Aether’s pitch deck is a real head-scratcher. The company says that it raised almost $50 million to “extract lithium from previously inaccessible reserves.” That makes sense: Lithium is a valuable, hard-to-get resource that is being used by the bucketload in batteries and other electronics. But, the pitch deck relegates this use case (which is the smallest opportunity in the deck) almost to footnote status.
It makes for some really interesting reading and storytelling, so let’s dive in and see if we can spot what happened and how.