Texas Is Quietly Assembling the Bones of a Domestic Rare Earth Value Chain

Texas has now committed nearly $1 billion to its Semiconductor Innovation Fund since 2023.

A growing share of that capital is not going into chip fabs. It is going into rare earth mines and magnet factories.

USA Rare Earth, Inc. (Nasdaq: USAR) received a $14.2 million TSIF grant to accelerate Round Top Mountain in Hudspeth County, a deposit holding an estimated one billion tonnes of material and 15 of 17 rare earth elements. That follows a CHIPS Act LOI in January covering $277 million in federal funding and a $1.3 billion loan for the same project.

In February, MP Materials secured $53.5 million from the same fund for its $1.25 billion rare earth magnet campus in Northlake, backed by a DOD partnership.

Two companies. Two projects. Both in Texas. Both funded through semiconductor channels. Both building mine-to-magnet operations on American soil.

For anyone tracking the critical minerals space, Texas is quietly assembling the bones of a domestic rare earth value chain. The federal government is co-funding it. The DOD is co-investing in it.

And the pace of capital deployment is accelerating, not slowing. Less searching. More strategising.™