Vulcan Elements has the connections. Now can it launch its NC magnet factory?

04.03.2026
By Brian Gordon, The News & Observer

I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

One year ago, on the eve of America’s tariff-fueled trade war with China, Vulcan Elements showcased its pilot production facility in a ceremony featuring a U.S. congressman, Durham’s mayor, and North Carolina’s top economic leader. This speaker lineup was notable for a 2-year-old Research Triangle Park company, especially one with fewer than 20 employees and a 30-year-old CEO who, up to that point, had received next to no media coverage.

Since then, Vulcan has added backing from the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Donald Trump Jr. (more on that below). And, the company told me this week, around 80 new employees.

Whether its links to power will lead to its promised 1,000-worker rare earth magnets factory in Johnston County is a $918.1 million question, one that has North Carolina taxpayer dollars at stake.

Vulcan envisions this future factory south of Raleigh will be the largest rare earth magnets plant outside of China, capable of producing 10,000 metric tons each year. China currently dominates production of these magnets, which are essential to a range of military and civilian equipment — from drones to smartphones to metal baseball bats.

Vulcan’s ambitions face unforgiving realities. “Having worked in this industry, getting customers is no trivial matter,” said John Ormerod, a rare earths magnet consultant based in Tennessee. “(Vulcan has) got a boatload of financing. The links and contacts that they have with the Department of Defense. But that’s not going to absorb 10,000 tons of capacity.”

For context, the Pentagon needs 3,000 to 4,000 tons of specialized magnets annually, the Commerce Department said last summer. The federal government expects demand to rise, but Vulcan also isn’t the only domestic producer the Trump (and Biden) administrations have funded. MP Materials, for example, is a publicly traded company with an operating mine and a market capitalization above $8 billion. It’s building a facility in Texas that, like Vulcan’s in North Carolina, commits to making 10,000 metric tons of neodymium magnets annually.

“Vulcan’s goal is to be the most cost-competitive magnet producer out of China, and ultimately in the whole world,” CEO John Maslin, a former financial manager in the U.S. Navy, wrote in emailed responses this week.

Beating China on cost is a Herculean task. The country has lower labor costs, weaker environmental regulations and massive economies of scale. “You’re going up against a 900-pound gorilla,” Ed Richardson, president of the US Magnetic Materials Association, told me last year. “There are a lot of carcasses along the way.”

Vulcan has reasons for optimism. It vows to be decoupled from China, an attractive military pitch.

“As long as it’s the Pentagon (buying), a lot of these startups have a safe customer,” said Dave Miller, president of the Indianapolis sector equipment firm Magnetic Instrumentation, which has previously supplied Vulcan Elements. Yet while U.S.-made magnets may surge during conflict, Miller said Vulcan would benefit from a more diverse “peacetime” play.

Maslin said his company already produces “high-performance magnets” at its RTP site and has nine Pentagon contracts.

Private investors have supported Vulcan, too. In August, the company announced it had raised $65 million. One of the firms in that funding round, 1789 Capital, has Donald Trump Jr. as a partner.

Three months later, the Trump administration invested, too — a $620 million loan from the Department of Defense (which the Trump administration calls the Department of War) and a $50 million equity stake from the U.S. Department of Commerce. This has sparked critiques from the left and right of (at best) bad optics or (worse) corruption. In late March, House Democrats attempted to subpoena Trump Jr. over his stake in Vulcan Elements, an effort House Republicans blocked.

“Vulcan elements has had no contact with Donald Trump Jr.,” Maslin wrote to me this week. “And 1789 has had no role in our work with the U.S. Government.” He then highlighted that his startup got its initial three Pentagon deals during the Biden administration.

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