Biz Beat – $76M in new funding for Phoenix Tailings

Today Online
Jun 23
4 min read

Updated: Jul 25

• Investors back Phoenix Tailings to tune of $86M overall

Special to Today Online • Business Beat

Biz Name — Phoenix Tailings

• Headquarters – Woburn • Massachusetts

• Production Facility – Burlington • Massachusetts

CEO — Nick Myers

Email — info@phoenixtailings. com

Website — www.phoenixtailings.com

• Myers has answered this Q&A for the Phoenix Tailings team — a Canton native, he was born and raised in Connecticut's Farmington Valley — Myers is a 2010 high-school graduate of The Master’s School in West Simsbury

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• Today Magazine cover story:

Toxic Haste – Tech Startup Sees Urgency of Finding Value in Mining Waste

• Year established — 2019

• Significance of the Phoenix Tailings name:

• Nick Myers — Tailings are the technical term for the mining waste material we work with. Phoenix is the legendary bird that is resurrected. Phoenix Tailings represents life being born from the ashes of the waste.

• What have been the top 3-5 developments for Phoenix Tailings since the Today Magazine cover story?

• Myers — Since the Today Magazine cover story in March 2022, Phoenix Tailings has grown from a small tech startup to one of the top high-growth companies in the sector defending national security.

• In January 2023, we launched our Burlington MA facility, the world’s first sustainable critical metals refinery. This marked a turning point not just for us, but for the global supply chain, as we became the first company to produce rare-earth metals commercially without toxic waste.

• In 2024, we signed a sales agreement of more than $197 million with a magnet manufacturer in the automotive sector, solidifying market validation and demand for our clean metals.

• We are shipping rare-earth metals globally at tonnage scales to solve the major geopolitical supply-chain crisis, and we are scaling up our production rapidly.

• Most recently, in 2025, we closed our Series B at $76 million, including $59 million in new capital, accelerating our ability to scale sustainable rare-earth production in the U.S. — particularly with our new $13 million refining facility in New Hampshire that is scheduled to open this summer — our Series A funding round in August 2021 was $10 million.

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CEO Nick Myers • VP Anthony Balladon • COO Michelle Chao • CTO Thomas Villalón

• Editor's Note

• Series A, B and C are funding rounds that follow the stages of seed funding and angel investing, giving outside investors the opportunity to buy equity in a new company, per Investopedia.com — the terms come from the series of stock being issued by the capital-seeking company.

• Myers adds that this is a “Silicon Valley” style of capital raising.

• Phoenix Tailings received UConn’s annual Wolff New Venture Competition award in October 2019 — the $20,000 prize was the first step in the company's Series A funding and provided actual laboratory space, says Myers: “This moved us out of a backyard, and I still remember the feeling of this becoming something real” •

• Mission — To create a zero-waste world •

• Company Slogan — Clean Mining and Metals Production

• Myers — The dream is to be the world’s first clean mining and metals production company with zero waste and carbon emissions, our belief being that if we get together the most passionate, most brilliant and most incredible people, we will solve any challenge in the world.

• Why you chose this profession and decided to start the business

• Myers — I want to change the world for the better, and this is the best way I can make an impact to help people.

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• Highlights and further info

• Myers — We were not started like most deep technology companies, out of a fully funded lab — Phoenix Tailings was started when I met Tomas Villalon at a Bible study. ... We started talking about all the major challenges in the world, as one does late at night.

The major thing we focused on was the 173 billion metric tons of waste produced every year in the metals industry, enough to cover the entire state of California in a foot deep of sludge every year — immediately, we said: “We cannot allow this to continue, and we need to find a solution to this problem.”

So he brought in Michelle Chao, I brought in Anthony Balladon, and together we built the first prototype in Tomas’ backyard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• Editor's Note

• Five visionary entrepreneurs founded Phoenix Tailings — CEO Nick Myers, chief technology officer Thomas Villalón, chief operating officer Michelle Chao, VP of partnerships Anthony Balladon, and Mike Martin.

• Martin and Myers were high-school classmates at The Master’s School in West Simsbury, graduating in 2010 — Martin is no longer on the Phoenix Tailings team — he has been a manufacturing engineer at East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney since June 2022, according to his LinkedIn page.

• Myers is a 2014 graduate of Saint Michael’s College in Vermont (B.S. in physics) and he has earned two master’s degrees: an MBA in marketing from Rochester Institute of Technology (2015) and an MBA in finance from Northeastern University (2017) +

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