The world uses a lot of copper, but thanks to the energy transition and data centers, it’ll need a lot more. Between now and 2050, we’ll have to produce more copper than has been mined throughout all of human history, according to one study.
A lot of that copper ends up in the electrical grid, which in the U.S. is showing its age.
“We’re hitting this inflection point of AI and the electrification of nearly every industry, and it’s creating this point where we have overburdened and overstressed the energy grid,” Amir Mashal, founder and CEO of Arcturus, told TechCrunch.
One option is to throw more copper at the problem, but Mashal said his startup, which has been operating in stealth, offers an alternative. Arcturus can reduce the amount of energy that electrical conductors lose to heat by infusing carbon nanomaterials into copper and aluminum using lasers. Replacing traditional copper with Arcturus’s material would allow the same size power lines to carry more electricity.
In practical terms, that could cut losses on the electrical grid in half, which would immediately unlock around 3% more electricity on average and up to 10% more during the most congested times, when the grid arguably needs it most. At the low end, that’s about a year’s worth of demand growth in the U.S.
“Copper loses conductivity as it heats up, so the hotter it gets, the more energy it wastes as heat,” Mashal said. “As I kept peeling back the layers of that onion, everything kind of started clicking to me because I noticed the same limit shows up everywhere. The modern world really runs on metals.”
While the grid is the ultimate destination for a materials startup like Arcturus, the company is starting smaller with drones, robotics, and, yes, data centers, where a few percentage points more electricity can have an outsized impact.
The company exclusively told TechCrunch that it raised $8 million in a seed round led by Initialized Capital with participation from Toyota Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, 1517, and Wireframe Ventures.
Mashal has been quietly refining his materials in a garage in Malibu, California, where he’s currently able to produce several centimeters of wire as a proof of concept. With the new funding, he plans to ramp up to tens of meters so that the nano-infused materials can be tested in various applications, including windings in electric motors and busbars in power distribution equipment.
Though the materials’ properties are new, Mashal said they’re engineered to be a “drop-in replacement” in existing copper and aluminum applications. “Same form factors, no system redesign, no new training for folks to handle or crimp the material.”
Arcturus’ materials could make for lighter drones or more efficient EVs. By reducing the amount of energy lost to heat, they can also reduce data centers’ needs for cooling.
“All those industries have the same kinds of bottlenecks, whether your drone wants to have double the flight time or your graphics card is just heating up too much,” Mashal said. “Those are all areas where our material can fundamentally disrupt things.”