A lab just outside Canberra used AI to design proteins that eat plastic. Now it wants to point the same approach at rare earth metals.
How it works
Samsara Eco was founded by Paul Riley and grew out of research at the ANU. Its AI platform designs enzymes, proteins that break things apart. Feed one an old polyester or nylon garment and it breaks the plastic back into the chemical building blocks it was made from, so you can make the same material again rather than downgrading it into something like carpet. It started with PET and has since developed enzymes for nylon 6 and nylon 6,6.
The part that’s already real
- Its first full-scale plant opened at Jerrabomberra, near Canberra, in 2025
- lululemon has a 10-year deal with Samsara, and released an enzymatically recycled nylon product in 2024
- LSKD signed a 10-year deal in 2026, with recycled fibre expected in its supply chain from 2028, from a planned 20,000 tonne plant in Asia
The harder bet
Rare earths sit in magnets, dead batteries and mine tailings, and Australia has plenty of tailings. Samsara reckons its AI can design proteins that pull those metals out. It has started raising a $100M Series B to find out, with a critical minerals pilot at Jerrabomberra targeted for the first half of 2027.
My read
The AI being ours is the part that matters. We were never going to win on scale, so owning the thing that does the designing is a different game. The minerals pilot is where we find out if it travels beyond plastic.