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.”
Apple has confirmedthat it has removed two popular gay dating apps from its Chinese iOS Store, following an order from Beijing’s main internet regulator and censorship authority.
It comes following reports of the apps — Blued and Finka — suddenly disappearing from the iOS App Store over the weekend.
In a statement shared with CNBC, Apple confirmed that it was behind the action and defended the company’s position, stating that it must follow the laws of the countries where it operates.
“Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only,” the company said, though they clarified that the apps had already been unavailable in other countries.
However, a “lite” version of the Blued app is still available for download on the China App Store, CNBC confirmed Tuesday.
The Wire had been the first to report that Apple had made the move at Beijing’s order.
The disappearance of Blued and Finka is the latest example of China’s crackdown on app stores in recent years.
Grindr, a popular gay dating app from the U.S., was removed from the iOS store in 2022, days after the Cyberspace Administration of China began a crackdown on content it considered illegal and inappropriate.
Later in 2023, Beijing announced new policies requiring all apps serving local users to register with the government and receive licenses. That move had resulted in a wave of foreign apps being removed from iOS.
The following years have also seen regulators continue to appeal directly to companies like Apple to remove certain apps due to issues with their content.
In April 2024, Apple removed Meta’s WhatsApp and Threads from iOS following an order from the CAC, citing national security concerns.
Apple has proven a willingness to comply with these requests in China, which represents its largest oversea market outside the U.S.
The takedown of Blued and Finka also likely reflects increasing crackdowns and censorship of the LGBTQ community in China. In recent years, the government has shuttered major advocacy groups, including the Beijing LGBT Center.
While homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, same-sex marriage remains unrecognized.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Nov. 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Investors piled back into artificial intelligence names on Monday stateside. Shares of Nvidia jumped 5.8%, Broadcom advanced 2.6% and Microsoft climbed 1.9% to end its eight-day losing streak, its longest consecutive decline since 2011.
Market watchers are hoping that another historically long streak — the U.S. government shutdown — could soon be snapped as well. The U.S. Senate has voted in favor for a deal to reopen the government, though it still has to pass through the House and then be signed into law by President Donald Trump (who has already given it his approval).
CoreWeave on Monday reported its third-quarter earnings. It rents out Nvidia cards to AI-related firms, such as Google and Microsoft, a business model that ties it intimately to the AI trade. The company’s revenue swelled 134% year on year, but it still reported a net loss and gave lower-than-expected guidance for this year.
The general shape of those figures — high revenue and high losses — broadly reminds one of OpenAI, the industry-leading, money-bleeding startup that kickstarted the AI frenzy. Though it would of course be a stretch to equate the two companies and the factors driving their finances.
Still, Mark Haefele, CIO of UBS’s global wealth management, thinks “AI-related stocks should drive equity markets.” With the U.S. government shutdown in sight to end (hopefully this doesn’t jinx it), that’s another obstacle surpassed for markets.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 15, 2025.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week ordered his officials to complete a road map by Dec.1 “for the long-term development of the extraction and production of rare and rare earth metals.”
Moscow has fallen behind peers like China when it comes to the exploitation of its deposits of rare earth elements. While lagging behind the big players, Russia is still estimated to possess the fifth largest known reserves of rare earths, totaling 3.8 million tonnes, the United States Geological Survey stated. That’s above the U.S. which is seen with 1.9 million tonnes.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (L) and the CEO of the SoftBank Group Masayoshi Son pose during an AI event in Tokyo on November 13, 2024.
Akio Kon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion.
The firm said in its earnings statement that it sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October. It also disclosed that it sold part of its T-Mobile stake for $9.17 billion.
The announcement came after SoftBankposted a $19 billion gain on its Vision Fund in its fiscal second quarter, helped by investments in ChatGPT maker OpenAI and electronic payment services firm PayPay.
The Vision Fund has been aggressively pushing into artificial intelligence, investing and acquiring firms throughout the AI value chain from chips to large language models and robotics.
While the Nvidia exit may come as a surprise to some investors, it’s not the first time SoftBank has cashed out of the American AI chip darling.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund was an early backer of Nvidia, reportedly amassing a $4 billion stake in 2017 before selling all of its holdings in January 2019.
Despite its latest sale, SoftBank’s business interests remain heavily intertwined with Nvidia’s.
That Tokyo-based company is involved in a number of AI ventures that rely on Nvidia’s technology, including the $500 billion Stargate project for data centers in the U.S.
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