Found Industries has gone through several distinct phases in the four years since it was originally formed as Found Energy.

There was the scrappy startup stage, in which the company was primarily housed in the basement of founder Peter Godart ’15, SM ’19, PhD ’21. Then there was the demonstration phase, in which the company worked to productise its technology for transforming aluminium into high-density fuel for industrial operations.

Now, after confronting supply chain vulnerabilities related to critical metals in its aluminium fuel business, the company is launching a new division, Found Metals, to extract the critical metal gallium from mineral refineries – a move that builds on its original technology while addressing a significant national security need. 

Found, with support from the Department of Energy, is hoping to use their electrochemical gallium extraction technology to create a new domestic supply chain for gallium and a host of other important metals. Image: Courtesy of Found Industries.

Gallium is a critical material in the defence, semiconductor, and energy sectors. In 2024, China produced 99% of the world’s primary supply – market dominance the country takes advantage of through export controls.

Godart’s company developed an electrochemical gallium extraction technology for internal use after realising how dependent it would be on China for the catalyst material at the centre of its aluminium fuel reactors. Now, with support from the US Department of Energy, Found is hoping to use that technology to create a new domestic supply chain for gallium and a host of other important metals.

Found Industries is still committed to its aluminium fuel operations, now under its Found Energy division. It is already running a 100-kilowatt-class demonstration plant and is preparing for industrial pilot deployments next year. But with its expansion, which was announced on April 21, the company is also working to meet the moment for critical metals production.

“Gallium is the world’s most critical metal, as it’s 99% controlled by China,” says Godart. “When you produce 99% of something, you also produce 99% of the tools required to extract it. We couldn’t get our hands on some of those tools, so we were forced to come up with a new technology. Now we believe we can deploy this at scale to become one of the first major western suppliers of these metals.”

From fuel to metals

Godart focused on robotics as an undergraduate in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Following graduation, he worked at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he explored systems for tapping into high-density fuels like aluminium on other planets.

“I had this crazy idea that you could use aluminium, which is already a common construction material for aerospace, as a fuel on other planets,” says Godart. “You don’t need most of the aluminium on a spacecraft once you land on another planet. Aluminium is about 40 times more energy-dense than lithium-ion batteries, and if you have an oxidiser, like water on an icy moon for example, then you can react that aluminium with water and extract energy as heat and hydrogen.” 

Found is already running a 100-kilowatt-class demonstration plant and is preparing for industrial pilot deployments next year. Image: Courtesy of Found Industries.

Luckily for people who might spill water on aluminium while cooking, the metal is normally very stable when exposed to air. In order to tap into aluminium’s stored energy, it needs to undergo a chemical reaction. Godart began exploring catalyst materials to create that reaction at Nasa. He continued that work with professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart when he returned to MIT in 2017, this time for applications a little closer to home.

“If we want to think about moving humanity to other planets, we have some problems to solve here first,” says Godart. “That was the impetus for me to go back to MIT to study using aluminium as a fuel for energy distribution on Earth.”

About 70 million tonnes of aluminium are already transported around the globe every year. Godart says that gives aluminium an easier path to scale. During his PhD, he created a process for coating aluminium with a gallium-containing alloy to help tap into aluminium’s embodied energy.

“We found a catalyst that, when mixed with aluminium scraps, enabled aluminium to react with water very rapidly and at orders of magnitude higher power density than what had been possible before,” says Godart. “That meant you could use aluminium as a fuel and get megawatt-scale power from compact reactor systems.”

By the time he finished his PhD in 2021, Godart and his collaborators had developed a system that mixes aluminium fuel with those catalysts to continuously produce electricity at the kilowatt scale through a hydrogen fuel cell.

Godart launched Found Energy in 2022, licensing part of his research from MIT’s Technology License Office and receiving support from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service. The company received an Activate fellowship, and after quickly outgrowing Godart’s basement, moved into its current 20,000-sq-ft facility in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Today, Found Energy is working with industrial companies that have abundant aluminium scrap.

“When you invent a fuel, you then have to invent the engine,” says Godart. “Our engine is called a catalysed aluminium water reactor. You feed in aluminium that’s been treated with the catalyst and water, and you get a steam-hydrogen gas mixture. We call that our power stream. We use it to co-generate industrial heat and electricity. The reaction byproduct is a hydrated aluminium oxide that can be sold into various industries or recycled back into aluminium, which is the long-term vision.”

As Godart worked to build more of the systems, he became concerned about Found’s reliance on Chinese supply chains for its catalyst material. So, in 2024, he developed a new way to extract gallium from Bayer liquor, an industrial process stream used to produce aluminium. Traditional methods for extracting gallium rely on foreign-controlled organic chemicals or resins to bind and concentrate the gallium.

Found uses a continuous electrochemical process to recover the gallium directly from Bayer liquor and other industrial feedstocks, even at low concentrations.

“We thought of it as a way to future-proof what we were doing,” says Godart. “Necessity was the mother of invention.”

Then, towards the end of 2024, China began restricting the export of critical metals including gallium.

“We realised we had already developed a technique for producing these restricted metals that could be very quickly adapted,” recalls Godart.

Scaling for national security

On April 14, the Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation selected Found as part of its $5.4m programme to recover gallium from domestic feedstocks. The company plans to start extracting gallium, along with other critical metals like indium and germanium, by the end of 2027.

Meanwhile, Found is already running a 100-kilowatt-class aluminium fuel demonstration system in Charlestown and is working through a orders of several megawatts from large public companies.

“For our fuel technology, the vision is to go as big as possible,” says Godart. “We envision major power plants. Aluminium refineries today, for example, consume hundreds of megawatts of continuous thermal power. That’s what we aim to deliver.”

Godart says he spends most of his time now on gallium extraction, but both branches of the business could make supply chains more secure in the future.

“The big focus now is critical metals, because the government needs this,” says Godart. “We’re also making these metals for ourselves, so we’re vertically integrating our own supply chain, which is table stakes now for companies that deal in physical goods. You need to be able to control your inputs. By focusing on metals, it improves the likelihood of success for our aluminium fuel business.”