S1 E40 – Buckstop: We’re in the Valuation Business

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You're joined by me, Dustin, my co-host Daniel, and a special guest, Alex, who is the CEO of Buckstop. Alex, welcome to the show. How are you?

Alexander Olesen (00:53)
Very good, thanks. Very excited to be here as well.

Dustin Olsen (00:55)
Perfect. Alex, your company has a novel approach to recycling using AI-driven methodology. So to kind of unpack all of that, we'd love to understand your background, how you got into working in this business and things like that.

Alexander Olesen (01:13)
A lot to unpack there. just to introduce what we do, ⁓ Buckstop is a data-driven urban mining company. And our goal is to enable a sustainable end of life for every electronic device on earth, eventually. And we've launched an appraisal engine in the renewable energy space. So ⁓ our core value to the industry is helping folks understand what deployed assets are out there, when they're going to come offline, and what circularity strategies they could implement to recover value,

from resale or recycling. we're a data business. We help folks measure, deploy feedstock, and hopefully that'll help drive recovery rates up and ensure that there's a lot of stuff being channeled to the right kind of processes downstream. So that's kind of the high level on what we do. As far as how I got here, I actually spent the last 10 years prior to this building an OEM in the vertical farming space. And we manufactured

automated greenhouses, which is very different from over money, but we were in OEM building electronic assets. We were shipping them all around the

And so I had a front row seat to kind of the journey of developing kind technology products and manufacturing them. And more importantly, I was watching all of them eventually go obsolete. And even before they go obsolete, stuff breaks, thing, stuff happens. And when it happened, our operations teams didn't want to deal with it. ⁓ It was a real value destruction event. ⁓ Unfortunately, a lot of assets ended up in landfill because we didn't know what they were worth. The customers who bought them didn't know what they were worth. And it was just not something that our teams had the bandwidth to

deal with. So I've been wondering, like, what would it take to create a better system for managing end of life for technology assets? And fortunate to know ⁓ several other kind of companies in renewables, robotics, other like distributed hardware systems, they all have the same thing, all of their assets eventually obsolete. And so that was kind of the segue to

what if we did create an end of life valuation platform that could really help these guys understand when stuff's gonna come offline and what to do with it. And that is essentially the problem we're trying to solve today at Buckstop.

Dustin Olsen (03:11)
That's fantastic. I can see how that would be a really big problem. have this investment into an infrastructure and when it becomes obsolete or it breaks, you're just like, wow, what is this worth? Do I just throw it away? Like that's really frustrating. So with that in mind, great introduction by the way, can you walk us through Buckstop's business model? How do you source the EU waste? How do you?

process it, what's your raw materials, which raw materials you recover, things like that.

Alexander Olesen (03:39)
So I think maybe helpful to say what we don't do as well as what we do. So we're not a processor. We're not actually in the business of kind of recycling or reselling assets at this time. And really all we do is valuations. So we've launched an appraisal engine that is kind of the user interface for a technology we've developed called, we're calling it an algorithmic assay. for those that don't know, an assay is the process of kind of breaking stuff down into its element or form super

important

⁓ for recyclers to understand their feedstock and what are they processing. So we've developed a method of essentially ⁓

deconstructing finished goods into their raw materials and rare earth elements. And we think that's a really important measurement layer for ⁓ understanding the residual value in deployed technology. So we're working primarily in the renewable energy space, but our goal is to move across all electronic assets and provide accurate data about

the residual value contained in these assets. And the underlying raw material and rare earth elements is kind of the baseline, but we also look at all of the resale channels and the regulations that apply to a given asset. So that process alone, I think is going to save folks a lot of time and provide kind of a higher fidelity tool for them to outvalue these assets because today, one of the big problems is folks just don't know what they have and they don't know what it's worth.

⁓ And so that sits, you know, we're designing these tools primarily for people who've got deployed assets. So energy companies, things like that. But there's also a lot of applications for the downstream processes who are trying to figure out where, is the feedstock? And when someone calls them with a load full of assets, what's it made of? What's it worth? How should they be thinking about reselling or recycling it? So, you know, we're in, we're in the valuation business and we've just launched this appraisal tool and beta for the energy companies. And we think it's a really nice,

user experience for folks looking to value technology assets and figure out what to do with them.

Daniel O'Connor (05:33)
I'll jump in Dustin. First of all Alex, super important. I think it's a brilliant idea and it's critically needed because if we think about the situation right now, there's the energy space, but then there's the, let's look at the rare earth element supply chain. Okay. Right now about ⁓ the output of that supply chain most frequently are magnets, right? Rare earth magnets. There's other components and

⁓ elements that are produced, but let's just say magnets are the number one product. They're all different, there's bespoke and they're different attributes dependent upon the end customer. Well, only about 1 % today, I think worldwide, are these magnets derived from recycled materials. What does that mean? That means that we're all highly dependent right now on

where those rare earth mines are and where the processes are. Well, if it comes to heavy rare earths, about 99.9 % of that is China. So right now the Department of War, Defense Department and other agencies we know, we hear through the grapevine are very interested in recycling. So clearly that's gonna become more important. So like let's think about a scenario ⁓ where you have today,

very little recycling. If someone does have the output that can help with this process, walk us through how that would work. Like how would you all engage with them and how would you, how would the software or the system work and what benefit would that bring to them as compared to if they didn't do work, didn't work with your system.

Alexander Olesen (07:08)
Yeah, so just putting our primary kind of users are asset owners with deployed kind of ⁓ hardware technology assets. in that context for energy specifically, they have asset retirement obligations, which is kind of an umbrella term that could be permitting through to decommissioning bonds and even project-based financing, lending, they all require some kind of plan for what are you going to do with this thing once it's… ⁓

reaches the end of its life. And so that is an area which is dependent on third party appraisals, independent engineering studies, that these can be very costly, time consuming projects that are done, they're repeated for every project and it's a lot of assumptions in there. So it's not our standardized process and it's one of the reasons why a lot of this stuff, when it does come to end of life, they're wildly off their estimates and that's a huge cost center for lot of the folks who are having to deal with.

end of life. And so that's kind of part of what we're doing here is providing a tool that can be used by independent engineering companies, appraisal firms, but also these asset managers themselves to look at what do I have in terms of deployed metal, minerals, what are the resale opportunities, what are the regulations, and just trying to provide a standard user flow for that. And we can basically take in their asset lists and kind of run our analysis to understand.

what the best pathways are to recover those assets.

Daniel O'Connor (08:32)
So, walk me through this. So basically, either an engineering group that is contracted to assess some recycled ⁓ assets or a company directly, your system can assess the recycled material and how much of terbium or whatever metal is in this recycled asset, correct?

Alexander Olesen (08:56)
Yeah, so we do go down to kind of the material level and that's kind of the true baseline. And then we also look at resale, right? So it's a range and if you can resell something that's more sustainable, it's also a higher part of the value. So we try and optimize for that, but of course a lot of the stuff can't be in. I think that that's useful for the asset owners. It does also have a lot of implications for companies that are doing decommissioning or recycling to use the tool. I think it's important to frame this in the context of, know, there are assets and industries

where

they're very circular, a lot of this stuff is figured out, but what we're concerned with is that in the US your electronic waste recycling rate currently sits at between 15 and 22 percent, which is very low by international standards. You've got the EU, kind of 40, 45 percent, Taiwan north of 80 percent. So this can be done. And for us it's like, well, if you can measure it, you can improve it. So how do we help these asset owners figure out the best pathways to manage their assets?

And for a lot of these folks, they're not really optimizing for end of life. They're actually more often than not, hoarding it or they're putting in a landfill. And that's really an information gap that we're trying to fill to be like, hey, this stuff has value and we can make it easy for you to figure out what that value is.

Daniel O'Connor (10:08)
No, mean, it's very important. So Alex, physically walk us through, and obviously we don't want you to give away any secrets here, but is it a software? Let's say it's a data center and they're decommissioning, and let's say there's hardware, okay? And they've got a whole bunch of it. How does it work? How do you do the assay and run your AI? ⁓

to generate the report so that the buyer knows what they have here.

Alexander Olesen (10:37)
So without giving away exactly what we do, I think at a high level, it's just a very, it's a lot of data engineering. Fortunately, our co-founding team has pretty broad backgrounds from,

Daniel O'Connor (10:40)
Of course, yeah, please don't.

Alexander Olesen (10:50)
recovery of these assets through to data engineering. It's basically how do you design, really train LLMs to work off very specific data around the residual values ⁓ in raw material terms, and how do you consolidate and organize all that information to provide useful results to the asset owners, right? Because again, this stuff can be done through independent engineering studies, but it's a highly specialized workflow.

and there's really kind of not a central point of truth for these inputs. So that's part of what we do is just organizing a lot of information about devices, about the regulations, about shipping costs, really all of the variables that go into it to create much higher fidelity answers that are backed by a lot more data points than these kind of standalone engineering studies.

Daniel O'Connor (11:36)
I get it. It's ⁓ fascinating. It's actually really fascinating. Now, I had another question before Dustin chimes back in. Why do you think it's the case that so low a number in the United States, let's say 15 to 20 percent thereabouts, why is our number so low compared to, let's say, Europe or Japan? Why is that?

Alexander Olesen (11:57)
I think there are so many factors that contribute to it, right? You've got regulations. ⁓ I think the US actually, regardless of the current administration, is really changing. It's actually certainly at the state level. are landfill bans ⁓ for a lot of electronics now, and that's moving quickly. We do a lot of work in solar, and just two more states have added landfill bans for solar assets this year alone. So I think that's moving quickly. The US has other challenges. Just the sort of ⁓ take-make-waste economy, which is the linear economy, ⁓ is very

prevalent and you've got a lot of logistical hurdles in the US that you don't have in more densely populated areas.

But things are changing and I think it's also important to look at history where, for example, cars were left on the side of the road to rot when they broke. And then in the midst of the Cold War, they started looking for more domestically sourced metals and recycling was one of the key options there. So companies like the Kelley Blue Book emerged to help formalize the aftermarket for these assets. And now cars, people don't talk about it, but it's the most circular industry on the planet. 97 % of vehicles are recycled.

almost all of them have multiple ⁓ owners and usage cycles. And actually in many ways that's a role model for a lot of the tech.

assets that are out there today and where we come in is trying to kind of build that data layer and the ability to value the stuff so that if you have one of these assets you can figure out what to do with it which is you know both more sustainable but it's also an economic case for someone who has this assets like oh if I could sell it or recycle it and get some money back that's a that's a great outcome for them whereas today you know I think it's while people putting stuff in landfill is a huge issue and we'd love to solve that I think the bigger issue is people do nothing I'm sure you have a drawer full of electronics at home

Companies have that too. have warehouses and storage yards and massive scale in some cases of stuff there because they kind of know it has value but they don't know what to do with it and that's where I think we really are trying to come in with a really streamlined and accurate tool to help them value their assets and provide the foundation for them to make better decisions about what to do with it.

Daniel O'Connor (13:59)
makes total sense, Dustin.

Dustin Olsen (14:01)
Yeah, so just a point of clarification is to use the tool that you've created. Is it like an app on my phone? I take a picture of my asset or is it something where your team has to come out? They leverage your own tool to do the evaluation. What does that process look like?

Alexander Olesen (14:19)
Yeah, so we're still iterating on the right user experience, but for now it is very much like an enterprise software platform. So we can onboard clients, we work with their kind of operations teams, finance teams to run their appraisal through, to run their assets and things through our appraisal engine.

But yeah, we see a future within the next couple of years where it's opened up, not dissimilar to a Kelly Blue book where you can kind of just throw in a couple of assets, a big asset list and run your appraisals from there.

Dustin Olsen (14:37)
Got it. Okay.

That'd be probably, honestly, revolutionizing to follow that role model you said of buying and reselling vehicles. So what are some logistical or technology challenges you've encountered in just trying to build and scale Buckstop?

Alexander Olesen (15:02)
Yeah, it's interesting. think we've all been taking a deep dive into the nuances of training LLMs. we have people say, I could just ask you for GPT. And it's like, well, good luck. I think you're seeing that a lot of these specialized use cases of AI actually take a lot of, there's a wide range of training and specialization that has to go on behind the scenes to produce consistent, accurate results. certainly working through a lot of those challenges.

you

Yeah, I think that's kind of the main one. then of course, just trying to get out there and figure out what's the right kind of company and the right kind of assets that need this now. Because it's easy to say, you know, every electronic device on earth. But if you think about just the sheer scale of that endeavor, it's not attainable in the near term. So we have to start somewhere. so there's a lot of just figuring out what's needed. also in the context of the current geopolitical climate, what are the asset types and the underlying ⁓ raw materials

elements that need to be recovered most. So you mentioned magnets, things like that. are areas that we're spending a lot of time on.

Daniel O'Connor (16:03)
Yeah, yeah, Dustin, I was going to say the magnets are really, really key. On that note, so the company was founded early 2025. I'm assuming you just probably have a handful of ⁓ employees at this stage, right? Is that correct?

Alexander Olesen (16:18)
Yeah, we're slowly ramping up, but yeah, it's a small, dedicated team of co-founders at this point. yeah, we just launched the beta of this platform recently. And yeah, we're onboarding folks behind the scenes and really trying to think about what's the best way to scale up the appraised engine, as I mentioned, kind of which segments and what kind of materials are we going to be focused on.

Daniel O'Connor (16:38)
And I was going to ask you, Alex, in terms of investment, do you all have what you need now? I mean, you've obviously developed the 1.0 version, or maybe it's a little bit more advanced. in terms of go to market, do you have the investment you need? Are you raising funding? Like, where are you at with that process, if you don't mind me asking?

Alexander Olesen (16:59)
⁓ Yeah, we're pretty covered for now. We're fortunate to kind of come into this endeavor with some really key supporters and I think as you know, we talked about both You know, actually we knew that this was a needed thing But if you look at what's been happening in the geopolitics also the domestic kind of incentives We were pretty well timed with that with that obviously couldn't have seen that coming But we were lucky to be well on our way to launching this platform when all of that stuff really started kicking off. So

And we've got an investor group who kind of supports that. And I think we will look for additional funding next year, but we're all set for the time being.

Daniel O'Connor (17:35)
So, you know, we've been interviewing other companies that focus on recycling. For example, there's one in India called Attero. Are you familiar with them?

Attero, what they do is they actually take the used assets and they actually do the physical processing to recycle them. And what they've done is they've set up e-commerce sites in India. So you can log on to this website in India and you can actually sell your product to that company. And what they don't have yet…

is Buckstop where you can run that Buckstop in the background and it's like again the Kelly Blue Book, you get an estimate of what your value is and what you have, right? So now you're just, it's all opaque. It's whatever the buyer offers you with your product, correct me if I'm wrong here, you could literally run that on a defined set of attributes for an asset and get a much more granular specific value number that

can make that market more efficient. that correct? Am I understanding this correctly?

Alexander Olesen (18:36)
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think it's also important, kind of as we think about where we fit, it's like, that's why we're trying to be a tool to help people value it, because there are so many different stages in the life cycle of an asset, and then also in its second, third life through to recycling, where this data becomes important. And we spent a lot of time with recyclers, I was actually out in West Africa earlier this year, on the ground there.

these are incredibly resourceful operations where they are taking in a wide range of scrap in some cases, working devices, they're making the most of it and creating new markets. And I think as we think about what needs to happen for the circular economy to really evolve and mature, we think this valuation tool is a key part of that.

And fortunately, you know, all around the world, there are people who need energy assets, they need technology. And we're seeing that, you know, companies like Apple doing trade-in programs is a great bellwether for the economy. Most companies don't have the resources, the infrastructure to do that, but it's a signal that, you know, from these companies getting multiple use life cycles out of their products is great for the environment. It's great for their revenue. ⁓ And it ultimately increases their install base. And I think it's creating opportunities for people both in the U.S. and internationally. And so

We hopefully will be part of that in a data layer that can really help all of these companies figure out what's worth keeping and ⁓ how to recover the most value from it either through resale or recycling.

Daniel O'Connor (19:54)
percent.

Dustin Olsen (19:54)
That's awesome.

So a question I have is, so you help with the evaluation, you kind of put a dollar figure on the asset that they have, which is very helpful. But that next step is who do they give it to? Who do they try to sell it to? you also provide that information in your evaluation?

Alexander Olesen (20:14)
So we're looking at directories and trying again, our goal is to try and identify and unlock feedstock for reselling recycling. yeah, absolutely kind of letting them know what are the most effective pathways to resell or recycle is key to that. And that can be domestic or international. I don't know if you know, they call the US the Saudi Arabia of scrap. So a lot of people come from all around the world to get material from the US and ship it internationally for processing. so there's a lot of cases to be made that these

models and the options are global for reselling and recycling. And I think again, that's something we're looking at of how do you kind of bring a standardized way of valuing it and then also figuring out who are the approved vendors and things to send it to. So we'll play a role in that for sure.

Daniel O'Connor (20:59)
And I had a question, Dustin, ⁓ Alex, it's not that big of a leap to actually emerge as a market for that because if you're the place to go to get more granular, accurate information on pricing or cost and you're aggregating all that, mean, could sort of, that could emerge as a market, I mean, at some point.

Dustin Olsen (21:00)
That's fantastic.

Alexander Olesen (21:20)
It's not on our plan now. It's funny, people do ask a lot and I think fortunately there are a lot of ⁓ great success stories in circular marketplaces. You've got Backmarket on the consumer electronic side of note and there are a lot of great kind of material marketplaces on the recycling side. we want to be a tool to help all of them. It's not on our roadmap right now to become a marketplace. I think it's also just when you think about the scale of ⁓ the problem when it comes to electronic waste and all the different segments. I think for us being a specialist in

Valuing and then obviously there are elements to that like forecasting value and figuring out when the right times are to sell Those are super important insights that can really move the move the needle for all of these folks who own assets all the people who are trying to get the most value out of them through reselling recycling and there's plenty of work to be done to get good at that and I think it's Also a great place to be where we can help all these different stakeholders within the industry without kind of getting into competing with them

Daniel O'Connor (22:16)
And another question quickly, Alex, if we look at, you know, neodymium, NDPR, let's say magnets, and we look at recycled or end-of-life assets, are there sort of heat maps of where you go to get more end-of-life assets that can be used in the stream of recycled rare earth?

supply chain? Are there geographical components or considerations? We don't know much. I'm just curious. Are there certain parts… You're saying that the United States is like the number one scrap target market. Is that fair to say?

Alexander Olesen (22:56)
Yeah, that's right. I think there's kind of multiple stages. think a heat map is a good analogy for some of the things we're doing, where we look at supply forecasts and then kind of back into geography, the types of companies, things like that, to really understand what the volumes are out there. that's a key part of what we're doing. And again, that has a lot of implications for the processes. think it's just as things stand, the US doesn't have any tier one smelting capabilities, all of this stuff.

sort of

if it's collected at all, is aggregated and sent internationally, I think that's going to change. Obviously, there's a big political push to change that. And so we anticipate a lot more of this feedstock supply staying domestically. And then a lot of the investment that's going into downstream shredding facilities through to refining, that's going to be a beneficiary from it. I think the problem still stands of how do you actually get people to recover more and stop throwing it in landfill or hoarding it? And again, that's where we hope.

hopefully we can help on both sides.

Daniel O'Connor (23:51)
fascinating.

Dustin Olsen (23:52)
That's awesome.

That's great. So Alex, looking ahead, if we were to meet again in five years and I ask you how's Buck stop doing, what would you hope to tell me?

Alexander Olesen (24:00)
So I think in the industry today for Socratic, the issue at hand is sourcing and aggregation. So for all of these downstream processes, they need more feedstock sources and they need it to be kind of organized in a way they can get it. So I hope that we play a really big role in working with asset owners and we become the standard, know, the Kelly Blue Book for electronic assets and this point of truth for what's my stuff worth and what should I do with it.

Dustin Olsen (24:24)
Awesome, that sounds great.

Alexander Olesen (24:26)
hopefully sooner than five days, but five is a good timeline.

Dustin Olsen (24:29)
I hear you, man. Things gotta move quicker than they actually will. Alex, this has been a great conversation. If you were to summarize really quick, put everything into perspective. And for those that are interested in working with you, what do you wanna say?

Alexander Olesen (24:41)
I think for all of the companies ⁓ out there who are trying to kind of understand ⁓ where they fit in this critical mineral landscape, it's like what is the value hiding in your balance sheet? You know, for a lot of these companies, they're sitting on assets that they're stranded, idle, obsolete, and we're providing tools to help you really understand what your stuff's worth and what you can do with it.

So yeah, that's really in a nutshell what we're trying to do. And if we're successful, we hope we unlock a lot of feedstock and we move that recovery rate up domestically, maybe internationally, and that's gonna be super beneficial for all of the folks listening who are in the processing business. And we are working with processors to try and look at how we can use our models to help them streamline the evaluation process. So the application is what we're doing pretty broad.

Dustin Olsen (25:21)
Yeah, fantastic.

Daniel O'Connor (25:21)
Dustin, as

we're getting towards closing here, I just want to say, Alex, I think it's a brilliant idea. One of our main goals or missions is to accelerate the what we call ex-China rare earth element supply chain, meaning we help facilitate and influence more activity outside of China so we have more balanced markets and more prosperity around the world.

I personally think what you and your colleagues are going for is going to help with that process. I commend you. I think it's very exciting what you're doing.

Alexander Olesen (25:53)
Thank you, I appreciate that. And it obviously takes a lot across multiple sectors and industries, and I hope we can play a part of that. So yeah, exciting time to be in this space, and I really appreciate your mission, because I think it's very important at this time.

Dustin Olsen (26:06)
So I couldn't agree more. To those who are listening, if you liked this episode, found it helpful, please give us a like. It'll help expose Alex and his mission that much more. If you don't want to miss a future episode, please subscribe to wherever you listen to this podcast. Alex, thank you again for being on the show and we hope to have you again on the show again in the future so you can give us an update on where things are at and how people can get more involved.

Alexander Olesen (26:31)
Let's do it. Thanks for having me.

Dustin Olsen (26:32)
Thanks.