MP Materials CEO warns investors to approach suddenly hot rare earths industry with caution
Pentagon-backed MP Materials warned investors this week to approach other rare earths projects with caution, pointing to the industry’s difficult economics.
Stocks of U.S. rare earth companies have had wild swings in recent months as investors have speculated that the Trump administration might strike more deals along the lines of its landmark agreement with MP. Smaller retail traders have gotten involved in the stocks with the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF up 60% this year.
The Defense Department in July took an equity stake in MP, set a price floor for the company, and inked an offtake agreement with the rare earth miner and magnet maker in an effort to roll back China’s dominance of the industry.
CEO James Litinsky said he didn’t want “people to get burned” amid the speculation. Litinsky cautioned investors “to just be very clear-eyed about what the actual structural economics are amidst all the excitement.”
“The vast majority of projects being promoted today simply will not work at virtually any price,” Litinksy said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday evening.
VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF, YTD
MP views itself as “America’s national champion,” Litinsky said. MP is the only active rare earth miner in the U.S. and has offtake agreements with Apple and General Motors in addition to the Pentagon.
“We have structural advantage because we’re fully vertically integrated,” the CEO said. “We’re years and billions ahead of others.”
It takes years for the best rare earth producers to ramp up and stabilize their output and economics “despite what some promoters might suggest,” Litinksy said. Australia’s Lynas took about a decade and MP will reach normalized production in about three years from the start of commissioning, he said.
The White House is “not ruling out other deals with equity stakes or price floors as we did with MP Materials, but that doesn’t mean every initiative we take would be in the shape of the MP deal,” a Trump administration official told CNBC in September.
Litinsky described the rare earth industry as close to a “structural oligopoly,” a system where there are just a few major players. The government investing in a dozens of sites and businesses wouldn’t necessarily set up a supply chain, he said.
The Trump administration should continue to encourage private capital to flow into the industry through loans, grants and other support, Litinsky said. There is room for “a lot of other players and supply” but the market will require “materially higher prices” for the industry’s structural challenges to change, he said.
“If X dollars of capital can stimulate two or three X in private capital, they should be doing that as much as possible,” Litinsky said.
The CEO indicated that he views MP as a forerunner that will help create the conditions for a broader market that is not dependent on China over time.
“In the very short term the administration has made sure that we have a successful national champion in MP,” Litinsky said. “We are going to sort of pave the path if you will to then figure out how there’s much broader supply coming online.”
Rare earths are crucial for making magnets that are key inputs in U.S. weapons platforms, semiconductor manufacturing, electric vehicles, clean energy technology and consumer electronics. Beijing dominates the global supply chain and the U.S. is dependent on China for imports.
Tesla’s Supercharger network — already the most reliable fast-charging network in the world — just became a little easier to use. Google Maps now displays live availability data for Tesla Superchargers, showing how many stalls are currently available at each location.
The new integration means users can now see real-time charger status directly inside Google Maps, similar to what Tesla owners have long seen inside their vehicles or in the Tesla app.
When searching for a Supercharger, Maps now lists the total number of stalls and how many are available at that moment. It’s the same information Tesla provides through its own navigation system, but now visible to anyone using Google Maps — Tesla owner or not.
Latest step in opening up Tesla’s Supercharger network
This might look like a small change, but it’s another sign that Tesla is steadily opening up parts of its once-exclusive charging ecosystem.
The company has already begun integrating non-Tesla EVs into its Supercharger network across North America – first through the short-lived Magic Dock and then through the NACS rollout.
While this update is not particularly useful for Tesla owners, who already have this data in the in-vehicle navigation or the app, making real-time charger data available on Google Maps makes perfect sense for non-Tesla EV owners.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla has always led when it comes to charging reliability at Supercharger stations – hence why opening up the network to non-Tesla EV owners in North America over the last 2 years has been such a big deal.
But next to having non-functioning chargers, there’s nothing worse than showing up at a charging station and it is fully used.
Now, if EV owners are planning their trips through Google Maps, they will be able to avoid that more easily.
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) says renewables and AI are reshaping the world’s energy future, and that transformation is happening faster than anyone expected. In its new “World Energy Outlook 2025,” the IEA warns that energy security risks now stretch far beyond oil and gas. Critical minerals essential to clean tech, defense, and AI have become the new fault lines in global supply chains. The IEA also states that energy has become a central focus of geopolitical power struggles, making it one of the defining economic and security challenges of our time.
A more complex, electrified future
The IEA’s annual “World Energy Outlook” explores three possible scenarios for the future, emphasizing that none are predictions. Instead, they’re roadmaps that show what could happen depending on the choices governments and industries make on policy, technology, and investment.
Across every scenario, one theme stands out: electricity demand is surging faster than for any other form of energy. Electricity currently accounts for only about 20% of global energy use, yet it powers more than 40% of the global economy. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the trend is accelerating: “Last year, we said the world was moving quickly into the Age of Electricity – and it’s clear today that it has already arrived.”
Driving that growth are data centers, AI, and electrification across transportation, heating, and manufacturing. Global data center investment alone is expected to hit $580 billion in 2025 – even higher than the $540 billion the world will spend on oil supply.
Shifting global energy dynamics
Emerging economies, led by India and Southeast Asia, are now shaping energy markets that were once dominated by China. These regions are experiencing a rapid increase in demand for power, mobility, and industrial energy use. By 2035, 80% of global energy consumption growth is expected to come from countries with high solar potential.
At the same time, the IEA warns that grid expansion and storage aren’t keeping up with this growth. While investments in power generation have jumped nearly 70% since 2015, spending on transmission and distribution has risen at less than half that pace. The agency calls for urgent grid upgrades and stronger government coordination to prevent future electricity bottlenecks.
Renewables and nuclear on the rise
Solar leads the charge across all IEA scenarios, with renewables growing at a faster rate than any other energy source. Nuclear energy is also making a comeback: after two decades of stagnation, global nuclear capacity is projected to increase by at least a third by 2035, thanks to both large-scale projects and small modular reactor designs.
Dave Jones, chief analyst at global energy think tank Ember, said, “The world is moving in the right direction, and continued acceleration can drive a more rapid transformation of the energy system. Renewables and electrification will dominate the future – and fossil-importing nations will gain the most by embracing them.”
Energy access and climate urgency
The IEA highlights two critical areas where the world is falling short: universal access to energy and climate goals. Roughly 730 million people still live without electricity, and nearly 2 billion rely on polluting cooking methods. Even in the agency’s most ambitious pathways, global temperatures surpass 1.5C of warming before potentially returning below that level later in the century.
Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are already disrupting energy systems. In 2023 alone, over 200 million households worldwide were affected by energy infrastructure failures, with transmission lines accounting for about 85% of incidents. The IEA says governments must prioritize resilience not only against extreme weather but also against cyberattacks and supply chain shocks.
Birol summed it up: “When we look at the history of the energy world in recent decades, there is no other time when energy security tensions have applied to so many fuels and technologies at once. With energy security front and center for many governments, their responses need to consider the synergies and trade-offs that can arise with other policy goals – on affordability, access, competitiveness, and climate change.”
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