Tesla offered $325M for Salton Sea startup

The article raises a few interesting points I didn&#x27;t know:<p>- In SoCal there are several areas which have geothermal activity and correspondingly several electric plants based on that<p>- This geothermal activity raises both hot water and a fair concentration of a brine solution containing many metals<p>- The lithium isn&#x27;t mined, they were getting it by processing this brine solution<p>Based on that, and reading many comments that modern batteries also needs lots of Co, Mn, etc... I wonder if the brine water coming up from this area is basically &#x27;battery soup&#x27;? Seems like a lot of potential value that is already being pumped out of the ground by someone else - who considers it a waste product!

&gt;$325 million, paid in Tesla stock.<p>&gt;Musk wrote in a June 21, 2014 letter to Simbol CEO John Burba<p>Jesus. I probably wouldn&#x27;t have taken this deal either because it&#x27;s all in stock but damn they must be kicking themselves right now.

Like they say... hindsight is 20&#x2F;20...<p>Finding this piece really interesting though for other reasons. Had a similar idea for a project based in that area a couple years back. Imperial Valley (in general) strikes me as a HUGELY under-capitalized opportunity at the moment.<p>As a San Diego native, grew up familiar with it as the cesspool and stink-puddle that it is... but, if you look into the history of Imperial Valley and Salton Sea (and the abundance of mineral-rich &#x27;dust&#x27; and other waste) it&#x27;s actually an extremely fascinating tale.<p>Anyone want to put a few million into helping establish a similar project? Seems like there&#x27;s way more than just Lithium to be monetized out there.

So roughly what we know can be summarised as<p>- company has promising but not proven scalable means to extract lithium from drilling waste water.<p>- company gets all stock offer from Tesla which to all intents and purposes is &quot;if tesla succeeds you get rich, if not you fail as well.&quot; Not clear what voting rights there were.<p>- company seems to have not responded one way or another.<p>And who can blame them - they work for the dream, and the best offer is to take a part of someone else&#x27;s lottery ticket. Turns out it was a good bet but who knew.

It looks the investor wanted the company to go to BK. Maybe they were also the senior debt holder which means they could potentially get the company cheaper since senior debt holder have highest priority in getting paid back.

Remember this isnt a proven technology yet (lithium brine mining). There are tons of promising projects in the sheltered environment of chemistry labs that dont scale up in the real world due to unforseen complications. I&#x27;d say 9 out 10 promising battery announcements fall into this category.

Tesla should buy the Jadar mine in Serbia, huge deposits of Lithium, Rio Tinto seem to have done nothing with it! Serbia could do with some positive investment, economy is still dire, lovely people who deserve a break.

The facts are still a bit scarce, I wonder if their claims of a more efficient extraction process failed to scale up.

For the curious, this is the patent for the tech - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;patents&#x2F;US8637428" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;patents&#x2F;US8637428</a>

As someone who grew up in Palm Springs I can&#x27;t believe there was a startup there. There is absolutely nothing going on there. Maybe it&#x27;s changed in the last 10 years.

The HN title is quite a misleading alteration of the actual title.<p>There&#x27;s no mention that the startup &quot;refused&quot; the buyout, and it was unclear why the negotiations fell apart.<p>The actual article is simply titled &quot;Tesla offered $325 million for Salton Sea startup&quot;.<p>And here&#x27;s a quote from the article giving a different picture : &quot;The person with knowledge of the negotiations told a slightly different story, saying Musk shut down all discussions after seeing the $2.5 billion valuation from Jefferies. According to that source, Musk abruptly ended all negotiations after reviewing the valuation, never giving Simbol the chance to present a counteroffer to his proposed $325 million purchase price.&quot;

1. Buy mine in Serbia<p>2. Invest hundreds of millions in mine<p>3. Have mine taken off you by Putin one day when he&#x27;s pissed off at the US State Department and wants to strut to the Russian electorate<p>4. Cry<p>Seriously, you would be utterly insane to invest in Russia at the moment with money from US, UK or EU. The reason Rio Tinto are so reluctant to invest might well be because they know it could be taken off them tomorrow.

Apparently lithium gets mined. Who knew.