Metastable Materials

Positions itself as a raw material supplier rather than just a recycler, refining India's spent-battery stockpile into industrial metals instead of relying on imports.

Proprietary Integrated Carbothermal Reduction process avoids external chemical inputs used by conventional recyclers.

Batteries are dismantled under water, removing fire and toxic-gas risks common to conventional crushing-based recycling.

Buyers of recovered lithium.

Largest global consumer of nickel; Metastable's recovered nickel can feed into this supply chain.

Buyers of recovered cobalt; magnet makers set contamination specs (e.g. manganese limits).

Buyers of recovered copper.

Primary buyer of recovered aluminium.

Nickel Manganese Cobalt cell manufacturers are described as another major customer category for recovered battery metals.

Works directly with customers to develop product specifications before supplying at scale, e.g. acceptable manganese contamination levels in cobalt for magnet manufacturers.

Buys spent lithium-ion batteries and dismantles them under water to remove fire and toxic-gas risk before processing.

Runs the patented reaction, then separates individual metals by physical properties — copper recovered under pressure, lithium dissolved in water, nickel and cobalt separated by magnetism.

Ongoing in-house development of processing equipment and continued patent filings remain a company priority.

Core, trademarked chemical-free reaction at the centre of the company's extraction process; the company holds five patents including one international filing.

Metastable designs and builds most of its own machinery rather than buying off-the-shelf equipment.

One of India's most compact zero-liquid-discharge systems, recycling all liquid waste generated during processing on site.

A half-acre facility in Bengaluru's Harohalli Industrial Area and a second facility in Delhi, chosen for proximity to battery feedstock supply, operating since 2024.

Sources spent batteries from a range of suppliers, from local scrap dealers to large vehicle OEMs, working closely with them on logistics and safety of battery transport.

Buys spent batteries at market prices, refines them, and sells the recovered lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and aluminium priced off commodity exchange benchmarks; final pricing depends on purity, volume and customer relationships.

Commercial revenue only started flowing in 2025 as the Bengaluru facility scaled utilisation.

Investor commentary at the seed round framed the chemical-free process as capital-efficient relative to conventional battery recycling, which the company says needs significant investment in facilities and engineering.