Head of Government Relations

Solcoa Industries builds U.S. Rare earth metal capacity. Rare earth supply chains are often described as a race to open mines or build magnet factories. Solcoa Industries is working on the factory step between them: turning separated rare earth oxides into the metal that a magnet producer can actually use. Founded in 2025 by Hooman Reza Nezhad and Artem Iurkovskyi, Solcoa Industries makes magnet-grade neodymium-praseodymium, known as NdPr, and samarium metal in Alameda, California. Nezhad serves as CEO and Iurkovskyi as CTO. Their company is trying to rebuild a conversion capability that remains heavily concentrated in China even as the United States invests in domestic mines, separation plants, and magnet manufacturing. The timing makes Solcoa more than a materials startup with a new chemistry route. Electric vehicles, robotics, wind turbines, electronics, and defense systems all depend on high-performance permanent magnets. A domestic supply strategy can still break at metallization if refined oxides have to leave the country before they can become magnet feedstock. What Solcoa Industries makes. Solcoa's product is rare earth metal, not an ore body or a finished magnet. Its process starts after rare earth elements have been mined and separated into refined oxides. It ends before a manufacturer alloys and shapes the material into neodymium-iron-boron or samarium-cobalt magnets. That middle position is the point. The International Energy Agency reported that China accounted for 91% of refined rare earth production and 94% of sintered permanent magnet production in 2024. The agency expects demand for magnet rare earths to rise by another third by 2030, while projects outside China remain insufficient to meet projected demand later in the next decade. Solcoa says its proprietary, halide-free process replaces the conventional molten-salt electrolysis route. Bain Capital Ventures describes it as a pyrometallurgical method that avoids hydrofluoric acid and the perfluorocarbon emissions associated with the conventional process. Solcoa also designs and builds its modular reactors in-house, joining process chemistry and production equipment inside one operating system. The company reports that its existing Alameda line can produce more than 10 tonnes of NdPr and samarium metal per year. Its investors say the line is operating continuously. Claims that the method is faster, cleaner, less energy-intensive, and lower-cost remain company or investor reported rather than independently audited, making commercial scale the next meaningful test. From a 10-tonne line to Solcoa One. Solcoa is now building Solcoa One, a Nevada facility designed to produce 500 tonnes of rare earth metal annually. The company plans to commission the plant in July 2027 and says that volume could supply enough NdPr for as many as one million electric vehicles. The scale-up is financed by a $75M package announced in September 2026. Bain Capital Ventures led $45M in equity, with Gigascale Capital, Long Journey, Felicis, Dylan Field, and other participants. J.P. Morgan anchored another $30M in debt and equipment financing. That capital structure fits the work. Solcoa is not only funding research or adding software engineers. It has to manufacture reactors, build and commission a plant, secure feedstock, hold material quality at higher throughput, qualify output with buyers, and prove that its operating economics survive outside a small production line. The modular reactor design may help the company add capacity in increments, but modularity does not remove industrial risk. Reliable commissioning, product consistency, customer qualification, maintenance, and working capital will decide whether a 10-tonne operation becomes a dependable 500-tonne supplier. The founders' manufacturing thesis. Nezhad and Iurkovskyi began working on the problem as young engineers with a broader interest in the material systems needed for large-scale industry. Investor accounts describe a rapid path from process development to a continuously operating production line, with the founders building hardware as well as chemistry. Felicis, which co-led Solcoa's pre-seed financing and joined the current round, frames the company around a neglected bottleneck. Western industrial policy has created momentum in mining and magnet plants, but those investments still need metal between the oxide and the finished component. Solcoa is betting that control of that conversion layer can become strategic infrastructure. The name reflects the ambition. Felicis notes that Solcoa was partly inspired by Alcoa, a company whose identity became inseparable from scaling a new metal-production system. The comparison is a thesis, not an outcome. Solcoa still has to demonstrate that its own process can reach durable commercial volume. Hiring shows where the company is scaling. Solcoa's current careers page shows openings across plant operations, research, mechanical engineering, technical recruiting, internships, and government relations. A current Pilot Plant Operator role in Alameda covers high-temperature reactors, vacuum systems, induction furnaces, and material handling. The mix matters more than the number of listings. Operations and engineering roles point to the physical work of running and improving the process. Recruiting supports a larger technical organization, while government relations reflects a market shaped by defense rules, public investment, and critical-minerals policy. Hiring across those functions suggests that Solcoa is trying to scale a company, a factory system, and an institutional interface at the same time. It also raises the execution bar. A materials company cannot separate laboratory performance from safe operations, equipment reliability, workforce development, and the documentation required by customers in regulated supply chains. Why the market needs the middle step. The U.S. Department of Energy is funding projects that convert critical minerals into high-purity metals because mining alone does not create manufacturing independence. Defense sourcing rules make the same point from another direction. Beginning January 1, 2027, restrictions extend across covered magnet supply chains, including certain materials mined, refined, separated, melted, or produced in specified countries, subject to stated exceptions. For buyers, the question is becoming more specific than where a final magnet was assembled. They need a traceable path through the earlier material stages. Solcoa's Alameda output and Nevada plan are positioned inside that requirement, serving a step that domestic miners and magnet makers cannot simply skip. The company's opportunity is large because the bottleneck is real. Its burden of proof is equally large because industrial promises only become capacity after plants run, material qualifies, and customers reorder. Solcoa has identified an overlooked handoff in the rare earth chain. Solcoa One will show whether the company can turn that handoff into reliable American infrastructure.

Solcoa raises $75M to scale U.S. Rare earth metals. America's rare earth buildout has invested heavily on both sides of a missing factory step. Mines and separation plants can produce refined oxides. Magnet factories still need those oxides converted into neodymium-praseodymium or samarium metal before they can build high-performance magnets, and that conversion step remains concentrated in Chinese industrial capacity. Solcoa Industries has secured $75M in financing to scale an American alternative. The September 24, 2026 package includes $45M in equity led by Bain Capital Ventures, with Gigascale Capital, Long Journey, Felicis, Dylan Field, and other technology and defense leaders participating. J.P. Morgan anchored another $30M in debt and equipment financing. The capital will fund Solcoa One, a 500-tonne-per-year rare earth metallization plant in Nevada, plus reactor manufacturing in Alameda, California, and additional engineering and research hiring. Solcoa expects to commission the plant in July 2027, when tighter U.S. defense sourcing restrictions will make the origin of rare earth materials across the magnet supply chain even more important. What Solcoa is building. Solcoa currently produces neodymium-praseodymium, commonly called NdPr, and samarium metal at an Alameda facility. The company says its existing line can produce more than 10 tonnes of magnet-grade metal annually. Solcoa One is designed to raise that capacity to 500 tonnes, enough NdPr to supply as many as 1 million electric vehicles according to the company. Co-founders Hooman Reza Nezhad, Solcoa's CEO, and Artem Iurkovskyi, its CTO, are approaching rare earths as a chemistry and manufacturing problem. Solcoa develops its own halide-free processes, engineers the production system, and builds modular reactors in-house. The company says this route is faster, cleaner, less energy-intensive, and lower-cost than conventional molten-salt electrolysis, although those performance claims remain company-reported rather than independently audited in the announcement. Bain Capital Ventures describes the process as a pyrometallurgical method that avoids hydrofluoric acid and perfluorocarbon emissions associated with the conventional route. The investor also reports that Solcoa's 10-tonne line is operating continuously and that the company aims to supply at least one-third of North American NdPr demand by the end of the decade. Those targets make execution at Solcoa One the next meaningful proof point. The missing step in the rare earth supply chain. Rare earth elements are used in the permanent magnets inside electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, speakers, data centers, and defense systems. Mining and separating the elements are only part of the chain. Manufacturers still need magnet-grade metal before they can produce neodymium-iron-boron or samarium-cobalt magnets. Solcoa says China controls 95% of global metallization capacity. That concentration matters because a magnet assembled outside China can still depend on Chinese production several stages earlier. Felicis, which participated in the financing after co-leading Solcoa's pre-seed round, describes metallization as the industrial step that Western rare earth strategies have often skipped. The distinction also changes the commercial question. Solcoa is not selling another plan for a mine or a future separation plant. It is attempting to supply a conversion capability that magnet makers, automakers, robotics companies, and defense contractors need after those upstream investments have already done their work. Why the 2027 deadline matters. The timing is partly regulatory. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement already restricts covered magnets and materials produced in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. Effective January 1, 2027, the rule extends to covered materials mined, refined, separated, melted, or produced in those countries, subject to stated exceptions and nonavailability determinations. That creates a specific sourcing problem for defense suppliers using neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-cobalt magnets. Compliance depends on more than the final location where a magnet is pressed, sintered, or assembled. Contractors increasingly need evidence that earlier stages of the material chain also meet the rule. Solcoa is positioning its Alameda output and Nevada expansion inside that gap. The company says Solcoa One will serve robotics, electrification, and defense markets, while its modular reactor design allows capacity to be added in increments rather than waiting for a single conventional plant to reach full scale. What the $75M financing changes. The financing combines venture equity with equipment-oriented capital, a structure that fits the work ahead. Software can often use a seed round to add engineers and sell a product that already runs in the cloud. Solcoa has to build reactors, commission a Nevada facility, qualify material, maintain product consistency, and earn the trust of buyers whose failures become manufacturing or national-security problems. The $45M equity portion gives Solcoa room to deepen the process, expand its teams, and absorb the uncertainty of industrial scale-up. The $30M debt and equipment financing ties part of the package more directly to the physical system. Calling the entire $75M an equity seed round would overstate the venture component, so the more accurate description is a seed-stage financing package split between equity and debt or equipment capital. The market signal. Solcoa's round reflects a broader shift in climate and defense investing toward the physical bottlenecks beneath electrification, automation, and advanced manufacturing. Investors are underwriting factories, reactors, supply contracts, and regulatory deadlines alongside technical intellectual property. The capital is moving toward companies that can turn geopolitical exposure into measurable domestic capacity. The next test is operational. Solcoa has moved from laboratory-scale output to a 10-tonne annual line in less than a year, according to the company and its investors. Moving from that line to 500 tonnes will require reliable commissioning, consistent magnet-grade output, qualified feedstock, customer commitments, and economics that remain competitive outside a laboratory. If Solcoa One reaches production on schedule, the plant will make one overlooked handoff in the rare earth chain visible. American mines and separation projects can produce material, and domestic magnet factories can turn metal into components. Solcoa is building the conversion capacity that has to connect those investments before the 2027 sourcing clock runs out.