Show Notes
Rare earth magnets power the modern world and the clean energy transition. They’re inside every electric vehicle motor, wind turbine, MRI machine, and computer hard drive in a data center. But the world throws most of them away. Less than 1% are ever recycled. And today, China controls nearly 90% of the global supply. That’s the crisis Cyclic Materials was built to solve — by turning circularity into industrial reality. In this episode, co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman explains how his team figured out what the industry long thought impossible: separating rare earth magnets from steel before they’re lost forever. We explore the engineering that makes rare earth recycling commercially viable, the spoke-and-hub logistics model to power urban mining where end-of-life products are abundant, and why companies like Microsoft, Amazon, BMW, and Jaguar are already lining up to work with Cyclic Materials. If the clean economy is going to scale, it needs rare earths. Cyclic Materials found a way to recover them — not from a mine, but from the discarded machines all around us. Show Notes:
Guest: Ahmad Ghahreman - CEO, President, and co-founder Company: Cyclic Materials
For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
More from Supercool
From Sofas to Swim Spas: Secondhand Goods Get the Buy-New Experience Buying a used Peloton, sofa, or swim spa can save you thousands of dollars. But when it comes to large, expensive products, the inconvenience and risk of purchasing secondhand often outweigh the savings. Commonplace founder and CEO Ari Kimmelfeld has built a business to eliminate those obstacles, creating a three-sided marketplace connecting buyers, sellers, and a network of trained drivers who handle inspection, transportation, and installation. For sellers, listing a product is remarkably easy. For buyers, Commonplace offers premium secondhand goods at steep discounts, with financing, delivery, and installation taken care of. To grow the circular economy, buying secondhand needs to be as easy as buying new. On Supercool, Ari explains how Commonplace is building the infrastructure to make that happen, keeping valuable products in circulation, reducing waste, and cutting the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing new products. Show Notes Guest: Ari Kimmelfeld, founder and CEO Company: Commonplace For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Climate Adoption Playbook * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
While saving the Amazon grabs headlines, the trees right outside your front door shape your life in important ways. The more trees in your city neighborhood, the less crime, the fewer prescriptions for antidepressants, and the lower rates of asthma, childhood leukemia, and other immune diseases. These leafy giants affect everything from healthier newborns to longer life expectancy to higher property values. Geoffrey Donovan, an urban forester and economist with the U.S. Forest Service, joins the show. His groundbreaking research over the two decades is reshaping how urban planners and policymakers think about the essential public health and economic role of trees in city life.
In an industry that moved fast and defied cities, Veo chose a different path: partnership over disruption. Co-founder and CEO Candice Xie is building one of the only profitable micromobility companies in America by leading with discipline, transparency, and respect for the people shaping urban life. While competitors flooded streets and flamed out, Veo continues to earn trust — winning 90% of city RFPs and operating in over 50 markets nationwide. Candice joins Josh Dorfman to unpack how Veo’s strategy of asking for permission, designing durable hardware, and prioritizing community needs became its true growth engine. This is a masterclass in scaling deliberately, proving that in 2025, the climate-tech companies that endure aren’t the ones that move the fastest — they’re the ones that build trust the deepest. Show Notes Guest: Candice Xie, CEO and co-founder Company: Veo For more low-carbon innovations now scaling—and the playbooks driving their market adoption—subscribe to the podcast plus our: * Weekly Newsletter * Supercool on Instagram * Supercool on LinkedIn
Every day, 27 million kids ride 500,000 school buses—the largest transit system in America. And yet, this 80-year-old relic is stuck in the past: buses are late, routes are inefficient, and parents have no clue where the bus is or when it’s coming. Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, decided to fix it. All of it.
There are trillions of dollars of clean energy projects ready to be built—and trillions more in capital waiting to fund them. But the system connecting the two is too slow, fragmented, and expensive. That gap is what Alfred Johnson set out to close. A former Treasury official who helped steer markets through the 2008 financial crisis and later served under Janet Yellen, Johnson co-founded Crux to build the financial software layer the energy transition was missing. Crux connects developers, manufacturers, and investors across a marketplace for clean energy finance. In just two years, it’s closed over 120 transactions worth billions—turning a bureaucratic tangle of documents into a liquid market built for speed, trust, and scale. This conversation explores how liquidity, intelligence, and automation are accelerating capital into hard infrastructure—and how Crux is becoming the financial engine powering today’s clean energy industrial revolution. Show Notes