Impossible Metals
Impossible Metals Inc. builds autonomous underwater vehicles that hover above the seabed and pick polymetallic nodules individually, using computer vision to leave visible marine life in place. It is a Delaware public benefit corporation headquartered in San Jose, with its robotics lab in Collingwood, Ontario.
Its April 2025 request for a lease off American Samoa opened the first United States offshore mineral leasing process in more than thirty years. No lease has been issued.
News and articles
Overview
- Incorporated in Delaware in 2020 as Impossible Mining and renamed Impossible Metals in September 2022. It is a public benefit corporation and a certified B Corporation.
- Launched publicly at the 2021 climate conference, joined Y Combinator’s winter 2022 batch, and says it has raised ~US$15 million in total.
- The approach required three inventions in the company’s account: a buoyancy engine so the vehicle hovers rather than lands or is towed, a fast underwater robotic arm, and a vision system that recognises nodules and the life attached to them.
- Eureka 1 showed selective pick-up in shallow water in 2022 and was demonstrated publicly in May 2023.
- Eureka II dived to ~1,800 metres off Florida in 2024 under full autonomy, carries three arms, and in August 2026 recovered itself from the open ocean off Nova Scotia without human intervention.
- Eureka III is the production-size machine, roughly the size of a shipping container, with sixteen arms. Its design was completed in 2025.
- The Eureka III seabed test has slipped. It was announced for January 2026 in Germany’s exploration area in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone at ~4,200 metres, and the company’s own consultation page now says 2027 or 2028.
- Refining is outsourced. Non-binding agreements were signed with ReElement Technologies in July 2025 and with Aqua Metals in September 2025, neither of which has reached commercial scale.
- An international-waters track opened in September 2025, when Impossible Metals Bahrain applied to the International Seabed Authority for an exploration licence sponsored by Bahrain.
The vehicles
| Platform | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Eureka 1 | First proof of concept: buoyancy engine, fast arm and vision system | Selective collection shown in shallow water. Demonstrated publicly May 17, 2023. |
| Eureka II | Second generation, three collection arms | Autonomous dive to ~1,800 m off Florida in 2024. Arm cycle time cut from over 4 seconds to under 2. Autonomous self-recovery from open water filmed August 2026. |
| Smart Hook | Autonomous launch and recovery that catches the vehicle below the wave zone, removing the need for a dynamically positioned vessel | Proof of concept 2024. A C$4 million project with Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, C$1.2 million of it public money, announced June 2025. |
| Eureka III | Production-size pilot collector, sixteen arms, roughly a shipping container | Design completed 2025, conveyor prototyping shown February 2026. The seabed test is now scheduled for 2027 or 2028. |
| Eureka IV | The commercial fleet configuration, which exists only in the economic model | Modelled at 66 wet tonnes a vehicle a day, and ~6.8 million wet tonnes a year for a full deployment. |
Where it is trying to work
| Area | Route | Size | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Samoa outer continental shelf | United States federal leasing under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act | The company asked for ~73,200 km². The regulator’s proposed sale covers two lease areas totalling ~127,500 km². | Request filed April 8, 2025. A proposed leasing notice was issued in July 2026 for an auction on November 19, 2026. No lease has been issued. |
| Clarion-Clipperton Zone | International Seabed Authority, sponsored by Bahrain, through Impossible Metals Bahrain | n/a | Exploration application filed September 2025. In July 2026 the Legal and Technical Commission deferred consideration of the updated application, after a notification of material changes, to the first part of its 32nd session. |
| Germany’s exploration area, Clarion-Clipperton Zone | Technology supplier inside another contractor’s area | n/a | The Eureka III pilot, planned over four days at ~4,200 m in two collection modes, with independent monitoring from a German research vessel. Deferred to 2027 or 2028. |
| Deep Sea Minerals Corp. prospective areas | Non-binding agreement to deploy and evaluate the system if licences are awarded | n/a | Announced July 6, 2026. |
How much it says it leaves behind
Selectivity is the company’s central claim, and the number has moved a great deal. It is worth reading the figures as a moving economic argument rather than a fixed design parameter.
- Congressional testimony in April 2025 said the system avoids all visible life and leaves 60% of nodules untouched, and the July 2025 regulatory filing repeated that figure.
- By November 2025 the company published modelling arguing its peak economics comes from leaving 94% of nodules undisturbed, because moving faster over more ground and taking only the largest nodules is cheaper per tonne. It says the system can be profitable picking up 1%.
- The company has said the original target of leaving 30% behind came from a conservation goal rather than from site data.
- The Eureka III test plan still describes collection modes at 90% and 50%, and its economic modelling assumes 70%, so the published figures do not yet reconcile with each other.
- Modelling by an independent consultancy for the planned test predicts suspended sediment stays within ~5 metres of the seabed and that more than 93% settles inside the collected area.
- The same modelling, prepared by DHI Water and Environment in October 2024 for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, puts the seabed sediment discharge of a production-scale Eureka III at ~46 kg an hour. The only collector ever measured in the field, Global Sea Mineral Resources’ Patania II, discharged ~43,000 kg an hour in the 2021 trials. The Eureka design has no riser and no separation at the surface, so it discharges nothing in midwater.
Ownership
There is no public cap table, and there never has been. The company is a private Delaware corporation with no filer record at the United States securities regulator, so no share count, valuation or percentage holding has ever been disclosed. What follows is the complete list of holders the company itself has named.
| Holder | Stake | As reported in |
|---|---|---|
| Chalet, whose founder sits on the board as an investor director | n/a | Company frequently asked questions, 2025 |
| Y Combinator, from the winter 2022 batch | n/a | Company release, January 2022 |
| Justin Hamilton, who led the May 2022 seed round and holds a board seat | n/a | Company release, June 2022 |
| Mike Regan, described as the company’s first investor and appointed chief growth officer in June 2025 | n/a | Company release, June 2025 |
| Simon Segars, Warren East and Sir Robin Saxby, all former chief executives of ARM | n/a | Company release, June 2022 |
| Around twenty named venture funds and unnamed angels | n/a | Company release, June 2022, and the partners page |
| Total raised | ~US$15 million | Company frequently asked questions, 2025 |
Funding to date is a US$2 million pre-seed in September 2021 and a US$10.1 million seed in May 2022. No priced round has been announced since, and the company has filed nothing with the securities regulator that would disclose one. It also retains a minority holding in Viridian Biometals, the private company its mineral-processing team was spun out into in April 2024. The size of that holding is not disclosed.
Listed exposure
There is no way to take listed exposure to this company. Its three listed counterparties, ReElement’s parent American Resources Corporation, Aqua Metals and Deep Sea Minerals Corp., have each signed memoranda of understanding and none of them discloses any shareholding. Aqua Metals describes the work as exploratory in its own annual report and notes that no commercial-scale operations have begun.
Reports
Earlier reports (2 documents)
| Year | Document |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Annual and ESG report (PDF) |
| 2022 | Annual and ESG report (PDF) |