pattern recognize what the United States has done in national security and an energy We have never been autarkic We've always had partners that we've relied on and we will have partners that we rely on this is a good thing Yeah, right having partners that we rely on You talked about recycling right as one way to solve the problem Recycling is not only a solution that the United States is looking at We are well endowed by having lots of critical minerals here in the US resources not always reserves, but resources There are plenty of countries out there with large booming populations That want clean energy that have no resources Indigenously the best example of this is the country where I was born India the most populous country in the world that has Absolutely, no reserves of lithium of nickel of cobalt of aluminum of manganese I just named five of the 50 critical minerals and I could just keep going on and on in this list So for those countries that lack these in-house or in-country reserves For them recycling is the solution if the battery cell the battery pack comes into our land. Let's hold on to it here Let's recycle it here The issue with recycling, right? I'm not saying it won't be solved. It's just something to keep in mind Is you are running up against the incentives that a battery cell maker has to put their technology roadmap? When you buy a Tesla today You want that battery to last a long time forever, right? Yep And I envision a future in which when you buy the electric vehicle You are holding on to the battery pack is the most valuable part of the vehicle for 20 30 years And you're replacing the car body every 10 years to keep up with whatever is new That's diametrically opposed to having a large input feedstock of battery cells coming in for recycling, right? so that's just an issue that recyclers have to contend with and The second issue that we need to think about is Even when a battery reaches end of life, it doesn't mean the battery is just dead It just means that it's no longer fit for the purpose for the application in which it was first made So we see happening in China, which is the global leader in many parts of battery supply chain Including in recycling is the downcycling market is really taking off So battery cells battery packs that were used for automotive functions are then being used at the end of their life For energy storage once they're done in that energy storage function. They're going to an even longer duration storage. I Mean this is exactly the right thing to do is to amortize the carbon costs needed to manufacture that battery cell over as long A life as possible. We're gonna see that trend continuing So given that Where do you see things going for those parts of the of the world developing nations that have this critical need and can't get capacity Where do you see the conversation going around the fairness of that? We also see right now? This is where multilateralism comes in right so defense packs are usually where multilateralism first begins And I'll just take the example of India again, right because I brought up that they don't have indigenous resources over here They didn't have indigenous resources for oil instead But they did a great job of multilateralism in terms of building their own energy security in-house, right? And now the world's most efficient petrochemical refinery the world's most efficient is in India and they have been able to keep up their multilateral relationships for oil in the 75 years that that country has existed likewise in Terms of defense the United States and India are working very closely together on this whole concept of the Quad Which is a Indo-Pacific strategy mostly around containing China And what that means is it's going to be the start of many such partnerships that India will have with other countries that are very resource rich Right Australia is a good example Canada is a good example the United States is a good example All of which are thinking about defense partnerships with India outside of India if you think about Southeast Asia for example They're doing the opposite right Southeast Asia is thinking so Vietnam Philippines Thailand Singapore these are also countries that may not necessarily have the resources and reserves But they're looking more to China as being the country with whom they can strengthen their trading ties So that they can have access to clean energy technologies so the interception of the US multilateral approach and the desire for populations to uplift themselves out of poverty by taking advantage of the Relentless march of energy costs to zero dollars over time and by having access to the clean supply chains It doesn't always map cleanly China will be a force in this and there will be certain countries that align their multilateral approaches Towards China and not towards the United States. It's the reality of the world in which we live We are better placed by recognizing it now We are also better placed by the way by recognizing once again Chinese companies are the best companies in the battery supply chain We can learn a lot from those companies. Yeah, so thinking about that and taking it one step further Thinking about you know what the world is going to look like there are lots of factors that play into Risk assessment as a company is thinking about how to source they have to think about risk mitigation and how to you know Have downside planning scenarios You know that could be Geopolitical it could be you know here change of Administration there could be lots of things that impact what the landscape looks like How do you how do how should companies think about? Weighing cost of resources risk mitigation and what the strategy should be I'll give you an ugly example of this that recently played out is the Russia Ukraine war So Russia is the world's lowest cost producer and one of the largest producers of nickel when sanctions began 20 months ago now the London Metal Exchange price of nickel went all over the place and Western buyers of nickel especially those that were looking at nickel for battery cell supply chain had a really hard time Which hastened their move towards lithium iron phosphate lithium manganese iron phosphate being an iron-rich cathode company It's good for me, right? But now what we see happening is the situation for nickel has gotten so desperate That you do have Western trading firms Trying to circumvent the sanctions using an army of lobbyists and lawyers to try to get their hands on Russian nickel Russian aluminum because it is the lowest cost the best assets in the world This has always been the problem with mining in Every other economic resource since the beginning of time You can move those resources at a certain cost The mine is where the mine is It's been there since before you were born It's going to be there for decades and decades and millennia. You have to work With whatever jurisdiction is overseeing that mine and a lot of times you just don't have a choice like it is It is very easy to sit here and pontificate on we should never touch Russian nickel, right? Now of course being iron-rich. I just stray away from that debate completely But there's many companies out there Where if they do not have access to those resources that company will fail that company will fail All the suppliers that depend on that company will fail all the people who depend on jobs of that company will be out of a job It is a very difficult decision to make and so these complex geopolitics and the complex changes of geopolitics that seem to happen and Many resource rich countries. It's just something that we have to contend with especially when we think about critical minerals This is something that IRA was trying to go after also, right? Which is let's just remove the complex critical minerals geopolitical question by trying to do as much of this in the United States as possible I'll tell you what else Ellen. We have a great example of this successfully working Fracking an oil and gas we are no longer dependent on oil and gas from foreign adversarial nations Right it took 25 years of work on fracking to get there But it was a combination of policy legislation and funding and frankly a couple of hot wars that sparked that to happen so if you give a long enough time span the Desire for the United States to be critical minerals independent or to take a multilateral approach towards critical minerals is Definitely possible, but the time span is a lot longer than some people like yeah Well, there's there are so many facets of making that process more expedient right getting new minds on Line is an enormously complicated Process laden with regulatory Legislative compliance issues you know so many factors lots and lots of factors within communities Environmental factors, there's you know a whole host of laws that have to be complied with You know even to just get into the permitting process So it's going to be a long time. I think and unfortunately given where we are in Washington I don't know how Fassil our legislators are going to be with coming up with solutions that are fast enough to meet where we are need Absolutely. I mean look we're sitting here in Silicon Valley. We're dreaming the future. We're inventing new technologies We're bringing these technologies out to market, but the real game for critical minerals is played in Washington I think there's never been a more consequential election for climate and for critical minerals than 2024 Because the question that everybody has on their minds those who are industry insiders and those who are observing from afar the inflation reduction act With skepticism right is is this law is the policy the legislation in the funding Going to survive. Yeah, whatever might happen in the 2024 election, right regardless of whomever is the person that wins the presidency it's a question of where will the Congress go, you know, and where will that be in conjunction with the president and What will the messaging around inflation reduction act be so I'll give you another example of this myself, right? I I've had a great time in Washington, DC Speaking with senators speaking with Congress people speaking with DOE staffers in general. There's broad alignment that we need These programs for critical minerals to last no matter what the political winds should be because on one hand It's energy independence which both sides can get behind on the other hand its job creation which both sides can get behind I mean, this is one of those rare things and The thing that nobody else will tell you but if you ask them enough they will tell you it's US strategic positioning against China Which both parties can really get behind This is the thesis. Let's see if it's true, right? No matter who wins in 2024 for presidency or Congress Let's see what the continuity of this bill is because The entire industry hinges on the continuity of the bill the critical minerals industry the electrification thesis hinges on the continuity of the policy legislation funding from the last five years Yeah, I mean the auto industry alone is putting tremendous pressure on on our legislature They want to make sure that they get the benefit of the tax credits under the IRA Mm-hmm and and for that they are imposing requirements on their downstream suppliers to make sure that those credits are going to be available And they can pass them along. Yeah, and so that that's it's very publicly known that General Motors let our series be which is something that both Ellen and I worked on together and Every single call I have with General Motors is about the Inflation Reduction Act. Yeah, right It's always what can we do for you in terms of bringing IRA compliant materials to your supply chain? I know this is the same conversation. They're having with every one of their suppliers. Yeah, absolutely And it's not just GM. It's it's everyone every car manufacturer. Absolutely, right? Yeah So I know we're over time, but I thought maybe we could open it up for some questions and see if folks have Questions I don't and let us know. I don't know whoever is is running the show Let us know if we are out of time, but if there's still a few minutes, we're happy to open up for questions Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining us. So my name is Arno. I'm second year MBA in Berko present so I understand there a lot of like New battery technologies emerging right now yours iron base. There's also lithium metal Sodium ion. Do you think at the end of the race this technology race? There will be one winner with the best technology and all the other companies like losing the game or There will be a mix of good technologies each of them sharing having a market share Hmm, I use the words platform technology to describe lithium-ion batteries Platform technology is one on which multiple different product categories for multiple different customer segments are built So for example what you use in a mass market EV may not be necessarily what you use in long-duration energy storage What you use for medium-duty trucking may not necessarily be what you use for long distance trucking What you use for a us mass market customer who wants as long a range as possible may not be what you use For a Chinese mass market customer who doesn't care about range, but cares a lot more about cost Right, it may not be the same as what you use in India Where somebody cares a lot more about operating temperature conditions rather than any of the other factors that I just mentioned right also cost Where I'm going with this is multiple different technologies multiple different companies multiple different products are needed for all These different segments to electrify it's actually a good thing when we see people coming out with Competing and complimentary technologies to a company like mine. I mean we really applaud this so we mentioned You know General Motors Let our last round Very publicly General Motors has also led the rounds of other companies in the battery supply chain Using other complimentary technologies because in their minds, right? They've never confirmed this publicly, but they're taking a whole of supply chain strategy And if they're looking at batteries as a platform technology, right? Of course you want every single part of the battery to be improving So when I think about batteries 30 years from now, I think about semiconductors as they are today It's not like there's one company. That's one everything, right? I think TSMC has emerged as the best fab and Nvidia has quickly emerged as the best designer for GPUs and advanced chips But there's plenty of other companies that are doing very well in this semiconductor space right in the broader ecosystem Likewise, if we think about batteries today, right? There are certain companies that have emerged as the best battery cell players There are certain companies that have emerged as the best Players in the upstream supply chain for specific parts of the battery as of today, but we're still at the beginning Let's see where we are in 30 years Yep, and I'll I'll stick around also so max will also join me up over here And he'll also be happy to answer any questions as a fellow Berkeley alum as well Yeah, I mentioned Max early max once you just come and join us here because we're gonna end pretty soon max is our head of commercial And he's a Berkeley Haas alum as well So, you know after this last question max and I will stand off to the side of the stage And we're happy to stay as long as you want and answer any questions. You have a question Yeah, thank you so much because I have a question and also just want to clarify that Thailand is neither is not relying on China relying on India as well and having said this I know that you've touched upon a lot of the macroeconomics of how Battery is the future and how you know as an investor from Thailand. We are actually looking Towards America. We're looking in this direction Just want to make it clear because not only the model is correct But the fact that Americans are looking into investing in this in order to Create jobs. That is that is one of the that is an authentic thesis Towards ESG and all that ESG in the boardrooms now is for financial reasons but I think America has been from the start before ESG was a cool thing America is kind of the Which am I calling that the model for for a lot of the investors and a lot of other countries I want to touch upon and ask about the microeconomics of your technology I know that you are using machine learning and AI to to help out with some of these products And how are your products different from from other miners or other suppliers of cathodes? Yeah, sure. Thank you. So by the way, thank you for those nice comments we take product from Mining companies, especially chemicals companies and we make a performance chemical on it When we think about our product portfolio and we think about what we want to do for future products It needs to intersect with a few themes It needs to deliver better energy density at the same or lower cost without compromising on other customer specs We need to be able to get to that product faster through R&D cycles in-house and Accomplish that product using two constraining variables number one does it scale with existing? Manufacturing process technology with minimal customization so that we can do rapid scale up Doing something in a lab is easy doing something at tens of thousands of tons per year scale is very very hard And there's only so many risks we can take as a startup. We are firmly taking product development risk today We are not taking process scale up risk, right? We are taking product scale up risk, but not process scale up risk number two doesn't come from existing supply chains That are already scalable and can already be scaled an inflation reduction act compliant matter What we don't want to do is go work with more critical minerals that are even more esoteric that are even more hard to find and even less Viable for the inflation reduction act so when we think about constraining our product development along those lines It actually makes it extremely clear what we need to do. This is why we only have three products today, right? LFP well known well industrialized LMFP which has been publicly stated as a main target for GM to accomplish with us and what we call LMX Which is a very high-energy dense iron-rich cathode which will have comparable performance to nickel rich at the battery pack level those commercial You know those consequential commercial decisions as constraining factors are on product development It's just a very different approach than you would see in a normal R&D company And we do this because we come from a heritage of thinking commercially Right and we want the products to be built at scale into vehicles on American roads and on roads in the west as quickly as Possible this is what is needed to fight climate change, right? We just need to get products out as quickly as possible well keep my next comment very Short at just 10 seconds. I think that China is leading Some of these mining industries because they have never been so concerned with ESG, but because America has always been true to their true to their Priorities with the ESG that's why mining industry did not take off However with you Viva's and also that AI technology maybe in the next decades America can bridge that gap So a lot of high hopes for you. Thank you. Yep We're one of many companies that will go and solve this problem And I hope that I'll be back in 10 years and I'll be talking about what the next 10 years of AI enabled Decarbonization materials for climate change will look like wonderful. Thank you very much. Yeah Thank you all very much. Yeah. Thank you everybody