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Nikhil Gupta

Founder & CEO of Determinant Materials, a Pensacola, FL startup using MicroParticle Refining to recover critical metals from e-waste.

Oct 7, 2026

1:55
Why haven't people done this before? Is it completely a breakthrough?
1:58
I mean, yeah, it is a big breakthrough.
2:00
I think it's a kind of standard, I mean, that's a pretty common question, I think, for a lot of innovative technology companies.
2:07
I mean, you could say, why didn't IBM do what Apple ended up doing, right? Why didn't NVIDIA, I mean, why didn't some competitor before NVIDIA do what NVIDIA's doing? So I think there's a huge aspect of innovator's dilemma.
2:17
On the panel earlier at, you know, we're at Climate Week, On the panel earlier, someone mentioned basically a lot of the innovation comes from outside the industry, right? So when you're stuck within the industry of metals, let's say, the metals industry, it's people coming up with their education, their PhDs, their background, the technology of the company, the assets, the know-how.
2:40
It's all geared towards what the status quo is, okay? There's a lot of embedded momentum behind that, right? Inertia.
2:47
We came at it as a fast-moving, innovative tech startup coming outside the industry.

25 MINS LATER

27:23
Anything that you've observed that you think is like really going to be important going forward?
JordanHOST
17:32
So can you just explain the difference between the two categories?
17:36
Yeah.
17:36
And in fact, I'm going to expand that question a little bit, if you don't mind.
17:39
Yeah, sure.
17:40
So, yeah.
17:41
So like the periodic table, like we have this goal that we want to eventually kind of produce all the metals and maybe even just kind of refine everything on the periodic table, be a one-stop shop.
17:50
The typical broad categories traditionally in metals were like precious metals and base metals.

26 MINS LATER

JordanHOST
43:31
But like, you know, if there were a million different like weapons companies

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