When one nation controls 70% of the world's critical minerals, that isn't a supply chain risk — it's a strategic vulnerability.
Sovereign Capability at the Atomic Level
When one nation controls 70% of the world's critical minerals — the materials underpinning defence, aerospace and critical industry — that isn't a supply chain risk. It's a strategic vulnerability.
That's why we're proud to double down on Atomic Tessellator, which today announces its $11.3 million seed round, led by Crane Venture Partners with new institutional partners including our good friends at IQT.
From the moment we met founder and CEO Alain Richardt, it was clear this was a different kind of deep tech company: world-class science, an urgent mission, and an exceptional founder whose obsession has been a genuine joy to back.
Atomic Tessellator's simulation-first platform compresses what once took three to four years in a lab down to weeks, at under 1% of the cost — arriving at synthesis with high-confidence candidates, not untested hypotheses.
Today the company also unveils Vireon: the world's first rare earth-free magnet to outperform existing rare earth alternatives on key performance metrics. Behind it sits a pipeline of 20 novel material candidates, many already in lab synthesis. This is what sovereign capability looks like at the materials level.
"Material chemistry is often at the foundation of the technology we back. Atomic Tessellator is solving sovereign supply chain risk at the atomic level — designing new materials with predictable procurement." — Dan Bennett, Founding Partner, Salus Ventures
"Vireon isn't a theoretical result. It's a lab-verified, better-performing material ready for commercialisation. A world-class team doing world-class work." — Archie Judd, Salus Ventures
Congratulations to Alain and the whole Atomic Tessellator team. The decisions being made right now about where next-generation materials infrastructure is built will define strategic advantage for decades.
