CDL-London at Imperial College London is Creative Destruction Lab’s newest international hub dedicated to transforming academic breakthroughs into scalable, commercial ventures.
CDL-London is supported by Founding Partner, Rio Tinto, a leading mining and materials company, and hosted at Imperial College London – the global top ten university and leader in engineering and physical sciences.
As part of Imperial’s Enterprise ecosystem, CDL-London will be led by the Institute for DeepTech Entrepreneurship, a cross university initiative housed within Imperial Business School, in partnership with the Enterprise Lab.
CDL-London marks a major expansion of the CDL Minerals programs, which supports high-potential startups advancing technologies for mineral exploration, processing, and decarbonization. By connecting scientists and entrepreneurs with world-class mentors, investors, and industry experts, the program will help founders sharpen their value propositions, prioritize milestones, build teams, and raise early-stage capital.
For founders who seek to commercialize hardware or software innovations that are enabling improvements in the efficiency, safety, productivity and sustainability of mineral exploration and the mining industry critical to society’s future.
Professor Mary Ryan, Vice Provost (Research and Enterprise) at Imperial Business School
The global energy transition will rely on sustainable ways to discover, extract, use, and reuse and deploy critical minerals. We are proud to host CDL-London at Imperial alongside our Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials. This collaboration will help accelerate the development of deep-tech cutting-edge materials and cleantech businesses.
Professor Peter Todd, Dean of Imperial Business School
CDL-London demonstrates Imperial Business School’s ability to serve as a bridge between breakthrough science and business. As Europe’s only leading business school within a STEMB university, we are uniquely positioned to help cutting-edge research become real-world benefit. This partnership with Creative Destruction Lab aligns perfectly with our mission to bring science to humanity – supporting ventures that will shape the future of sustainable innovation and global prosperity.
Dan Walker, Chief Innovation Officer at Rio Tinto
Startups have a vital role to play in solving some of our industry’s biggest challenges and providing the materials the world needs. Our investment in the Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials is focused on transformational research. But we know that research alone isn’t enough – academic theory must translate into real-world impact. That is why we’re backing CDL-London to help turn breakthrough discoveries into the next generation of game-changing companies.
Contact the CDL-London team at cdl-london@creativedestructionlab.com.