Endolith CEO Liz Dennett laughed when she heard her company’s copper-mining microbes called “Alaskan bugs you would love to take to a gun fight”. But after winning the IMARC 2025 Innovation Pitch Battle she might find herself reciting the tagline in future.
The American astrobiologist came to Sydney and took on a crack local batch of start-ups after honing her pitch with about 120 VCs over the past few months, emerging on top in the eyes of the judges.
“Liz, you had me at genomic sequencing,” said one of them, experienced mining business and technical leader, Caoilin Chestnutt.
Also judging the Shark Tank-like line-up of promising new mining tech start-ups were veteran mining technologist and Global Mining Guidelines Group counsellor Andrew Scott and Rob Adamson, RFC Ambrian executive chair and tech investment guru.
In the proverbial tank were founders and leaders of Bioculum, Banksia Minerals Processing, Ecohoist, RapidGraphite and Endolith which, for the uninitiated, means rock organism or bacterium.
They were picked from an IMARC Innovation & Investment Zone overflowing with outstanding tech minnows.
Dennett compared Endolith’s super bugs with a stray dog her family adopted during her childhood in Alaska. “That brown mutt could thrive in any conditions because it grew up pretty much on the streets of Alaska. And that’s what these bugs are. These aren’t really domesticated organisms that need fastidious nutrients.
“We use microbial communities – many hands make light work – so it’s not us sending in acidus peribacillus ferredoxins like some people. Our communities have somewhere between six and 20 different microbes. A lot of times they have redundancy. They are completely robust.
“We grow our microbes on site. We use continuous low-dose inoculation. And then we use real-time genomic monitoring. We love to work with your really challenging ore types but as your orebodies change we augment the microbes. As temperature changes, Eh changes, pH changes, all of that: we’ve got microbes for that.”
