Kansas City is building a national hub for critical materials, and it's looking for investors and corporate partners to build it with. In this reverse pitch, Critical Materials Crossroads (CMC), backed by up to $160 million NSF Regional Innovation Engine award, flips the usual format: instead of founders pitching investors, CMC lays out the challenges between promising technologies and commercial scale across battery supply chains, rare earth elements, and high-purity recycling and recovery.


Tony Caruso and Ashlynn Horras will share how CMC and its ecosystem partners are forging industry partnerships and developing industrial sites to de-risk the leap from pilot to plant. Come with a solution, a problem, or an appetite for co-investment.