Strategic Investment in Artificial Intelligence for Materials Discovery in Energy Applications
VIRGINIA CITY, Nev., Oct. 07, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Comstock Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (“Comstock” and the “Company”) today announced the execution of an agreement by Comstock, Deep Interstellar Research LLC (“DIR”), and Quantum Generative Materials LLC (“GenMat”) under which Comstock effectively acquired substantially all of the equity in GenMat, including GenMat’s artificial intelligence materials discovery platform, materials synthesis, and related assets, business, and most of the related technical team. Concurrently, as part of the acquisition of GenMat, Deep Prasad’s holding company will be receiving GenMat’s consolidated satellite, mission control software, other related low earth orbit assets, and space team. As a result of the transaction, Comstock will own substantially all of GenMat’s issued and outstanding equity and continue development and commercialization of its breakthrough physics-based artificial intelligence products and services to discover new materials and other technologies, primarily for decarbonizing energy.
“Our interest in GenMat was and remains grounded in the critical need and use of artificial intelligence for materials science and mineral discovery, for breakthrough energy applications and other mature industries with large addressable markets,” said Corrado De Gasperis, Comstock’s executive chairman and chief executive officer. “Artificial intelligence is even more critical today, as rapidly evolving AI platforms have begun to accelerate the pace of global innovation and redefine industries and competitive requirements. Frankly, anyone that is not integrating AI into their core competencies and capacities will likely either be disrupted or completely replaced.”
OpenAI’s ChatGPT employs a generative large language model to generate new, valuable information for a wide range of use cases at orders of magnitude faster than what was previously possible. GenMat’s AI operates similarly, but instead of generating words and language for a wide range of use cases, it generates new atoms, molecules, and physical systems for a wide range of materials applications, harnessing aspects of humanity’s collective knowledge of physics and chemistry combined with proprietary synthetic datasets to discover new materials in an exponentially shorter time than traditional methods have allowed.
Kevin Kreisler, Comstock’s chief technology officer, added, “focusing and building on GenMat’s team and competencies in materials science, computational chemistry, and computational machine learning, while incorporating the bleeding edge of emerging artificial intelligence technologies will reinforce our competitive advantages in our metals, mining, and fuels businesses, while dramatically expanding our existing innovation capacity as we continue to develop more advanced solutions for enabling systemic decarbonization.”
Since our initial investment in 2021, GenMat has built an exceptional team and achieved a series of critical milestones in materials simulation and synthesis, in addition to successfully launching its orbital imaging and remote sensing satellite, developing its proprietary mission control software, and commencing commercial sales in its space business.
“Deep Prasad positioned GenMat for an extraordinary second opportunity commercializing satellite development, manufacturing and management that requires different skills and dedication,” continued De Gasperis. “Launching a new company that will leverage GenMat’s existing space-based assets evolved as the logical, win-win solution that allowed our respective companies to maximize the value of each enterprise, with Comstock fully owning and dedicating to GenMat, and Deep fully dedicated to, owning, and leading the new space-based enterprise.”
“GenMat is one of the world’s first physics-based AI for materials science startup companies,” added Deep Prasad, GenMat’s founder and former chief executive officer. “We couldn’t be prouder of our accomplishments in materials simulation and synthesis, and the emerging opportunities with space-based systems and technologies. We are excited with Comstock’s plans to build on our work to date, and our ability to now fully dedicate and focus on building our space-based technologies, assets, and operations.”
“The strategic value of leveraging physics-based AI cannot be overstated,” concluded Kreisler. “AI will allow us to build on our competitive advantages in this rapidly changing world, while positioning us to generate extraordinary shareholder value as we fulfill our mission to enable systemic decarbonization by innovating, developing, commercializing, and monetizing new technologies for producing, distributing, storing, and using energy more efficiently.”
Mr. Kreisler will lead the management of GenMat’s ongoing technology development and commercialization efforts, including as part of Comstock’s growing innovation capabilities, projects, and partner networks.
Technology Readiness Level
Comstock uses the technology readiness scale to estimate the readiness of technology from conception to commercialization, iterating sequentially as follows: (i) TRL 1 (basic principles observed and reported); (ii) TRL 2 (technology concept and application formulated); (iii) TRL 3 (analytical and experimental proof of concept); (iv) TRL 4 (validation in laboratory environment); (v) TRL 5 (pre-pilot scale validation in relevant environment); (vi) TRL 6 (pilot prototype demonstration in relevant environment); (vii) TRL 7 (scaled-up commercial prototype in operational environment); (viii) TRL 8 (commercial system demonstration); (ix) TRL 9 (commercial maturity).
GenMat’s materials discovery AI is at TRL 3 in some applications. GenMat is focused on the minimum sufficient requirements for simulating and synthesizing breakthrough new materials for use in energy applications at TRL 6, followed by both commercialization and integration into Comstock’s businesses.
Comstock’s original 2021 investment agreement with GenMat called for a milestone-based investment of $50,000,000 for 50% of GenMat’s fully diluted equity, including about $15,000,000 previously paid by Comstock. Comstock and GenMat agreed to terminate each of their prior agreements as part of the new acquisition agreement. Comstock expects to efficiently operate, integrate, and commercialize GenMat.
About Comstock Inc.
Comstock Inc. (NYSE: LODE) commercializes innovative technologies that contribute to global decarbonization and the clean energy transition by efficiently converting under-utilized natural resources, primarily, woody biomass into low-carbon renewable fuels, end-of-life metal extraction and renewal, and generative AI-enabled advanced materials synthesis and mineral discovery for sustainable mining. To learn more, please visit www.comstock.inc.
Comstock Social Media Policy
Comstock Inc. has used, and intends to continue using, its investor relations link and main website at www.comstock.inc in addition to its Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts, as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.
Contacts
For investor inquiries:
RB Milestone Group LLC
Tel (203) 487-2759
ir@comstockinc.com
For media inquiries or questions:
Comstock Inc., Tracy Saville
Tel (775) 847-7573
questions@comstockinc.com
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