Rare earths and mineral investments dig deeper in the Lone Star State.
Texas has a long legacy in mining, ranking with California, Alaska and Wyoming as top states for the presence of rare earth elements (REE), which are critical to most common and advanced technologies created and used today. REEs are found in compounds, not pure metals, requiring complicated processing once extracted. Texas is digging down on its reserves of the materials, building out mining operations and manufacturing sites to the tune of billions.
This digging will also continue in the northern reaches of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro where American company MP Materials Corp. is locating a new, large-scale rare earth magnet manufacturing campus, dubbed “10X,” which will locate in Northlake, Texas.
Expansive Operations
The 10X site will be less than 10 miles from MP Materials’ existing Independence facility in Fort Worth, which began commercial metal production in 2024 and alloy flake and finished magnet production on commercial equipment in 2025. A company press release stated that the experience, technical talent and supplier ecosystem that grew from the Independence site will lay the foundation for 10X, giving the Las Vegas-based rare earth materials company a competitive advantage in its pursuit of scaling advanced magnet manufacturing in the United States.
MP Materials selected the 120-acre Northlake site, acquired from real estate and development firm Hillwood within the AllianceTexas development, to expand its rare earth magnetics manufacturing platform, which currently comprises mining and refining, metallization and alloying, sintering, finished magnet production and closed-loop recycling. The company is directing $1.25 billion toward the Northlake project, creating more than 1,500 direct jobs in manufacturing and engineering. Commissioning is set to start in 2028, and the facility will produce NdFeB magnets, the most powerful type of commercially available permanent magnets, adding to the company’s total annual production capacity of about 10,000 metric tons.
MP Materials selected Northlake to expand its rare earth magnetics manufacturing platform, which currently comprises mining and refining, metallization and alloying, sintering, finished magnet production and closed-loop recycling.
Rendering courtesy of MP Materials
“10X is about building industrial strength at a scale the United States has not seen in generations, and the exceptional talent and infrastructure in North Texas make it possible,” said James Litinsky, founder, chairman and CEO, MP Materials, when the company announced the site’s location in February 2026. “We are advancing key objectives under our public-private partnership with the Department of War and accelerating America’s rare earth and magnet independence with an uncompromising focus on speed, execution and delivery.”
The State of Texas, Denton County and the City of Northlake will provide $200 million in incentives over the next decade for the project, including more than $66 million in grants from the Texas Enterprise Fund and Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund.
“MP Materials selected AllianceTexas for its 120-acre ‘10X’ campus, located less than 10 miles from the company’s existing Independence facility, because of its access to the region’s highly skilled workforce, proven expertise in advanced manufacturing and a pro-business climate with our public partners,” says Bill Burton, executive vice president of marketing and development for Hillwood. “The future campus will significantly expand MP Materials’ U.S. rare earth magnetic production capacity in Texas and significantly accelerate domestic manufacturing, further reinforcing North Texas as a hub for the United States’ rare earth magnet supply chain.”
According to an MP Materials press release, cutting-edge NdFeB magnet manufacturing technologies will take place at 10X, including proprietary and innovative processes that will significantly reduce or eliminate heavy rare earth requirements while maintaining high coercivity (a magnetic material’s resistance to becoming demagnetized) and thermal stability (a magnet’s ability to maintain magnetic strength through changing temperatures).
The company’s processing facility in Mountain Pass, California, will provide the raw light and heavy rare earth materials needed at the 10X campus, with magnet scrap at Texas sites to be fed back into the company’s short- and long-loop recycling circuits in Texas and California.
General Motors and Apple are two commercial partners for MP Materials. The company also announced last summer its public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense (now the U.S. Department of War) to accelerate the build-out of a U.S. rare earth magnet supply chain, reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.
Rounding Out Rare Earth Production
Near the small Western Texas town of Sierra Blanca is Round Top Mountain, which has deep reserves of beryllium, gallium and lithium and is also one of the largest deposits of heavy REEs in the nation, totaling in the hundreds of millions of metric tons of REEs and other minerals needed to manufacture powerful magnets for EV motors, wind turbines, electronics, medial imaging and practically all advanced technology used today.
Headquartered in Stillwater, Oklahoma, American mining and manufacturing company USA Rare Earth announced in March 2026 that it will acquire former joint venture partner Texas Mineral Resources Corporation (TMRC), marking USA Rare Earth (USAR) as the exclusive operator of the Round Top Project, named for the 1,250-foot mountain range hosting a vast swath of valuable REEs (16 of 17 rare earths are found there) and other valuable minerals. USAR currently holds a long-term lease with the Texas General Land Office for its operations on state land in Sierra Blanca.
“Round Top is one of the most strategically important mineral deposits in the United States, and it sits right here on Texas state land,” said Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office Dr. Dawn Buckingham in March. “This acquisition puts a well-capitalized, American-owned company in full control of developing the largest heavy rare earth deposit in the country. That means good-paying jobs for West Texans, critical royalty revenue for our Permanent School Fund and a major step toward ending America’s dangerous dependence on China for the minerals that power our national defense. Texas is proud to be leading the way.”
Barbara Humpton, CEO, USA Rare Earth
The $73 million, all-stock deal is part of USAR’s move to strengthen the domestic critical supply chain under its Accelerated Mining Plan, which has the goal of extracting almost 40,000 metric tons of rare earth and critical minerals daily by 2030. USAR announced in December 2025 that it would accelerate its strategy to start producing at the Round Top site by two years, with commercial production starting in late 2028.
“We’re challenging ourselves to innovate and pursue creative solutions that accelerate our timeline for securing, reshoring and growing the U.S. rare earth value chain,” said USAR CEO Barbara Humpton. “Beginning commercial production at Round Top two years earlier than anticipated would be an exciting milestone made possible by the team’s technical capabilities, process knowledge and ingenuity. As global demand for rare earth magnets continues to rise and geopolitical risks escalate, accelerating domestic production is essential for securing the long-term competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing.”
The acceleration in the commercialization timeline at Round Top is due to the fact that USAR’s Hydromet demonstration facility in Colorado will begin production this year, leveraging a novel “parallel-process” approach and generating enough operational data to proceed with commercial plant design. This will allow USAR to complete a feasibility study earlier, which means an earlier production start time at Round Top. The site is a key part of USAR’s mine-to-magnet value chain, which includes feedstock mining, oxide processing and separation, metal and alloy production and magnet manufacturing. Heavy REEs are used in producing defense systems, semiconductors and aerospace components.
China currently holds the crown for the mining and processing of REEs, exporting to countries all over the globe including the United States. China has an estimated 44 million metric tons of REEs, capturing over half of the valuable commodity’s global production. By exploring existing local reserves of REEs, companies like USAR seek to not only expand business, but also reduce reliance on critically needed resources from other countries.
