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Yup. Here's that startup: https://www.nironmagnetics.com Lots of green eco verbiage and mentions of funders. No products, no samples. Researchers have been beating on this problem since at least 2003.[1] Someone may crack this problem, but the hype to results ratio is large here. Rare earths aren't really scarce. There's a boom and bust cycle. Recent history: Biggest producer was in California. Low-cost rare earths f…
So rare earths are the DRAM of manufacturing industry?
It's not just rare earths... lots of minerals (most glamorously, gold) are this way. There are mines that are profitable to operate if the mineral is selling for $x per kilogram (or gram, or tonne), but are not profitable to operate if it's selling for $x-1 per unit (or any other figure less than x). Shutting mines down and (sometimes) starting them back up based on economic reasons has been going on for centuries.