Riven Systems emerges from stealth with $7.9M and DOE award

Riven Systems said Aug. 13, 2026, that it has come out of stealth with $7.9 million in pre-seed funding to build an AI platform for critical minerals processing. The New York startup also won a Department of Energy Genesis Mission grant and is targeting U.S. supply chain resilience in rare earths and other key minerals.

Why it matters: - Critical minerals processing is a national security and industrial policy issue because the U.S. still relies heavily on China for processed materials. - Riven Systems is trying to lower the cost and speed of domestic mineral separation, which could help U.S. miners and processors onshore more of the supply chain. - The company is positioning AI as a way to replace manual, capital-intensive chemistry workflows in an industry that underpins defense, energy infrastructure, and computing.

What happened: - Riven Systems emerged from stealth on Aug. 13, 2026, with $7.9 million in pre-seed funding. - Cerberus Ventures led the round. - Scout Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Lightscape Partners and CLAI also participated. - New System Ventures served as an incubating investor. - The New York-based startup is led by co-founders Chip Breitenkamp, CEO, and Orion Archer Cohen, CTO. - Riven said it is building an integrated AI platform for industrial chemistry focused on modernizing critical minerals processing. - The company also said it won a Department of Energy Genesis Mission award.

The details: - Riven Systems is developing autonomous laboratories, computational modeling and AI for real-world processing infrastructure. - The platform is designed to de-risk processing chemistry for domestic producers and reduce costs and timelines by orders of magnitude. - The company said its work is aimed first at rare earths. - Riven said the DOE Genesis Mission program supports AI projects tied to energy, discovery science and national security. - The DOE grant was offered to less than 5% of applicants in one of the department’s most competitive funding opportunities, according to the announcement. - Riven is working with researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley on the project. - Breitenkamp has founded more than 20 patent families and previously served as president of battery materials maker NanoGraf Corporation. - Cohen earned a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley, was an NSF Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and contributed to the Materials Project. - Cohen led the development of TorchSim, an open-source tool for AI-accelerated atomistic simulation, including a collaboration with NVIDIA.

Between the lines: - The startup is betting that separations chemistry, not just mining, is the bottleneck in critical minerals supply chains. - Cerberus Ventures framed Riven as a “separation autonomy platform” built on a large separations dataset, signaling investor interest in software-driven industrial process control. - New System Ventures said it incubated Riven after systems-level research pointed to domestic critical minerals processing as a strategic priority. - The company’s pitch reflects a broader push to use AI and automation in industrial sectors that have changed more slowly than software.

What's next: - Riven said it is hiring across computational chemistry, machine learning, process chemistry and business development. - Open roles and contact information are available at Riven Systems. - The company will continue its initial focus on rare earth processing while expanding its chemistry platform for broader industrial use.

The bottom line: - Riven is trying to turn critical minerals processing into a software- and AI-led industrial stack, backed by fresh capital and federal validation.