Rare Earth Elements
Magnet and polishing materials dominated by China
Rare earth elements (notably Nd, Pr, Dy, Tb for permanent magnets, plus cerium for wafer polishing) are essential to motors, HDD/actuators, cooling fans, and power-system magnets in datacenter and networking gear. China controls roughly 60-70% of mining and ~85-90% of refining/separation, and has progressively tightened export controls on rare-earth magnets and processing technology through 2024-2025. Western projects (MP Materials, Lynas, plus DoD-backed refining) are scaling but remain far short of breaking Chinese dominance.
China refining share
~85-90% of separation/refining
Key elements
Nd, Pr, Dy, Tb (magnets); Ce (polishing)
Controls
2024-25 magnet + tech export restrictions
Western players
MP Materials, Lynas, DoD-backed refiners
How it fits the stack
Rare Earth Elements with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
Rare Earth Elements in the AI stack. Rare Earth Elements with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 1 entities, 0 relationships
Context — capital, rivals, policy · · 2