And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF 2022 is … Minerva Lithium • TechCrunch

TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 — the primary in-person Disrupt in three years — is within the books. And as at all times, we finish it by crowning the winner of Startup Battlefield.

It started with 20: As seasoned TechCrunch readers will know, startups collaborating within the Startup Battlefield have been hand-picked to compete within the occasion. In the course of the first two days of Disrupt, the businesses pitched earlier than judges — a number of teams of VCs and tech leaders — for an opportunity to win $100,000 and the coveted Battlefield Cup.

After a lot deliberation, the TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the checklist down to 5 finalists: Superior Ionics, AppMap, Intropic Supplies, Minerva Lithium and Swap Robotics.

They pitched in entrance of the ultimate panel of judges at the moment, which included Mar Hershenson (Pear VC), Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), TechCrunch editor in chief Matthew Panzarino, David Tisch (BoxGroup) and Richard Wong (Accel). One startup emerged victorious. With out additional ado!

Winner: Minerva Lithium

Minerva Lithium has produced Nano Mosaic, a coordinated polymer framework that appears a bit like black gravel and extracts vital supplies from brine in simply three days. Minerva says that it may possibly extract one metric ton of lithium utilizing simply 30,000 gallons of water, and it may possibly do it in three days. Evaporative brine processing must evaporate 500,000 gallons of water to get to the identical quantity of lithium. Only one gram of this absorbent materials has a floor space equal to that of a soccer pitch, which ought to offer you an thought of simply how little you’d must extract a considerable amount of minerals. Learn our protection on Minerva Lithium right here.

Runner-Up: Intropic Supplies

Plastics are nice for therefore many issues, however they keep round for an awfully very long time. Intropic leaps to the rescue with a set of enzymes that may be added to plastics on the very starting of their life cycle, earlier than it’s even was merchandise. The components the corporate makes have been proof-of-concept examined and it needs to upend how plastics are made and disposed of. Intropic’s components make most of the mostly used plastics biodegradable in regular business composting. The enzymes are added to the pellets or powders which might be used within the regular course of plastic manufacturing. This offers plastics new, biodegradable capabilities with out altering the manufacturing processes used to create plastic merchandise. On the finish of the lifecycle, when it’s time to do away with the fabric, the merchandise could be composted into their element components. Learn our protection on Intropic right here.