China refines 91% and makes 94% of sintered rare-earth magnets powering motors from EVs to GPU data centers
demian_ai · x · 2026-09-18
Nearly every high-performance motor — AirPods, phone haptics, EV drive units, robot wrists, compressor fans in GPU halls — relies on sintered rare-earth magnets. The bottleneck in three numbers: China mines 60% of magnet rare earths, refines 91%, and makes 94% of sintered permanent magnets. The author argues deposits are only a small part of the strategy: the real moat is the midstream of separating periodic-table twins, alloying, powdering, sintering and magnetizing, which China built while the West treated it as dirty work. Companies on those steps (e.g. $MP) are named.
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