DEScycle, a startup building distributed metals processing infrastructure for critical and precious metals recovery, has secured more £5.5 million in fresh funding bringing total funding to over £9 million.
As well as a £2 million equity injection, Grants have been awarded across a series of competitive programmes, comprising £1.9 million from the EIC Accelerator, £0.9 million through Innovate UK Investor Partnerships, £0.5 million through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
Headquartered in London, DEScycle has developed a distributed, modular platform that deploys repeatable, capital-light processing units to recover critical and precious metals closer to where materials are generated. Starting with electronic waste, the platform uses a proprietary ionometallurgy process that enables lower-capital, lower-energy metals recovery without the constraints of traditional smelting infrastructure. Construction of a demo plant is underway in Teesside, with launch targeted for H2 2026.
The funding will support several workstreams as DEScycle moves toward industrial validation: operating its demo plant for longer, generating additional data to inform design decisions, expanding customer trial capabilities, and integrating complementary technologies into the wider platform. It will also support development of digital product passports intended to provide traceability for recovered metals and help customers understand provenance across the supply chain.
The announcement comes as both the United Kingdom and Europe seek to strengthen critical raw materials capability and build more resilient supply chains for sectors including advanced manufacturing, electrification, AI infrastructure and digital systems. Metals processing infrastructure remains highly centralised, capital-intensive and slow to scale, creating a strategic gap for countries and industry players seeking to build greater sovereign capability.
DEScycle has secured strategic and commercial validation from partners including Mitsubishi, GAP Group and Cisco, with GAP Group and Cisco confirmed for customer trials in 2026 as the business moves toward broader commercial engagement.
Critical raw materials are becoming a strategic priority for both the UK and Europe, and that is creating growing demand for new metals processing infrastructure. Securing more than €10m in confirmed non-dilutive funding across competitive European and UK programmes is a strong signal of the importance of domestic metals recovery. For DEScycle, this funding helps de-risk deployment by allowing us to run our demo plant for longer, generate more data and make better design decisions before commercial scale-up. It also enables us to trial and integrate complementary technologies into our platform, helping us bring a stronger product to market.
