This is the final part of the Ucore series. Government funding and how it works.

Ucore in 2024 was an entirely new company, with new people and a new technology. If, a decade earlier, it applauded the decisions of the US government, in 2024 and beyond it bragged about its relationship with the same government.

March 2015 to September 2019, from Ucore's own filings.

A new life into a chaotic industry

Ucore's attempt to commercially mine rare earth elements (REEs) and separate them into individual oxides is a convoluted story. But it is the story of the West trying to break China's grip on rare earths

This is the first field note of Ucore Metals. I focus on the financial architecture of the company from the very beginning.

On June 23, Energy Fuels agreed to buy VAC, a hundred-year-old German magnet maker, for $1.9 billion. The deal doesn't even close until early 2027, but the first thing everyone fixated on was the price, because VAC lost fifty million dollars last year.

Many years ago, the West delegated the mineral processing of REE to China. It released the pendulum from one pole and divided the world into two: the ones who know how to use the tools, the Chinese, and those who don't, us, the West.