From Silicon Valley to North Carolina, and all the way to the UK, numerous start-ups are venturing into the energy sector, hoping to find new solutions to cope with China’s restrictions on the export of critical minerals.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday (December 10th), in an industrial area on the west side of Oakland, California, a start-up named Brimstone is utilizing its proprietary chemical technology and existing equipment to process gabbro, a type of rock, to produce minerals like aluminum and magnesium.
In the laboratory, workers in protective gear move between beakers, furnaces, and samples of minerals for durability and composition tests. Bags of gabbro and calcium silicate rocks are piled up in the backyard and the office.
The report indicates that some start-ups in Silicon Valley and venture capitalists are joining the ranks of critical mineral production, focusing on developing new metal resources urgently needed in the US to reduce reliance on China. This process is accompanied by record levels of private investment and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Former scientists in autonomous vehicle development are applying mathematical formulas to identify critical minerals. Entrepreneurs are using AI to improve the success rate of mineral exploration and develop metal alloys that can simulate the characteristics of critical minerals.
It is necessary to develop processes that are lower in cost and higher in profit.
Since 2023, Beijing has tightened export restrictions on critical minerals. Particularly since April 2025, these tightening export policies have forced manufacturers in various industries in the US to seek new suppliers, halt production, and incur higher costs.
A recent report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission pointed out that once politically advantageous, Beijing would utilize rare earths again.
Both the US political and business sectors have reached a consensus that the US is unlikely to rely on China for raw materials as in the past. These critical minerals are essential for industrial production and the manufacturing of components for defense systems. Restricted supply will lead to unnecessary obstacles.
The US once had a well-established supply system for critical minerals (including rare earths), but the influx of cheap supplies from China led to a price collapse, making it impossible for related companies to survive and forcing them to close down. Currently, China dominates the high-risk, low-profit extraction and processing of numerous minerals globally, which are widely used in products ranging from smartphones to automobiles, airplanes, and satellites.
CEO Cody Finke of Brimstone told The Wall Street Journal that it is essential to develop processes with lower costs and higher profits in order to shift production to the US. Finke stated that they use the same rocks, equipment, and chemical processes to process various minerals but at a 40% lower cost than traditional methods. Once fully operational, their energy costs are expected to decrease by 30% to 50%.
The company was founded in 2019 and previously produced low-carbon cement but has transformed to extract critical minerals from common rocks. The company has received over $80 million in investments from Amazon and Bill Gates.
Data from the provider PitchBook shows that venture capitalists have invested $600 million in US critical mineral start-ups since 2025, reaching a historic high.
Gracelin Baskaran, Director of the Critical Minerals Security Project at the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated that for the US to make any progress in this area, it must rely on the innovation of start-ups.
She told The Wall Street Journal, “The issue is not whether it’s feasible, but whether it’s economically viable. We all agree that we need mineral resources, but it must be economically viable.”
At Stanford University, a group of professors and students are applying AI to help mining companies improve drilling efficiency. Jeff Caers, founder of the Mineral-X team, which was previously involved in developing autonomous driving cars, is now writing code used to guide mining explorations.
John Mern, founder of the start-up Terra AI and a Stanford University alum, has begun using AI to help explorers determine drilling times and locations, increasing drilling efficiency by providing more comprehensive underground resource data and profitability assessments.
In the UK, the start-up Milvus Advanced is using the latest technology to synthesize alternatives to critical minerals in the laboratory. Founder Assia Kasdi purchases metal salts, dissolves them in water, and then mixes them with other components that possess specific mineral characteristics needed, such as durability or conductivity. This process ultimately yields new alloys that can mimic platinum, silver, and indium.
Similar research has been successful in academia and US national laboratories, but Milvus is one of the few companies that has commercialized this process. Kasdi stated that the cost of producing these new alloys is at least 70% lower than market prices.
Kasdi told The Wall Street Journal, “This is the only way to compete with Beijing.”
However, some experts are skeptical about the direction of development in start-ups. Corby Anderson, a mineral processing expert at the Colorado School of Mines, said, “What we lack is true wisdom, which means we have lost generations of talent who knew how to handle real minerals.”