01
Independent companies
Every member runs their own business, in their own market, on their own judgement. Independence is the starting condition, not a concession.
CMC — Critical Metals and Circularity
Circular metals · Founder-owned
The world's largest circular-metals platform. Owned by the founders who build it— with 1 million tonnes of recovered material per year by 2040.
50%
Of global GDP built by SMEs
2%
Of global financial assets
1M
Tonnes recovered per year by 2040
We are SME founders, and we built our companies the same way you built yours — with years we'll never get back. The machinery of capital was never designed for us to keep what we create. So we're building our own: a federation of independent circular companies, owned by its members.
Recyclers, refiners, e-waste processors and circular miners — keeping their own companies, pooling their capital, and meeting the market as one counterparty.
One founder, one voice · Your company stays yours · The Founding Circle is forming
1M
One for all, and all for oneCMC / I
Materials ·Zinc · Black mass · E-waste · Copper · Precious metals
Governance ·One founder, one voice
Open door ·The Founding Circle is forming
North star ·1,000,000 tonnes recovered per year by 2040
I
The gap
Half the world economy.
Two per cent of its financial assets.
0%
of global GDP
Produced by small and medium enterprises
0%
of the financial assets
Controlled by those same enterprises
Small and medium enterprises build half of everything and own almost none of the machinery that finances it. That distance between what we produce and what we control is the single problem CMC exists to close. Everything on this page follows from it.
01
Have you been turned down for financing you knew you could repay?
02
Have you taken money on terms you couldn't swallow?
03
Has your growth slowed — not because you ran out of ideas, but because you ran out of balance sheet?
It was never your failure. It was the design.
The bank didn't lend to who you were. It lent to collateral you didn't have. The investor offered money with a leash attached and called the leash partnership. Every round you raised to grow cost you a piece of the thing you bled to create.
The machinery of capital is engineered so that value flows out of the businesses that create it and into the institutions that finance them. We do the work; they own the upside. We take the risk; they price it and keep the reward.
Why it works so well against us
A founder alone is a borrower — small, exposed, one bad quarter from a renegotiation. That isolation is not a side effect of the system. It is the strategy.
II
What CMC is
A federation of independent
circular companies.
Founders keep their own companies and run them their own way. What the federation holds is capital — pooled, stewarded and put to work by the people who own it.
Members govern on one principle: one founder, one voice — regardless of size, regardless of capital. Economics follow contribution; control never does.
02
One balance sheet
Capital pooled into a single, real balance sheet — stewarded by members, deployed for members, with the margin recirculating inside the federation instead of leaking out of it.
03
One counterparty
The federation meets the market as one credit standing. That is what buys the plant, wins the contract and prices the capital — and it is what no member can reach alone.
The common-good rule
Everything that convenes, informs, or connects the federation — the forum, the platform, the media — operates at cost-recovery or under member-majority ownership. Nothing in the middle extracts. That's not a value statement; it's how the entities are legally structured.
III
What a federation does that a company can't
Owning the machinery is the instrument.
This is the purpose.
Four decisions that are impossible for a single SME and ordinary for a federation.
01
We own the next refinery
Name the processing step your chain is hostage to. Everyone has one. Built once, owned by all, fed by members — with the margin and the tolling relationship staying inside the group.
02
We fund the R&D no one can afford alone
Ten trials knowing three will work. In one company, the experiment that fails takes a year of profit with it — so it never runs. In a federation the failures are absorbed and the result belongs to the members, not to a vendor who leases it back for twenty years.
03
We buy the missing link
Upstream feed. Midstream logistics and storage. Downstream refining and offtake. We don't buy for the return on the asset — we buy for what it unlocks across every member at once.
04
We decide where the capital goes
Allocation as a collective act: to the plant, the trial, the acquisition, the member whose growth pulls everyone's volumes up. One member, one voice on control; economics follow contribution.
Who gets in — and who decides
Every member commits to the Code of Circularity — our shared standard for genuine circular practice. The team vets and recommends; the members decide, at a two-thirds threshold. The federation keeps its own gate.
The ecosystem
The Collective doesn't
stand alone.
CMC sits inside a living ecosystem. Sister entities carry the capital, the platform, the people, the collective and the story — so the Collective can stay focused on its members and their clusters.
IV
How it works
Six principles the
federation is built on.
01
Your company stays yours
You keep 100% of the business you built. What the federation pools is capital, and capital is what it puts to work.
02
Members are owners
You co-own what the group builds. Ownership is the relationship — there is no product being sold and no queue to stand in.
03
Members allocate the capital
One founder, one voice on matters of control; economics follow contribution. The two are separated on purpose, so the largest balance sheet in the room can never buy the room.
04
Nobody fails alone
Businesses have hard years. In a federation, capability, people and volume are absorbed by the group rather than lost. Resilience is what the structure is for.
05
Terms come first
Everything is written down and walked through before anyone commits to anything. You will always see the terms before you decide.
06
We earn when members grow
Conventional finance earns most when you are weakest. A member-owned federation earns when its members grow. The incentive is inverted by design.
Powered by Symviosis — the federation's own technology layerTerms are shared in full, in conversation, before anything is signed
A note on structure
Membership of CMC — The Collective is participation in a federation of independent companies. It is not an offer of securities, deposits or investment advice. Any credit institution referred to is in preparation and subject to licensing, and every structure is documented in the relevant jurisdictions — always by the member's own informed decision.
The north star
1,000,000
Tonnes of material recovered, every year, by 2040
- Zinc
- Black mass
- E-waste
- Copper
- Precious metals
- Other circular materials
Pulled back out of the waste stream instead of out of the ground — through companies owned by the founders who built them. Not a valuation. Not a multiple. Not a share price. Measured by what we actually did.
The choice
You already know what
one of these feels like.
Stay solo
- Finance every tonne on someone else's terms
- Give away equity to fund working capital
- Watch contracts go to whoever could fund them
- Carry the burden alone
Join the federation
- Own the machinery instead of renting it
- Bid for the contract you couldn't fund alone
- Reach up and down the chain, not just across your slice
- Share the next innovation instead of forgoing it
Scale the company. Keep the company.
V
The arithmetic
One founder is a borrower.
A hundred founders are a balance sheet.
The capital used to discipline us was always, in aggregate, ours. Our receivables. Our inventory. Our recurring revenue. Our growth, our resilience, our trust in one another.
It was sitting inside our own businesses the entire time — we simply never pooled it. We competed for scraps when we could have built the kitchen.
The Founding Circle is forming — join as an explorer
We honor commitment, we never sell influence.
VI
Where to meet us
Come see the collective
with your own eyes.
Autumn 2026 · Dubai
The Critical Circle
The CMC Forum's curated gathering of ~70 participants from across the circular critical-metals chain — operators, off-takers, and the founders building the Collective. Invitation only; members nominate.
November 2026 · Nusa Penida, Bali
The Founding Retreat
The founding retreat of the Collective. Five days where members set the Collective's first-year agenda, meet their future cluster peers, and shape the Code of Circularity in the room — not by newsletter.
Learn moreVII
The people
Built by founders who have sat
on the wrong side of the desk.
People who have raised working capital, met payroll and been told no by a credit committee. The federation is stewarded alongside its sister entities in the wider BetterWorld ecosystem.
Founder
Alex Alegria-Seif
Holds the vision; anchoring Metaluck as the first member in The Collective.
Chief Operating Officer
Clement Hochart
Turns the structure into an operating rhythm the members can rely on.
Financial Engine Lead · CEO, Providence AM
Dr. Farhad Reyazat
Builds the financial engine — credit, structure and the discipline behind it.
Partnership & Community Director
Ismail Tekin
Convening the living network of founders across the chain.
CMC Media Director
Roberto Corona
The storyteller — stories that regenerate and carry the work into the world.
The open door
The Founding Circle
Is forming — join as an explorer
Explorer is a standing, not a formality. You look at how the engine is built, ask the questions you would ask of any partner, and reach your own conclusion in your own time. Leave a name and a number and we will arrange a call.
Alex Alegría-SeifFounder
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