Mining and metals technology finance and M&A activity has been trending down since a 2021 peak but remains well above long-term levels. In that sense it parallels venture and growth investments in the clean-tech space going back to 2010, as mapped by Cleantech Group.
The leading cleantech researcher says the major surge in investment in 2021 and 2022 could be considered “outlier years”, with a “continued upward trend” seen over the longer term.
“We’re trying to deal with an innovation theme that is multi-decades,” Cleantech Group CEO Richard Youngman said on a 2025 outlook webinar.
“So I think we are just in a moment of time. We are in a classic venture capital cycle.
“We [also] have an amazingly strong [financing] ecosystem compared to where we were in the early 2010s.”
Cleantech’s multi-sector view of the investment field intersects with mining and metals tech in several areas. Materials and chemicals, resources and environmental management, and waste and recycling are the three main ones.
InvestMETS.com’s review of significant mining and metals tech financing and M&A transactions in 2024 put a value of US$1.2 billion on about 40 deals, headed by Spectris’ $260 million acquisition of SciAps and Lilac Solutions’ $145 million equity financing.
The total compared with circa-$2 billion in 2023 (plus-70 deals), $2.8 billion in 2022 (plus-50 deals) and $3 billion in 2021 (about 60 transactions).
Cleantech’s January webinar heard software impacting mineral exploration efficiency and perhaps increasingly its environmental impact was attracting greater investor attention – with KoBold Metals held up as a somewhat dubious poster child – and was a good example of cleantech digital models having a tangible impact on the physical world.
Cleantech opening up new critical mineral refining avenues was another area seeing increased venture and growth funding.
Cleantech Group sees a broader range of funding options being available to firms with more mature technologies, including bank finance from institutions becoming more comfortable with certain products and markets, but Youngman still sees “one of the areas where we’re going to need entrepreneurs, frankly, is much more on the financial side”.
“How is it that we innovate financial instruments to fit?” he said.
“Generally, the commentary is cleantech doesn’t fit our financial instruments.
“Well, do we want this stuff to come through?
“I don’t think it’s beyond the wit and the ingenuity of us collectively.”
Youngman sees funding constraints in some areas producing failures and “exits of that nature”.
He’s also expecting to see “significant consolidation, where people decide that they’re better off putting together two to three companies” to come up with a more aggregated solution. That would produce more roll-up type M&A, too.
The US-based Corum Group said on its early-2025 webcast reviewing 2024 tech deals and looking ahead at disruptive technology trends and other factors influencing markets this year the consolidation trend was already in full swing.
Corum said 2024 saw 5055 tech transactions, including 1085 VC-backed exits, 462 private equity platform deals and 384 transactions involving non-tech acquirers. Canada’s Constellation Software, which has continued to be active in the mining and metals software market, topped the overall acquirer league table with 109 acquisitions in 2024 its new annual high.
Accenture was the top strategic acquirer with 36 deals.
Corum said VC funding which grew steadily from 2015 to 2021 due to low interest rates, abundant liquidity and rapid technological innovation, culminated in $598 billion of VC deal value in 2021. That was at $372.2b in 2024.
“We believe tech M&A will set records this next year, especially for privately held companies,” Corum CEO Bruce Milne said on the company’s latest webinar.
“Despite all the drama in the world the major markets ended on a high at the close of 2024, with nearly all sectors reporting better deal multiples than last year.
“With the youngest baby boomers reaching 60 we expect more boomers to sell their tech companies in 2025 as they realise their succession planning options are limited.”
Milne said with venture debt “dead” and IPO sentiment low most sellers would exit via a traditional merger or sale.
“The biggest beneficiaries will be the platform companies set up by PEs. Today 60-80% of all transactions are bolt-ons or add-ins to these PE-backed platform companies,” he said.
“This will be a global phenomenon with many Asian-based companies being purchased by Western buyers.”
Corum’s top 10 disruptive technology trends driving tech M&A in 2025 include foundational trends “changing things at a core level of society” and functional trends reshaping specific markets.
“GenAI enablement remains our top trend,” Corum EVP of corporate strategies Tim Goddard said.
“Right now you’re seeing the market sort out between really three categories [of] companies.
“They includes companies with good tech but implemented in a high-touch customer manner. They risk getting stuck doing proof of concepts until the market passes them by.
“Then there are a lot of firms that have pasted a thin layer of GenAI on top of existing solutions.
“Now if you’ve really found a killer use-case this can be effective. But this usually doesn’t drive buyer interest on its own.
“Where we’re seeing the most interest in is in robust tools, either purpose built for GenAI or built with enough foresight that GenAI has been able to slot in as a key enabling factor or a robust toolset.
“That’s one half of the enablement concept.
“The other half that is arguably more active at the moment is in those enabling technologies and capabilities that are enabling GenAI itself at every layer of tech infrastructure.
“This includes unique data sources, LLM management, quality assurance, compliance orchestration, training and more.
“GenAI is extraordinarily compute-intensive as well.
“Electrical power needs are also changing as data centre demand is soaring to support GenAI, and tools addressing this are also in demand.”
Goddard said people-centric productivity tech remained a key trend even as the employment market continued to shift.
“While we’re out of the depth of the worker shortage broadly really the entire landscape of human resources is still wildly different to what it was a few years ago and for many industries that shortage is still a challenging reality.
“That translates into a steadily strong M&A market in HR tech and other tools that enable companies to attract, hire and retain employees.
“The other side of the trend is the software that helps employees do more with less, improving their productivity, automating drudgery and letting them focus on the tasks that truly require a human being.”
Actionable analytics, a broad term for technology that turns data into prescriptive insights that enable better, faster decision making, is another top Corum disruptive trend affecting M&A.
“Value chain intelligence” technology that enables data movement across value chains is also valuable, according to Corum.
“In any kind of complex process you always impact data when moving from one step to another: between departments, between organisations, between trading partners [and] sometimes just between individuals,” Goddard said.
“Software that keeps that data intact from step to step, enabling deeper insights and a broader view of the relevant environment is in high demand.”
Cleantech and software continued to be an intersection point on the mining and metals tech deal front in 2024.
Lilac, SiTration, MGA Thermal, CoTec Holdings, SensOre, ElectroLith, Green Gravity and Fleet Space Technologies raised venture and growth capital. Lilac and Fleet Space, in particular, spoke to the critical minerals processing and discovery investment themes.
Software and sensor companies were the primary focus for bolt-on acquisitions and could again be at the centre of much larger platform activity in 2025, harking back to the Seequent and Deswik deals of 2021.
