Anderson, Indiana, 1995. General Motors sold a small factory called Magnequench to a group of outside investors. Magnequench made rare earth magnets — the tiny blocks that spin motors and speakers and hard drives. GM had built the place from scratch in 1986. It was the first commercial NdFeB magnet plant in America.

Within six years, every machine was crated up and shipped to China. The buyers had ties to two Chinese state-linked firms. By 2001, the production lines were running in Tianjin. The workers in Anderson got severance checks. And for three decades, no one in America made rare earth magnets at scale.

That just changed.

MP Materials delivered its first production magnets to GM from a factory in Fort Worth, Texas. The magnets are NdFeB — neodymium iron boron — the same chemistry Magnequench pioneered forty years ago. They'll power the Chevrolet Equinox EV, the GMC Sierra EV, and the Corvette Grand Sport X. Prototypes are already in testing at GM's proving grounds in Michigan.

The Fort Worth plant, called Independence, has capacity for 1,000 tonnes of finished magnets per year, with an expansion planned to 3,000 tonnes. A second factory is going up ten miles away with room for 7,000 more. GM locked in a contract for about 1,000 tonnes annually — enough to supply its Ultium Platform EV motors. Commercial shipments start this quarter. The raw material comes from MP's Mountain Pass mine in California, the only active rare earth mine in the country.

That's mine to magnet, all American, for the first time since the Magnequench lines went dark.

It didn't happen on its own. The Pentagon bought a 15% stake in MP for $400 million and signed a 10-year offtake deal at $110 per kilogram — money that went straight into the refining and magnet lines. GM's supply chief Shilpan Amin says MP cut the timeline from eight years to five. "Multibillion-dollar supply chains do not move overnight," CEO James Litinsky said. "We would not be here without GM."

The question now is scale. China makes about 90% of the world's rare earth magnets. MP's 1,000 tonnes is a rounding error by comparison. But it didn't exist two years ago. And every magnet off the Fort Worth line is one that doesn't need a Chinese export license to reach an American factory floor.

MP still has to prove the magnets hold up at production volumes and pass GM's testing. That's the hard part. Making one magnet is chemistry. Making a million is manufacturing. China has been doing that for decades.

Take a look at this…

It’s Terafab — Elon Musk’s new AI chip factory in Texas.

You see, Elon needs more AI chips than the whole industry can make today…

So he decided to mass produce his own.

But there’s a catch…

Chips alone won’t cut it.

Because AI can’t scale without a radical “light-speed” device…

Not even Elon’s.

Yet most Americans have never heard of it.

Former Wall Street insider Jason Bodner — the same man who called Nvidia at $4.50 split-adjusted — says this device is about to launch a whole new wave of AI winners…

And to prove it, he’s giving away his #1 stock involved with it — for free.

Click here to learn more.

We have so much to look forward to

Ionic Rare Earths applied for a listing on London's AIM market on October 1, adding a dual quotation alongside its existing Australian stock exchange listing. The company's Belfast subsidiary, Ionic Technologies, is building a commercial magnet recycling plant that targets 400 tonnes of separated rare earth oxide per year by 2028. Peel Hunt and Canaccord Genuity are advising on the listing. The UK government has grant support on the table. If Belfast works at scale, Ionic plans to replicate the model in other markets — creating local recycling hubs that keep rare earth scrap out of landfills and out of China's refining loop.

A new study in Nature Energy found that meeting EU solar and wind targets through 2050 will create high demand for copper, zinc, silicon, and rare earths. The key number: offshore-heavy wind pathways lock in rare earth needs near 69.2 kilotonnes no matter how the rest of Europe's energy mix shakes out. That means the EU's rare earth problem isn't a variable in its climate plan. It's a fixed cost. Wind turbines, especially the big offshore ones, need NdFeB magnets. Those magnets need neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. Europe currently refines almost none of them.

Critical Metals (Nasdaq: CRML) won formal Greenland government approval for the mining and closure plans at Tanbreez, its heavy rare earth project in southern Greenland. The approval covers operations through September 2050 and sets the framework for a mine, refining plants, a port, and supporting infrastructure. Construction can't begin until the company secures additional permits for environmental management, marine transport, and mineral exports. Tanbreez has a net present value of $2.1 billion at a 15% discount rate based on a March 2025 study, with initial capital costs estimated at $290 million. The company is targeting first ore production in late 2028 or early 2029. Shares rose 4.4% on the news to $7.34.

An email announcing a new 401(k) investment option is coming to 70 million inboxes. Most will delete it – and miss what Larry Benedict calls the decade's biggest opportunity. He's naming the one ticker to own before it arrives – free. Watch here.

USA Rare Earth's former chief executive sold $1,215,376 worth of company stock, according to SEC filings this week. The sale comes after the company named Thras Moraitis as CEO and continues to build out its Serra Verde, Round Top, and Blacksburg assets under a $1.6 billion federal commitment.

— Investing.com

The world's 50 largest miners lost $264 billion in combined market cap last month. Gold's 26% pullback from its January peak of $5,595/oz dragged the sector. Only one lithium producer remained in the top 50 rankings.

— Mining.com

InvestorIntel's Technology Metals Report notes that the September summit produced no concrete agreement on rare earths. The Busan truce was extended to January 10, 2027, but the fact sheet's language on minerals was vague. More than 90% of Chinese export license applications remain pending.

— InvestorIntel

Gold traded near $4,129/oz this week, down from about $5,595 in January. Central banks bought 289 tonnes in Q2 2026 despite retail outflows. Higher Treasury yields and a stronger dollar drove the correction.

— Reuters / World Gold Council