USA Rare Earth (Texas)

Project Summary

The U.S. Department of Commerce has awarded USA Rare Earth, Inc. (“USAR”) direct funding and a loan agreement under the CHIPS and Science Act. This funding will support USAR’s construction of a mining and processing facility at Round Top Mountain in Sierra Blanca, Texas. These facilities will create mining, processing, and separation capacity for heavy rare earth elements and critical mineral oxides and concentrates, including dysprosium, terbium, yttrium, gadolinium, hafnium, erbium, thulium, lutetium, ytterbium, holmium, gallium, and zirconium. Furthermore, USAR will establish domestic neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet manufacturing capacity. 

These projects will create a domestic and integrated supply chain for critical and strategic minerals and rare earth magnets, essential materials for semiconductor manufacturing.

Economic and National Security Impact

These projects will strengthen the domestic semiconductor ecosystem and U.S. economic and national security by onshoring a reliable domestic supply of heavy rare earth metals, alloys, and magnets through the development of a vertically integrated mine-to-magnet production capacity. These materials enable downstream manufacturing of myriad products that are critical to the economic and national security of the United States, including semiconductors.