Reinvention, Robots, And Rare Earths: The Wild Origin Story Of Andean Inc.

In a classroom in Shanghai, Chinese teenager Zhining Zhao started a student newspaper that questioned conventional thinking and encouraged open dialogue on history, science, and society.

It didn’t last. The school administration shut it down, citing concerns over content and management, and eventually turned it into an official publication.

But the cloud had a silver lining, and something unexpected took root in Zhao: a determination to look deeper into existing systems and rebuild them into something more positive.

Today, Zhao is no longer focused on publishing but on tackling one of the most pressing global issues: electronic waste. Now the co-founder of Andean Inc., a stealth-stage AI-native metal refinery startup, Zhao’s work stands at the intersection of deeptech and political philosophy. Where some see useless scrap and worthless old technology, he sees a humanitarian crisis and generational opportunity to recover critical metals essential not only for thousands of modern products but also for rebuilding America’s industrial base.

Here’s a closer look at Zhao’s life, career, and his mission to help secure the resources that will power a new era of American re-industrialization.

From Setbacks To Existential Inquiries

Zhao’s journey began with a simple idea: to create a student-run newspaper that explored topics often overlooked in the classroom, from historical events to emerging technologies. What started as a small, curious project soon grew into a platform for open discussion and independent thinking, drawing in classmates and teachers alike.

And while the newspaper itself didn’t last, the experience sparked something much larger in Zhao. It encouraged him to dive deeper into the pursuit of knowledge and meaning, leading him to spend his remaining high school years in Massachusetts immersed in classics, philosophy, and mathematics — a continuous pursuit for truth and knowledge, but for a deeper purpose within himself.

He then continued his interest by studying philosophy, where he was drawn toward thinkers like Descartes and Kant. The former instilled in him a radical skepticism, while the latter grounded him in moral logic.

“Descartes taught me the value of questioning everything, almost to a fault,” says Zhao. “Kant taught me the value of accepting reason as the path to truth.”

But theory alone didn’t cut it. “Contemplation doesn’t translate to action,” he adds. Zhao ended up pivoting to computer science, where his systems thinking lent itself perfectly to robotics and machine learning.

Rather than choosing to complete his studies, he set out to address a broader challenge: refining material that often goes to waste.

Alchemy In The Age Of Automation

Almost 7 million tons of electronic waste is produced in America each year. Packed with rare earths and critical minerals, this waste is a crucial aspect of national security and the transition towards clean energy. Less than 1% of these materials are recovered domestically, with the overwhelming majority sent to low-income countries and processed under hazardous, environmentally destructive conditions.

Zhao believes this is an oversight of gargantuan proportions. “This isn’t just waste,” he explains. “It’s misplaced power.”

Andean Inc. is his answer. Rather than building fewer large, centralized plants, Andean is developing modular refineries powered by robotics and machine learning. Compact enough to fit near urban recycling centers, Andean’s solution can sort, dismantle, and extract materials from discarded electronics autonomously.

They are designed to operate independently and optimize themselves over time, embodying what Zhao refers to as an “AI-native” approach to infrastructure. “It’s an ongoing question,” he says. “What will the value chain look like if extraction and refining becomes autonomous? And how do we create a system, with the proper fail-safes, that would iteratively improve itself over time?”

These are not rubbish heaps or incinerators, but cybernetic, sustainable systems which integrate seamlessly with existing e-waste collection networks rather than competing with them.

As a result of this system, Andean aims to decentralize material recovery while scaling domestic resource production, saving money, helping the environment, and keeping valuable resources on U.S. soil.

Building A Post-Extractive Future

For Zhao, Andean represents more than just a startup, it’s his manifesto. Behind the technical innovation lies a reindustrialized America built through ethical automation to reduce reliance on hazardous labor and reclaim material sovereignty.

“One of the biggest goals of our operation is to make sure that no human will have to be put in the hazardous situation of handling electronic waste again,” he says. “Entire communities suffer because of the destructive downstream processes. We can do better using technology — and not for the sake of technology.”

While Andean is still operating in stealth, Zhao and his team are looking to engage with leading U.S.-based recyclers and research institutions to explore potential collaborations and are actively conducting their own R&D. The long-term aim is to evolve these collaborations into a distributed network of self-sustaining microfactories, each of them interlinked into a cleaner and more intelligent industrial web.

Long term, Zhao’s vision extends beyond material recovery. The roadmap centers on AndeanOS, an AI operating layer that runs across every refinery and links sites into a coordinated network. By sharing data and improving workflows across facilities, AndeanOS would let geographically distant units operate as a single system — effectively acting as one unified brain for all refining operations.

“I want to establish the industrial capacity for the materials we need in the 21st century,” he says, “on Earth and beyond.”

A Generalist In A Specialist’s World

Zhao has always rejected the idea that he’s an expert. Instead, he sees himself more as a generalist who can bring together ideas across philosophy, engineering, and economics: “I particularly enjoy understanding and bridging disparate gaps between different fields of knowledge to solve one big problem. There’s just so much more to learn out there and information tends to connect in unforeseeable ways.”

That interdisciplinary experience gives Zhao a much sought-after fluency in both human and machine logic: a proprietary blend of code and conviction with algorithms and ethics.

As mass automation, climate pressures, and geopolitical tensions continue to influence and present threats to the global landscape, Andean’s approach offers a way to ease strain across all three fronts. By turning discarded electronics into a domestic resource, its systems could reduce reliance on fragile supply chains, cut the emissions tied to traditional extraction, and remove workers from the hazardous conditions of manual processing.

While Andean may still be in stealth mode, his ambitions are anything but.

The Outsider Effect

From student journalist to AI industrialist, there’s a recurring theme in Zhao’s life: systems break, but they can be rebuilt.

Part philosopher, part engineer, he has spent his life and career challenging entrenched norms and proposing new ones. But Zhao’s work is grounded not in spectacle or ego, but in the quiet conviction that systems should serve people, not the other way around.

“Remembering that I will pass one day keeps me alive to serve my community, the world, and the future of our civilization,” Zhao concludes.

It’s an unusually mortal sentiment for a tech founder. But perhaps that perspective is exactly what the world needs, especially in the pursuit of turning one man’s trash into treasure for the whole world.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.