Rio Tinto Kennecott

Growth and 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-ups 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 support start-ups through 2 dedicated platforms: our Accelerator Program and our Ventures Fund.

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

  • exploration and orebody knowledge: accelerate the discovery of new resources, and enhance our understanding of existing orebodies
  • metals processing and recovery: unlock new, or better recover existing resources with novel processes
  • waste and water: step changes in management of water and mining waste
  • 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 some of the above themes.
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Accelerator program

Pre-seed and seed

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

We’ve partnered with Founders Factory in a Mining Tech Accelerator. We run 2 cohorts of 6 start-ups per annum. 

Applications for the accelerator program are open.

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Ventures fund

Series A and B

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

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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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