Fabien Koutchekian (Genomines): Can Plants Replace Mines?

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New Wave | Hugo Rauch | Substack

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🌊 Mining Without Mines

How plants could unlock the next wave of critical metals.

We’re joined by Fabien, Co-Founder & CEO of Genomines, a company rethinking how the world sources nickel, not by digging deeper, but by growing smarter.

In this episode, we dive into a radical idea at the heart of the energy transition: what if we could produce critical metals using plants instead of mines?

Fabien walks us through hyper-accumulator plants, the brutal economics of mining, and why biology might be the most under-appreciated extraction technology of our time.

This is a conversation about cost curves, patience, and why sustainability only scales if it wins on unit economics.

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why electrifying everything doesn’t work if metals stay carbon-intensive

→ How hyper-accumulator plants pull nickel straight from soil

→ The brutal reality of mining economics — and why most deposits aren’t viable

→ Why nickel isn’t rare, just inaccessible

→ Raising deep-tech capital when everyone thinks you’re crazy

→ Why winning on cost matters more than winning the climate argument

→ Transitioning from an R&D lab to an operating company

→ How cheap nickel could reshape batteries, EVs, and geopolitics

If you’re building in deep-tech or mining innovation, Fabien is someone worth listening to.