The global economy is rapidly electrifying, but critical mineral supply chains can be environmentally damaging, geopolitically concentrated, and vulnerable to human rights risks.

As demand for materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements surges, today’s mining-first systems cannot scale responsibly—creating a bottleneck for the clean energy transition.

Critical minerals are the backbone of the clean energy transition—yet the systems supplying them are fragile and increasingly unsustainable.

• Demand for lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements could grow 4x by 2040, while processing capacity remains dangerously concentrated.
• Extraction and refining can account for 20–40% of the cost and environmental footprint of advanced manufacturing. Rare earth mining alone can generate thousands of tons of toxic and radioactive waste per ton produced.
• Meanwhile, ecosystem impacts, unsafe labor conditions, human rights abuses, and Indigenous land displacement remain persistent in high-risk mining regions.

While these challenges highlight the limitations of a purely extractive model, they also underscore the urgency of scaling circular solutions. Recovering, reusing, and recycling critical minerals can help reduce the dependence on finite virgin resources, strengthen supply chain resilience, and mitigate environmental and social impacts.

XPRIZE Critical Minerals will accelerate scalable solutions that transform how these materials are recovered, processed, and reused.

By driving breakthroughs in circular recovery, material substitution, and nature-positive extraction, the prize aims to build mineral systems that are resilient, responsible, and ready to power the future.

XPRIZE welcomes funding from individuals, philanthropies and corporate entities seeking to sponsor this initiative.

If you are interested, we encourage you to contact us and help play a part in rethinking the critical minerals supply chain.

XPRIZE Critical Minerals aims to catalyze a new generation of mineral systems that are cleaner, fairer, and built to scale.

Expected outcomes include:

• Reduce dependence on geopolitically fragile mineral supply chains
• Lower emissions from extraction and processing
• Support ecosystem health and help reduce toxic waste in mining regions
• Improve human rights outcomes across mineral value chains
• Create new opportunities and standards for circular and nature-positive mineral solutions

The extractive industry is broken—circular solutions are the key to cutting reliance on finite virgin minerals and reducing social and environmental effects. XPRIZE Critical Minerals seeks to drive the innovations needed to make this shift a reality.

We welcome innovators from around the world to compete.

We are particularly interested in teams working across materials science, mining and processing technologies, circular economy systems, and environmental innovation—capable of transforming how critical minerals are sourced, processed, recovered, and reused.

Potential competitors may include:

• Startups developing technologies for mineral extraction, refining, recovery, or substitution
• University and research teams advancing materials science, metallurgy, and circular resource systems
• Recycling and circular economy innovators recovering minerals from e-waste and end-of-life products
• Mining and processing technology companies developing lower-impact extraction methods
• NGOs, Indigenous organizations, and community-led teams advancing responsible mineral development models
• Cross-sector collaborations combining expertise in energy systems, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain innovation