Watertown, Mass.– SiTration, a Massachusetts-based startup focused on sustainable materials recovery, marked a major milestone Thursday with the opening of its new 11,000-square-foot research and pilot production facility in Watertown. The company aims to scale its proprietary technology for extracting critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, and nickel, which are essential to the global clean energy transition.
The ribbon-cutting event drew state and local leaders, investors, and partners. Among those in attendance were State Representative Steve Owens and Massachusetts Undersecretary of Economic Foundations Ashley Stolba, who joined SiTration CEO and co-founder Dr. Brendan Smith in touring the facility and celebrating the company’s next phase of growth.
“This new space marks an inflection point for SiTration,” said Dr. Smith. “It enables us to expand our world-class team and build pilot systems larger and faster than previously possible. These systems will be deployed with mining partners around the world to demonstrate our uniquely profitable and sustainable critical minerals extraction capabilities, advancing us toward commercial scale.”
Founded out of research conducted at MIT, SiTration is developing chemical-free, energy-efficient technologies for extracting and recycling metals from both raw materials and waste streams. Its patented silicon filtration and electro-extraction process is designed to reduce the cost, pollution, and energy consumption associated with conventional mining and recovery methods.
The company has already partnered with major industry players, including Rio Tinto, to explore solutions for reclaiming valuable materials from mining waste.
Matthew Nordan, General Partner at Azolla Ventures—an early backer of the company—said SiTration exemplifies how Massachusetts’ innovation ecosystem supports breakthrough technologies.
“We invested in SiTration because the energy transition is a materials transition—the copper, lithium, rare earths, and other elements that SiTration can recover will increasingly power every sector of the global economy,” Nordan said.
To date, SiTration has raised $14.4 million in venture funding. Its most recent seed round was led by 2150, with participation from BHP Ventures, Extantia, Orion Industrial Ventures, and previous backers Azolla Ventures and MIT’s E14 Fund.
The new Watertown facility will support SiTration’s R&D expansion, production of pilot systems, and recent growth in staffing as the company accelerates its push toward commercial deployment.
