🎙️ Magnets without rare earths. Didn’t even know it was possible. Yet Niron Magnetics is making them in Minnesota and very soon the rest of the world.
Simply put, what Niron has done is one of the most exciting and important industrial-scale innovations happening in the United States today. Magnets are critical in the electric motors that power everything from EVs to drones to robotics.
But current magnets, like the ones in almost everything you own, need “rare earths” to function—rare earths that are sometimes mined in the United States, but never processed here. Which is why China often uses them as a trade lever, as they process more rare earths than any other country.
Niron changes all of that, using a process that requires no rare earths and is even more powerful than what’s available with standard neodymium magnets.
It’s huge.
Niron CEO Jonathan Rowntree joins TOOL OR DIE to explain how Niron’s tech could transform everything from EV motors to defense drones to data center cooling—and why America’s magnet crisis is bigger than most people realize. From the legacy of the Manhattan Project to the geopolitical chokehold of Chinese exports, this is a deep dive into the guts of the devices that run our world, and the urgent need to build domestic capacity from the atom up.
Timestamps
01:00 – What’s so hard about neodymium? And what is Niron doing differently?
04:00 – A rare earth-free magnet: iron nitride and how it works
07:30 – The environmental and geopolitical risks of traditional rare earth magnet supply
11:00 – Coming out of stealth and the global rare earth crisis 2.0
14:00 – Commercial pilot facility launched; full-scale factory coming in 2027
17:00 – Performance gains: higher thermal stability, motor efficiency improvements
21:00 – Small motor demand: drones, humanoid robots, and data center cooling
25:00 – Scaling U.S. magnet production from grams to 10,000 tons
29:00 – The capital challenge: what funding hard tech actually requires
33:00 – IP protection, cyber threats, and building a team for scale
36:00 – Why domestic magnet production could drive reshoring of entire supply chains
40:00 – What else needs to be rebuilt: copper, steel, automation, and skilled labor
Key Topics
Iron nitride as a rare earth-free alternative to neodymium magnets
The technical and geopolitical vulnerabilities of global magnet supply
Niron’s commercialization roadmap: pilot facility to 10,000-ton factory
Motor design, thermal stability, and efficiency performance tradeoffs
Strategic applications: EVs, drones, defense, data centers
Reshoring through component innovation: building near demand
U.S. capital markets and the gap in scaling hard tech
The future of skilled labor in an automated manufacturing world
🔧 Learn more: nironmagnetics.com
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TOOL OR DIE is hosted by Joel Johnson, former science & tech journalist turned corporate strategist who built brands like Gizmodo, WIRED.com, and Wirecutter; and Alex Roy, General Partner at New Industry Venture Capital (NIVC.us), known for breaking the Cannonball Run record and his work in autonomous vehicles. Each week, they speak with the people actually rebuilding American manufacturing—one machine, one company, one idea at a time.
Follow them at:
LinkedIn: joeljohnson | alexroy
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