Digging In: $15B+ for Private Critical Mineral Firms

Week ended strong on tamer expectations for the Fed. Stocks were lukewarm on Monday and Tuesday owing to geopolitical uncertainty around the Iran war and oil prices. However, both the S&P and Nasdaq were in the black by ~1% as of Thursday’s close as tamer CPI and PPI prints midweek sent stocks higher on easing concerns about hawkish Fed signals. The S&P set a new all-time high on Thursday and the Nasdaq neared its own record as well. Our NPM Private Market Tracker*, which shows the average price performance of the 50 largest names in our internal NPM Price data, is up ~67% YTD versus the S&P 500/Nasdaq up ~14%/~15%. (Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, NPM)

Over the past week the Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) has announced a slew of new funding for battery and critical minerals companies, totaling ~$3 billion (Reuters, 8/7). Investors are likely well aware of the support the US government has given to these sectors over the past couple of years in an effort to reduce dependence on China for critical minerals and batteries. The announcements of the last week left us wanting a recap of how much support the government has provided to this supply chain, the form it has taken and which companies are receiving it. We show this below and also analyze the puts and takes of this stepped up government support.

What is a critical mineral?

The 2020 Energy Act defines a critical mineral as a non-fuel mineral or material that (1) is essential to economic or national security, (2) has a supply chain that is vulnerable to disruption, and (3) serves an essential function in manufacturing a key product. The US Geological Survey (USGS) maintains a list of critical minerals that was most recently updated in 2025. It includes: aluminum, antimony, boron, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, graphite, lead, lithium, magnesium, manganese, metallurgical coal, nickel, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc and zirconium, as well as the full rare earth elemental group and the platinum group metals. Notably, copper, metallurgical coal, silver and uranium were recent additions in 2025. The US Department of Energy (DOE) maintains its own list that is very similar to the USGS.

Which Federal agencies are providing support?

There are four main government agencies that have provided support for the critical minerals/battery supply chain: (1) the Department of Defense via the OSC, (2) the DOE through its Office of Energy Dominance Financing, (EDF) (3) the Commerce Department via the CHIPS Act, and (4) the US Export-Import Bank.

OSC. The OSC was established in 2022 in response to the need to accelerate and scale private investment in critical supply chain technologies needed for national security. Its aim is to address the investment gap between the laboratory and full-scale production. The DoD also has the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program that sits adjacent to OSC and has provided some loans.

EDF. The EDF used to be called the Loan Programs Office (LPO) and was established in 2008 to allow the DOE to support the deployment of new energy/energy efficiency projects. Its aim was not to displace private capital but to act as a catalyst for projects that would have otherwise struggled to raise capital owing to technology risk. Alongside its rebranding as EDF, the office has de-obligated loans/loan guarantees made during previous administrations in support of efforts such as solar/wind power and decarbonization and has replaced them with loans focused on hydrocarbons, nuclear power, critical minerals, geothermal, grid and transmission, and manufacturing and transportation.

CHIPS Act. The Chips Act was signed into law by President Biden to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors, which extends into the critical minerals that are part of that supply chain.

US Ex-Im. The US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), which has existed since 1934, has created a critical minerals lane as well. Ex-Im has historically provided loans and guarantees to facilitate US exports and US job creation, and it has provided some significant loan guarantees of late in the critical minerals arena.

What form is this support taking?

Historically, government support from the OSC and the EDF primarily took the form of loan guarantees, whereby the government guarantees a commercial loan to encourage banks to lend to nascent companies that may not yet be creditworthy enough for palatable interest rates and terms. The focus was primarily de-risking projects. During the second Trump Administration, they have expanded the playbook to include long-tenor federal loans and export credit, direct equity and quasi-equity investments at both the project and the corporate level, and tools such as offtake and price floor commitments as well as strategic stockpiling. The goal remains to accelerate Final Investment Decisions on projects and “crowd in” private capital, but the broader array of support has given the agencies an ability to actively shape how and where capacity is built (FTI Consulting).

Another trend we are seeing is the stacking of capital or guarantees from different departments. Several deals we looked at have sourced funding from OSC, Ex-Im and the Department of Commerce, for example.

Companies that have received support

The table below highlights the companies that have received support from the US government in the current administration – over $15 billion in aggregate has been awarded, ~25% to lithium, ~25% to rare earths and magnets, ~35% to other critical minerals such as copper, and the remainder to nuclear and battery materials.

The dollars the government has allocated to creating resilient supply chains in critical materials has catalyzed private investment. Many of the deals shown above have required private capital alongside the government’s commitments, and some of the announcements named the providers of capital specifically. China’s dominance in rare earths, refined critical minerals and batteries is a risk to US industry and defense, and these efforts are working to close a real financing gap. The government is also procuring physical commodity supplies with offtake agreements, and that holds real value.

At the same time, picking winners is genuinely hard, and even experienced investors and companies don’t always get it right. These deals also come with execution risk: Mining projects are often over time and over budget, and some of the projects the government is funding (such as MP Materials’ Mountain Pass mine) have been unprofitable for decades. Short term funding might not reposition these assets on the cost curve and therefore might not ensure their viability over the long-term. Finally, returns on equity are vulnerable not only to successful project build out but also to the whims of commodity markets. Some of the government’s equity investments may well become grants depending on market conditions.

Based on our proprietary NPM Price data, the best performers of the large cap names in the private market thus far in 2026 have been:

Based on our proprietary NPM Price data using weighted averages for each sector, the top performing sectors YTD taking into account the top 100 largest names are AI and Machine Learning (100%), Consumer (+88%) and Industrials (+55%). The fact that most of the top performers are in the AI and Machine learning category helps explain the sector’s performance.

1. Nvidia announced a deal with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish “compute financing platforms” with an aim of deploying over $500 billion of capital in the coming years. Wall Street Journal, 8/11
2. Nvidia also agreed to invest $2 billion into Lancium, the infrastructure developer behind Stargate. The Information, 8/10
3. Anthropic announced an agreement with Macquarie Asset Management and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC to launch a new entity that will develop, operate and lease AI data centers for Anthropic. It also announced a $9.1 billion deal to secure computing power from Riot Platforms, a bitcoin miner that recently began selling AI data center capacity. The Information; Bloomberg, 8/11
4. Anthropic is in talks to buy Decart, a developer of world models and chip optimization software, for ~$6 billion. Axios, 8/13
5. The Pentagon asked defense firms to accelerate production of key weapons systems. Bloomberg, 8/10
6. OpenAI bought ~$7 billion in shares from employees in a recent tender. Bloomberg, 8/10
7. Intel raised $20 billion in a share sale. Wall Street Journal, 8/11
8. New York State launched a sweeping investigation into marketing practices of Polymarket and Kalshi. Wall Street Journal, 8/12

1. FormLabs, a Softbank-backed maker of 3D printers, is considering an IPO that could raise ~$500 million. Bloomberg, 8/7
2. London-based data center developer Nscale is targeting a September IPO in the US. Bloomberg, 8/6
3. Defense tech rollup Lyntris set IPO terms with a $2.4 billion market cap at the midpoint of valuation. Axios, 8/10
4. Las Vegas data center operator Switch filed for a confidential IPO, while DayOne, a Singapore-based hyperscale data center operator, also filed for a confidential IPO that could seek to raise $5 billion. Axios, 8/10–11
5. SPAC filings include GigCapital10, an aerospace and TMT SPAC, Gores Holdings XII and Inflection Point Acquisition. Axios, 8/11