US rare earth magnet startup raises $65M to scale up production

[Ben Graham]

Vulcan Elements, a US-based rare earth magnet startup, has raised $65 million in a Series A funding round to support its planned buildout of a commercial-scale facility in Durham, North Carolina.

The funding is being led by Altimeter Capital, a premier technology investment firm with over $12 billion in assets under management. The round included significant participation from One Investment Management, founded by Rajeev Misra, the former CEO of SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund.

In a press release dated Aug. 11, Vulcan said the investment will help accelerate its expansion to commercial scale to meet rapidly growing market demand—a critical milestone toward fully on-shoring the rare earth magnet supply chain.

The North Carolina-based company is producing high-performance rare earth magnets at its manufacturing plant located in Research Triangle Park. The 21,000-square-foot facility was opened in March to pilot the production of permanent sintered neodymium iron boron magnets, the highest energy product of any permanent magnet material on the market today.

According to Vulcan, its products are able to meet requirements across several advanced defense and commercial applications—from drones and semiconductor fabrication equipment to hard disk drives, robotics and automotives.

With the new funding, the company said it will begin to scale its production of magnets to several hundred metric tonnes annually in the next few years, and several thousand tonnes by the end of this decade.

“This Series A enables Vulcan to scale with the speed and seriousness that this moment and the nation demand,” said Vulcan Elements CEO John Maslin in the press release. “With Altimeter, OneIM, and others, we’ve brought together investors who understand what it takes to build enduring American industrial champions.

Decoupled from China

Maslin, a former financial manager in the Navy, described rare earth magnets as “essential invisible building blocks” of the US economy, as they are essential to nearly every advanced technology.

However, China currently manufactures over 90 % of the global supply, while the US makes less than 1%—leaving the latter vulnerable to having its economy frozen and its military production lines shut off by a Chinese export ban.

Vulcan, with eyes on “bringing this supply chain back home,” notes that its production process is entirely decoupled from China; All of its material and equipment is sourced from the US and its allies, ensuring complete traceability and transparency.

Since its founding in 2023, Vulcan’s magnet chemistry and process have been validated by the Department of Energy’s Ames National Laboratory, and its production process has received support from the Department of Defense—including contracts across the Air Force, Army and Navy, the company said.

Vulcan’s chief technology officer, Dr. Piotr Kulik, was the first to open a US rare earth magnetics lab in two decades, it added.

“Vulcan’s relentless execution has put it at the forefront of the industry. Vulcan has already emerged as a best-in-class manufacturer within two years of incorporation,” Altimeter founder and CEO Brad Gerstner commented the investment in Vulcan.