STRIDE Ventures

The U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP) launched STRIDE Ventures — an initiative operated by the Start2 Group — to advance innovations that reinforce U.S. technological leadership, economic security and industrial resilience. STRIDE Ventures enables NSF to experiment with new models of innovation funding — connecting researchers and entrepreneurs to urgent national challenges and accelerating the path from discovery to deployment.

NSF TIP is experimenting with bold, responsible methods to rapidly fund U.S. innovation. The STRIDE Ventures initiative accelerates the time from proposal deadline to decision. Following a rigorous review process, TIP selected the Start2 Group to operate STRIDE Ventures, which will develop, publicize and run multiple challenges that allow qualified teams to compete for funding to solve challenges in critical and emerging technologies. For each challenge, a jury comprised of industry, government and academic subject-matter experts reviews the submitted projects and informs the selection process. Winners are selected soon after.

The Tech Metal Transformation Challenge is the first funding opportunity under STRIDE Ventures. The challenge seeks to strengthen the U.S. supply chain for critical and strategic metals by developing breakthrough technologies. These metals form the backbone of modern industry, powering energy systems, defense technologies, advanced manufacturing and the digital economy. Yet access to many of these essential materials remains highly concentrated in a few producing regions, leaving domestic industries vulnerable to geopolitical and logistical disruptions.  

The Tech Metal Transformation Challenge calls for bold, interdisciplinary innovation that integrates biological, chemical and physical-mechanical processes to close this gap. Competing teams will design and demonstrate end-to-end prototype systems that can extract, convert and return metals from complex domestic waste streams into high-performance materials for advanced manufacturing.  

By developing processes that can transform secondary and unconventional sources into functional metals, the challenge aims to open an innovation-driven model for domestic materials security and build a resilient foundation for future industries.   

The multiyear, three-stage program was co-designed with and running parallel to Germany's SPRIND Tech Metal Transformation Challenge. Supported by tiered funding and expert guidance, these programs will advance breakthrough innovations from research and development to market validation, scale-up and deployment. 

IBM and Aurubis provided donated e‑waste that will serve as reference material during the initial stage of the challenge, enabling teams to test and validate their approaches using real‑world feedstocks. This work will be conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, whose engagement will bolster the technical rigor and national security relevance of the effort.