Vulcan Elements announced Tuesday a partnership with the North Carolina Collaboratory to advance development of high-performance rare earth magnets for defense and commercial technology applications. The company said the partnership converges two research fields that are foundational to national security: rare earth magnets and quantum mechanics. The collaboration joins the manufacturer with scientific expertise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where research led by chemistry professor Yosuke Kanai, PhD, will develop a novel analytic capability using quantum-mechanical simulations to predict with significant accuracy how changes at the atomic level affect magnetic properties, Vulcan said. The Collaboratory is supporting the partnership through a $600,000 research award, helping support the application of UNC-Chapel Hill’s scientific expertise to advance rare earth magnet innovation. Established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2016, the Collaboratory has managed more than $300 million in state appropriations and supported more than 800 research projects. “This collaboration is a model for the kind of public-private partnerships that this nation needs: generating cutting-edge breakthrough technologies and translating them into real-world manufacturing capabilities that deliver for our economy and national security,” Vulcan Elements CEO John Maslin said in a news release. “Rare earth magnets are increasingly important to our national security and economy, and North Carolina has an opportunity to play a meaningful role in this growing sector,” NC Collaboratory executive director Jeff Warren added. “By bringing Dr. Kanai’s computational research together with Vulcan’s synthesis and manufacturing capabilities, we can help advance innovation that has implications well beyond the laboratory.” Rare earth magnets are required components in critical technologies from semiconductor fabrication, robotics, and automobiles to drones, satellites, and virtually every military system. In 2025, Vulcan entered a $1.4 billion partnership with refiner ReElement Technologies and the US government to scale the companies’ development of a domestic rare earth magnet supply chain. The Commerce Department and Pentagon pledged financing and potential equity stakes in the domestic producer of rare earth magnets that are at the center of an ongoing trade war with China, the world’s dominant supplier. Vulcan said that “to its knowledge” it is the only rare earth magnet company in the world that is decoupled from China—down to the material, technology, software, IP, and ownership. The company said its Benson, North Carolina, manufacturing facility, currently under construction, will be the cornerstone of a domestic rare earth magnet supply chain and the largest rare earth magnet factory outside of China. The 1.1 million-square-foot facility will have an annual capacity of 10,000 metric tons of magnet production and will supply magnets for critical defense systems, semiconductor fabrication, robotics, drones, AI infrastructure, automobiles, and other strategic technologies, Vulcan said.
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