TCL #56: Mining Byproduct Sale, Fusion AI Twin, Oncology Acquisition

Largo locks in a binding term sheet for 4.5M tons of iron ore calcine from its Brazilian mine, eyeing $56M+ proceeds in an EXW deal. Ørsted gears up to legally challenge the Trump admin's halt on its 45% complete Sunrise Wind project, joining Equinor and others in offshore wind battles. OMV bags €123M for a 140MW green hydrogen plant producing 23,000 tons/year by 2027, slashing 150,000 tons of CO₂ annually.

CFS teams with NVIDIA and Siemens on an AI digital twin for its SPARC tokamak to speed fusion commercialization. Amgen snaps up Dark Blue Therapeutics for up to $840M to advance an AML-targeting molecule nearing trials. Biographica raises $9.5M seed to predict gene edits for crops, partnering with BASF's Nunhems.

Mining

Largo Inc., a Canada-based global supplier of vanadium and ilmenite products, has received a binding term sheet for the sale of 4.5 million tons of iron ore calcine. The potential proceeds from this sale are expected to exceed $56 million. The iron ore calcine is a byproduct accumulated over 11 years of vanadium production at Largo's primary mine, Maracás Menchen, in Brazil. This transaction is an Ex Works (EXW) contract, meaning the buyer is responsible for shipping. There is no guarantee that a final transaction will be completed or on the terms currently considered.

Energy

Ørsted plans to file a new legal challenge against a Trump administration order halting the Sunrise Wind Project off New York's coast. European energy companies have invested billions in US offshore projects, many of which are nearing completion. Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, a global investor in the offshore wind industry, previously challenged the suspension of their $5 billion Revolution Wind project. Norwegian company Equinor will also challenge the stop-work order for its Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. Ørsted said it had all the necessary permits for Sunrise Wind, which is 45% complete and was expected to start generating power by October 2026.

Hydrogen Production

OMV, an Austrian multinational integrated oil, gas, and chemicals company, has secured €123 million (~$143 million) in funding from Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH (aws) for its green hydrogen project. The project will feature a 140 MW plant with a capacity to produce up to 23,000 tons of green hydrogen annually. Operations are set to begin by the end of 2027. The green hydrogen produced will utilize renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydropower. The project is anticipated to achieve annual carbon emission savings of up to 150,000 tons.

Nuclear Tech

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company focused on developing and scaling tokamak fusion power plants, is collaborating with NVIDIA and Siemens to accelerate commercial fusion. The collaboration focuses on developing an AI-powered digital twin of CFS's SPARC fusion machine. CFS will utilize the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for engineering and managing machine designs. NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD will be used to integrate data with physics models for the digital twin. The digital twin will enable rapid simulations, hypothesis testing, and comparison of experimental results with simulations.

Biotech

Amgen has acquired Dark Blue Therapeutics, a UK-based biotechnology company, for up to $840 million. This acquisition is intended to bolster Amgen's oncology pipeline and marks the latest purchase of a UK company by a US pharmaceutical group. Dark Blue was spun out of an Oxford University incubator in 2022 and focuses on an investigational small molecule targeting two proteins that drive specific types of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The molecule is on the verge of entering clinical trials, with an unmet medical need facilitating rapid progress.

AgriTech

Biographica, a London-based startup, has raised $9.5 million in seed funding to advance its AI-driven approach to crop design, which identifies high-value gene targets for gene editing. Biographica has partnered with BASF's vegetable seeds business, Nunhems, to aid in the development of new crop varieties. Biographica's platform uses multi-modal machine learning trained on large genomic datasets to predict influential genes and design edits.