From clean tech to critical minerals, China dominates the green economy. Its government policies incentivize Chinese companies to manufacture renewable infrastructure like solar panels (and process the minerals to make them), in addition to batteries and other energy technologies.

But foreign and private-sector efforts to diversify the critical mineral supply chain are picking up steam—and experts told Tech Brew that 2026 will be all about unseating China as the primary processor of such materials.

Private progress: Even though critical minerals can be mined all over the world, processing the materials hits a bottleneck in China. In response, many companies outside China are pioneering ways to refine critical minerals. This includes pH7, a company that refines critical minerals by recycling the chemicals it uses for extraction. This process is an alternative to smelting—aka heating up mineral ores in order to separate the metals.

Mohammad Doostmohammadi, ph7’s founder and CEO, told Tech Brew the company is hoping to help regionalize metal processing by building plants in the US and Europe in addition to its operational plant in Vancouver.

“As long as the processing is happening in South Asia, in China, they’re going to own the market because they own the metals,” Doostmohammadi said. “Regionalizing and localizing the metal processing is going to be the key for the next few years.”

Keep reading here.—TC

Can an AI chatbot act as your therapist? 93 million bucks says the answer is yes.

That’s how much money Andreessen Horowitz, Radical Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, and other firms have poured into Slingshot AI, a mental health startup from Casper co-founder Neil Parikh and AI researcher Daniel Cahn. Over the summer, the company released its first AI chatbot tool, dubbed Ash, after 18 months of development with 50,000 beta users.

Parikh told Tech Brew that Slingshot was born from a desire to help ease a shortage of mental health providers. He hopes Ash might eventually expand access to certain mental health support to those with issues like depression, anxiety, or social isolation, freeing human therapists to focus on patients with the most serious needs.

Keep reading here.—PK

In late June, while much of the US sweltered under an early-summer heat wave, things were heating up at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, too.

Anker’s eufyMake E1, which is about the size of a microwave oven and claims to be the “first personal 3D-texture UV printer,” enabling consumers to print directly on a range of materials and objects, became the most funded project ever for Kickstarter.

The 60-day campaign, which had a $500,000 goal, ended on June 28 having raised $46.8 million, besting the previous record of $41.8 million by fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson, whose project involved publishing four novels over the course of 2023.

With the popularity of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe, you’d be forgiven if you thought these platforms had been around for decades. But not so long ago these funding platforms for startups were themselves upstarts: Indiegogo launched in 2008, Kickstarter in 2009, and GoFundMe in 2010.

Keep reading on Retail Brew.—AAN

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.