The world contains vast quantities of lithium, an integral element in electric vehicle batteries. And though lithium is commonly mined from hard rock, the majority of the world’s lithium reserves are actually found in brine, extremely salty water beneath the Earth’s surface.
Today, brine mining involves evaporating the brine in massive, extravagantly colored pools over a series of about 18 months, leaving high concentrations of lithium behind. It’s a simple but inefficient process that takes up vast swaths of land and is ecologically disruptive.
As automakers around the world struggle to meet extraordinarily ambitious electric vehicle production targets, there’s growing interest in doing things differently.
“The auto industry requires a 20x increase in lithium supply, and there’s just no way to achieve that type of growth with conventional technologies,” said Dave Snydacker, founder and CEO of Lilac Solutions.
Lilac is one of a number of companies piloting a set of new and largely unproven technologies called direct lithium extraction, or DLE, which could increase the efficiency and decrease the negative externalities of the brine mining process.
Instead of concentrating lithium by evaporating brine in large pools, DLE pulls the brine directly into a processing unit, puts it through a series of chemical processes to separate the lithium, then injects it back underground. This process produces battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide in a matter of hours, without the need to transport concentrated brine to a separate processing facility.
DLE could also help jump-start the domestic lithium mining market. Today, most lithium brine mining takes place in the Salar de Atacama, an expansive salt flat in northern Chile that contains the highest quality lithium brine in the world. But DLE technologies require much less land and can help unlock resources in areas where the brine contains less lithium and more impurities.
North American companies Lilac Solutions, EnergyX and Standard Lithium are exploring lithium resources in areas such as Arkansas’ Smackover Formation, California’s Salton Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake, as well as abroad in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The Chilean government has even announced that all new lithium projects will be required to use DLE technology.
“So the timing is right and ripe for this to see the light of day very, very soon,” said Amit Patwardhan, CTO of EnergyX.
Direct lithium extraction company EnergyX is building demonstration plants in Argentina, Chile, California, Utah and Arkansas.
EnergyX
Doing things differently
In a world before electric vehicles, traditional methods of brine mining and hard rock mining more than sufficed to meet global lithium demand.
“The world didn’t need DLE for the last 50 years. Lithium’s primary use was industrial — ceramics, glass and lubricants,” said Robert Mintak, CEO of Standard Lithium.
But with demand for EVs and the lithium-ion batteries that power them booming, now there’s a supply crunch.
“Over the last 10 years, 90% of new lithium production has come from hard rock projects. But hard rock projects are increasingly expensive as we go into lower grade resources. And if you add up all the hard rock projects, there’s just not enough resource out there to meet automaker goals. It’s the brine resources that are large enough to electrify the vehicle industry,” Snydacker said.
DLE is already being used to some extent in both Argentina and China, where the companies Livent and Sunresin are implementing commercial tech that combines DLE with traditional evaporation pond operations.
These companies both rely on a technology called adsorption, the only commercially proven approach to DLE. In this process, lithium molecules in the brine adhere to an adsorbant substance, removing them from surrounding impurities. But experts say that stripping the lithium from the adsorbents requires a lot of fresh water, a big problem considering many of the world’s best brine resources are in arid areas.
Livent’s most recent sustainability report indicates that it uses 71.4 metric tons of fresh water per metric ton of lithium carbonate equivalent, or LCE, produced. Lilac reported that in pilot testing it uses between 10 and 20 metric tons of fresh water, while EnergyX says it uses less than 20 metric tons.
China-based Sunresin says that it recycles all of its fresh water, and that its newer projects will operate without evaporation ponds.
But a host of other companies are now getting into the industry, testing out alternative technologies which they claim will not only eliminate evaporation ponds altogether, but increase yields while lowering energy and fresh water requirements.
New players
Bay Area-based Lilac Solutions is using a technology called ion exchange. It’s currently piloting its tech in Argentina in partnership with Australian lithium company Lake Resources.
“With the Lilac ion-exchange bead we’ve developed a ceramic material. This ceramic selectively absorbs lithium from the brine while releasing a proton. Once the lithium is absorbed into the material, we then flush the lithium out of the bead using dilute acid and that produces a lithium chloride concentrate which can be easily processed into battery grade chemicals,” Snydacker explained.
Lilac Solutions is developing a direct lithium extraction facility in Argentina in partnership with Australian lithium company Lake Resources.
Lilac Solutions
Lilac expects to have its first commercial-scale module operating before the end of 2024. The company is backed by BMW and the Bill Gates-funded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Ford has signed a nonbinding agreement to buy lithium from its Argentina plant.
EnergyX, which is based out of both San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Austin, Texas, uses a combination of technologies that it can tailor to the specific brine resource. Step one is traditional adsorption, followed by a method known as “solvent extraction,” in which the concentrated brine is mixed with an organic liquid. The lithium is then transferred to the organic before it’s stripped free and concentrated. Membrane filtration is the final stage, which removes all remaining impurities.
“So you see these all these loops and synergies that come out of combining these technologies. And that is another big differentiator in what EnergyX does and what really drives the cost of the technology much lower compared to anybody else,” said Patwardhan.
EnergyX is building demonstration plants with undisclosed partners in Argentina, Arkansas, Chile, California and Utah, and is aiming to have the first two up and running by the end of this year. Recently, the company secured $50 million in funding from GM to help scale its tech.
Vancouver-based Standard Lithium also has big backers. The public company’s largest investor is Koch Industries, and it’s been running a demonstration plant in South Arkansas for the last three years, producing lithium at a preexisting bromine plant.
The company uses both ion-exchange and adsorption technologies, depending on the resource. It expects to begin construction on a commercial-scale DLE facility next year and is expanding into Texas as well.
“We have an opportunity as we expand from Arkansas to Texas to be the largest producing area for lithium chemicals in North America, utilizing in an area that’s not under water stress, that has a social license to operate,” said Mintak.
Companies such as Standard Lithium, which are leaning into the U.S. market, stand to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act, which ties electric vehicle subsidies to domestic sourcing of battery materials. Automakers can also receive the full EV credit if they source from countries that have free trade agreements with the U.S., such as Chile.
While Chile has announced that all new lithium projects in the country will be required to use DLE technologies, it has not announced what companies it will be partnering with for these new projects.
Neighboring Bolivia was considering technology from both EnergyX and Lilac Solutions to help unlock the country’s vast but largely undeveloped lithium resources. The government ultimately tapped a consortium of Chinese companies, led by battery giant CATL, to spearhead DLE efforts in its salt flats.
Most new lithium supply will continue to come from hard rock projects for the rest of this decade, Snydacker said. “But by the end of this decade, we’ll see very large-scale brine projects coming online …” he predicted. “And going out into the next decade, this technology will provide a majority of new supply.”
Overall, lithium production from DLE is projected to grow from about 54,000 metric tons today to 647,500 metric tons by 2032, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. That’s forecast to be worth about $21.6 billion.
“But when we place it in relative terms against the rest of the global market, that only represents around 15% of total supply,” said James Mills, principal consultant at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “So we’re still going to have to rely on traditional forms of production for the lithium units, whether it’s evaporation ponds or hard rock mining.”
Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, joins CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ on June 5, 2025.
CNBC
Palantir CEO Alex Karp took on a familiar target during the company’s earnings call on Monday: His critics.
“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said, after the data analytics company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results. “Enjoy, get some popcorn, they’re crying. We are every day making this company better and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”
Palantir shares are up 25-fold in the past three years, lifting its market cap to over $490 billion and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 280. The stock slipped in extended trading despite the earnings beat and upbeat guidance.
Karp, who co-founded the company in 2003, said Palantir is “going to go very, very deep on our rightness” because it is “exceedingly good for America.”
The eccentric and outspoken CEO has gained a reputation over the years for his colorful — and oftentimes political — commentary in interviews, shareholder letters and on earnings calls. His essay-like quarterly letters have previously quoted famous philosophers, the New Testament and President Richard Nixon.
In Monday’s letter, Karp quoted 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and argued for a shared “national experience.” He wrote that rejecting a “shared and defined sense of common culture” poses significant drawbacks.
It’s “that pursuit of something greater, and rejection of a vacant and neutered and hollow pluralism, that will help ensure our continued strength and survival,” he wrote.
On the call, Karp pivoted from a discussion of artificial intelligence adoption to fentanyl overdoses in America, a topic he described as “slightly political.”
“I want people to remember if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working class people, we would be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America,” he said.
Karp also commented on the company’s deals with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Earlier this year, Palantir won a $30 million deal to build ImmigrationOS for ICE, providing data on the identification and deportation of immigrants.
In 2023, Karp had a message for people in the tech industry who have misgivings about his company’s dealings with intelligence agencies and the military.
“You may not agree with that and, bless you, don’t work here,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Palantir, which gets more than half its U.S. revenue from the government, also provided tools to Israel after the deadly Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas. In recent years, both Karp and the company have undertaken a fiercely pro-Israel stance.
Following the Oct. 7 attack, Palantir took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, saying it “stands with Israel” and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, a few months later. Karp has said the company has lost employees due to his staunch Israel stance, and he expects more to leave.
“We’re on the front line of all adversaries, including vis-à-vis China, we’re on ICE and we’ve supported Israel,” he said on the earnings call. “I don’t know why this is all controversial, but many people find that controversial.”
The “everything store” might have secured its biggest customer yet.
On Monday, Amazon announced that it had signed a $38 billion deal with OpenAI, offering the ChatGPT maker access to Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure.
On the one hand, the move isn’t too surprising — a continuation of OpenAI’s spending spree as it looks to secure resources to run its power-hungry artificial intelligence models.
On the other, OpenAI’s turn to Amazon shows that the firm is diversifying from its reliance on Microsoft, which had been its exclusive cloud services provider until this year. That could suggest OpenAI is getting ready for an initial public offering as it looks to signal “both independence and operational maturity,” as CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos writes.
Amazon shares surged on the news to close at a record high. Nvidia also had a positive day after Microsoft announced it was granted a license by the U.S. government to export the AI darling’s chips to the United Arab Emirates.
While Big Tech is attracting investor interest, the rest of the market has been rather lackluster.
Palantir’s third-quarter results beat estimates. The company foresees revenue of around $1.33 billion for the current quarter, outstripping the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG. Shares, however, fell 4.3% in extended trading on Monday evening stateside.
OpenAI signs a $38 billion deal with Amazon. Under the agreement, OpenAI will immediately begin running artificial intelligence processes on Amazon Web Services, harnessing Nvidia’s AI chips. Amazon shares popped 4% and closed at a record.
Microsoft gets approval to ship Nvidia chips to UAE. The U.S. Commerce Department license, granted in September, allows Microsoft to ship 60,400 additional A100 chips, involving Nvidia’s advanced GB300 graphics processing units. Shares of Nvidia rose 2.2%.
Qnity Electronics — now spun off from DuPont — moved higher in its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. The stock quickly earned an endorsement from Jim Cramer. “We have a nice position in Qnity, but we don’t own enough,” Jim said during Monday’s Morning Meeting . The Club received 812 shares of Qnity, one for every two DuPont shares the Club already owned. Qnity’s weighting in the Charitable Trust is 2.04% as of Monday, compared to DuPont’s 1.45% weighting. With its long-awaited split from DuPont in the rearview mirror, Jim touted Qnity as a great play on growth in semiconductors due to the artificial intelligence boom. This is especially true now that the former electronics division is not getting bogged down by DuPont’s far-flung businesses — focusing on health care, water, and diversified industrials. We do, however, plan to keep our remaining DuPont shares for now. Q 5D mountain Qnity Electronics started trading on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. Most of Qnity’s business is focused on providing solutions for the semiconductor market, with more than 65% of the company’s portfolio tied to the industry. Qnity makes the chemicals and materials used to produce semiconductors, which are utilized in powering everything from smartphones to AI data centers. Qnity forecasts the global market for semiconductors will surge to $1.3 trillion in 2030, up from $740 billion currently. A big reason for this growth is the need to build and retrofit data centers to run heavy AI workloads. Big tech companies are pouring billions upon billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, which should send more and more business to firms like Qnity. Qnity CEO Jon Kemp told CNBC on Monday that the company already derives roughly 15% of its sales from AI data centers. “We sit at the intersection of those transformative trends that are starting to transform the modern economy,” he explained, also citing other markets like high-performance computing, robotics, autonomous driving, and factory automation. Qnity already has deep partnerships with tech behemoths like fellow Club holding Nvidia , chip manufacturer Taiwan Semi , and consumer electronics giant Samsung. “We are really well-positioned to power the chips that power the modern economy,” Kemp said during a ” Squawk on the Street ” interview with Jim. Qnity plans to provide a business update after Thursday’s closing bell. Wall Street analysts like what they hear about Qnity, too. In fact, analysts at BMO Capital Markets, KeyBanc, and RBC Capital all started coverage of the stock with buy-equivalent ratings last week. Wolfe Research followed suit Monday, with a buy and a $110 price target. Put it all together, and this makes Qnity a great name to help ride the unprecedented wave of growth in generative AI and semiconductors, more broadly. “This is a very important deal for people who are looking for a new way to play all the stuff we talk about all the time,” Jim said Monday. Qnity shares closed up more than 2% in Monday’s debut to around $97 each. DuPont shares, which were adjusted lower to reflect the split, rose nearly 2%. The Club plans to put out a Qnity price target and one for the remaining DuPont in the coming days, Jeff Marks, director of portfolio analysis, wrote in Monday’s Homestretch . We will get a better idea of where things stand after DuPont reports earnings Thursday morning and Qnity updates investors Thursday evening. DD YTD mountain DuPont YTD (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long Q, DD, NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
