Seed round · 2026
ELEMENTIQ

Domain-expert AI for critical-mineral supply chains.

Built inside ElementUSA's real processing operations, for decisions where mistakes cost millions.
The problem

Critical-mineral sourcing intelligence is expensive, slow, and hard to trust. A defense buyer asking "where can we source 5 t/yr of germanium domestically, and what's the supply risk of each option" waits weeks and pays six figures, and still can't fully trust a general AI's answer.

What ElementIQ is

A domain-expertise layer that works with any AI. It answers only from vetted industrial data and operational expertise, not the public web, with a source on every answer. It turns Claude, GPT, or any model into a critical-mineral expert.

Why it's different, in one line

Normal AI improvises an answer every time you ask. ElementIQ runs an answer a human expert already worked out and validated, so it's the same every time, traceable to the expert and source, and runs cheap on ordinary CPUs. That is the difference between predicting an answer and executing a validated one, and it is what lets a regulated buyer actually trust it.

Proof
15 yrs
A glass-corrosion problem solved in hours at Savannah River National Laboratory.
$500M
A hot-cell facility concept designed with it for a DOE innovation campus.
80%+
Lower cost and compute than LLM-only workflows, high-90s in some cases.
13
Patents pending, plus an R&D 100 Award won with SRNL.

In production at SRNL and benchmarked against LLM-only workflows. ElementUSA is the first commercial customer, using it against real processing work every week. 25 years of the underlying AI, built for the DoD, the Intelligence Community, and DOJ.

The base it runs on
$850M
Louisiana refining initiative underway
30M+ tons
bauxite-residue feedstock
Rio · DoW · DOE
active contracts · Austin lab
The ask
~$4Mseed round
Reaches Series A metrics: ~$3.5M ARR and the first ~15 customers in 18 to 24 months. Finishes the production platform and funds the first paid pilots beyond ElementUSA.
55% Engineering & platform
30% Go-to-market
15% Operations
Chris Young · chris.young@element.us.com
Currently raising. Full data room and model available on request.
Download PDF ↓