America builds a rare-earth industry
China separates most of the world's heavy rare earths and makes most of the sintered neodymium magnets that go into electric-vehicle motors, wind turbines, drones and guided munitions. The US government has started to treat that dependence as a supply problem it will pay to fix: Department of Defense grants, Department of Energy loans and offtake agreements are now underwriting domestic mining, heavy-rare-earth separation and magnet manufacturing. The question for this thesis is whether that financing turns announced projects into operating plants. A portfolio under it selects US-listed companies whose revenue is tied to that build-out: rare-earth miners and separators, magnet makers, and the processors and equipment suppliers they depend on. It favors companies with government contracts or financing already in hand, a credible path to production, and funding plans that do not rely on repeated share issuance to reach first output.
MP Materials owns and operates Mountain Pass, the only rare-earth mine and separation site of scale in north america, and runs the Independence sintered NdFeB magnet plant in Fort Worth; its two reportable segments, Materials and Magnetics, are both rare earths and nothing else. it is the template for leg 1: the DoD bought $400M of convertible preferred, lent $150M for heavy rare-earth separation at Mountain Pass, set a 10-year $110/kg NdPr price floor and committed to buy 100% of output from the planned 10,000 t/yr 10X magnet facility with a $140M annual ebitda guarantee, while JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs committed up to $1B of construction debt. government financing and offtake are in hand rather than announced, the mine is producing (NdPr output up 41% year over year) and magnets are shipping to GM and Apple. the entire business is the domestic rare-earth build-out → 1.0.
Energy Fuels is a US uranium producer that is converting its White Mesa Mill in Utah into a rare-earth separation hub and buying its way downstream. today's revenue is almost entirely uranium — q2 2026 revenue was about $25m, of which $24.95m was uranium concentrate; the REE segment sells only trial NdPr lots. but the strategic focus and capital are rare earth: commercial NdPr separation is running, a heavy-rare-earth (Tb, Dy) circuit is under construction with completion targeted end-2027, the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has offered a conditional $725m 20-year loan for the mill expansion and a US metals/alloy plant, ASM (metallization) closed in august 2026, and the $1.8–1.9bn VAC deal would add a sintered NdFeB magnet plant in Sumter, South Carolina. uranium and heavy mineral sands remain large, unrelated segments, so this is material exposure rather than a pure play → 0.6.
USA Rare Earth is a single-segment mine-to-magnet rare-earth company: Round Top heavy-rare-earth deposit in Texas (commissioning targeted 2028), a Wheat Ridge CO hydrometallurgical facility, a sintered NdFeB magnet plant in Stillwater OK that entered production in 2026, and a $1.2B metal and magnet complex under construction in South Carolina. government capital is in hand — definitive Department of Commerce agreements for up to $1.6B of CHIPS Act funding ($277M grant, $1.3B loan capacity) and a $750M Department of War investment in the SPV that takes 100% of Serra Verde phase 1 output under take-or-pay with price floors for dysprosium and terbium. every dollar of the business is the domestic rare-earth build-out, which is leg 1 of this portfolio. tier held just under 1.0 because the only producing asset after the Serra Verde merger is the Pela Ema mine in Brazil — US-offtaken but not a US plant — and current revenue is international.