American demand for electronics has risen over the last few decades, with technologies like smartphones and electric vehicles only becoming more widespread. However, the critical components inside them are often imported, used, and discarded in short order. This leaves the United States desperately dependent on foreign supply chains for the materials that powers its technology while leaving a trail of mounting environmental hazards. Zhining Zhao, an engineer whose career has been defined by challenging convention, recognized this vulnerability firsthand. With a foundation in both philosophy and engineering, Zhao co-founded Andean, a startup focused on rebuilding America’s critical material supply chain directly from discarded electronics, reducing human labor and making the process cost-effective along the way. A Rebel’s Education Zhining Zhao’s story begins in a Shanghai classroom. As a teenager, Zhao launched a student-run newspaper that openly questioned government narratives, encouraged debate over revisionist history, and invited peers to think critically about political messaging. A risky undertaking, the publication grew rapidly in readership and influence — enough to alarm the school administration. Soon, it was shut down, Zhao was expelled, and the project was repurposed as the school’s official paper under new leadership. Stripped of his platform, Zhao spent the next few years in what he calls a period of wandering — reading voraciously, playing sports, and getting into philosophy to take a closer look at more encompassing questions that had begun to preoccupy him. These experiences equipped him with a combination of skepticism of established systems and a curiosity to seek out alternative solutions, which would become key notions in how he approached both engineering and entrepreneurship. “Being expelled was tough,” he said, “But being ostracized only affirmed my values in pursuing truth and the joy of building for a cause I believe in — even when everyone says otherwise.” From Ideas to Implementation After Zhao’s expellation, he packed his bags and arrived at a boarding institution in Massachusetts, where he immersed himself in the study of philosophy and the classics. He looked into the radical doubt of Descartes and the more didactic moral imperatives of Kant, which allowed him to better question common notions and map the logic of complex systems. He was amused to find himself, at one point, living in the same room as President Franklin Roosevelt once lived in — a man he deeply respects and continues to be inspired by. Yet philosophy’s abstract nature left him wanting something more concrete, something that could help him put all that theory into action. He then started studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon, with a specific focus on disciplines like computer vision and logic. Through these fields, he gained access to tangible tools that could apply the same systems thinking he valued in philosophy but with real-world impact. Zhao began to see many large industrial systems as vast and imperfect, waiting to be restructured; and Zhao believes the only way to do so is by redesigning it from the ground up in a vertically integrated manner. He soon made the decision to leave academia before finishing his degree, convinced that the best way to learn was by building — fully completing the transition from contemplation to creation. Seeing Value in What’s Discarded In 2025, Zhao set out to tackle America’s losing grip on critical metals and rising challenges with electronic waste. The U.S. produces roughly 6.9 million tons of e-waste each year, while global output is on track to reach 81.6 million tons annually by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum. Inside each discarded device lies a wealth of rare earth elements and critical metals — yet less than 1% is recovered. The rest is often shipped abroad, reinforcing U.S. dependence on imports for more than 80% of these materials and placing the burden of extraction on nations with fewer resources to manage the hazards. 6.9 million tons 81.6 million tons 80% of these materials Zhao viewed this as an opportunity for industrial resilience. Zhao saw a domestic reserve of materials essential to powering the next generation of technology. That vision became the foundation for Andean Inc., a startup that aims to reclaim value from discarded electronics. The company is developing modular, AI refineries that can identify, dismantle, and process devices with efficiency gains of up to 90% compared to conventional methods. Andean Inc. Intended for deployment in urban centers and integrated with existing collection networks, each compact unit is calibrated to process a wide range of valuable materials, from metals to various chemical compounds. Materials pass through a robotic handling system that disassembles and liberates recoverable objects at scale. Instead of relying on high-emission smelting, Andean uses a carbon-neutral chemical process to isolate these elements, making the process more sustainable long-term. Once separated and refined, these metals are then channeled back into the American manufacturing supply chain. Andean systems learn from every device they process, steadily improving their precision and performance over time. By rebuilding from the ground up with AI in the very logic of its operations, Andean positions itself not as a recycler, but a vertically integrated extractor and refiner: an automated system that elevates waste management into industrial renewal. Rebuilding from the Inside Out Zhao’s ambitions for Andean may start in the recycling industry, but he doesn’t plan on stopping there. With enough data, he envisions Andean acting as a single software layer, acting as the shared brain for all operations across all refineries, thereby paving the way for a decentralized network of facilities that adapt and evolve over time — eventually operating not just on the confines of Earth, but serving an interplanetary humanity across the solar system. As a result, recycling would no longer be a static service but an evolving process of refinement, further reducing the human toll of hazardous labor and turning discarded electronics into a foundation for growth. For Zhining Zhao, the path from a censored school newspaper in Shanghai to the helm of a deeptech company in the U.S. is a clear signal of a consistent thread: the refusal to accept a system’s limitations as fixed. Zhining Zhao

This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.

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