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Despite the technical progress, chairman John Busbee told Fastmarkets that finance, not technology, remains the main bottleneck for US critical metals.
“Funding has to be holistic. The government took significant risk in the battery space to catch up, but funding has now slowed, and that sends really bad signals to institutional investors and entrepreneurs,” Busbee said in an interview.
“Many promising companies fail because investors expect things to be done on unrealistically short timelines – like getting a breakthrough commercialized in four years when it’s actually an eight-year process. That just discourages people from starting,” he added.
Busbee, a former Air Force materials researcher and nanotechnology pioneer, founded Xerion after decades in government service. He emphasizes that US expertise is strong, but private finance has often been risk-averse.
“There have been so many good technologies that have died on the vine because private finance wanted something ready to go instead of funding a program in stages,” he said.
At the heart of Xerion’s DirectPlate technology is a molten salt electroplating process.
Unlike conventional water-based electroplating, which struggles with reactive metals like lithium, Xerion’s molten salt bath avoids water entirely. It dissolves ores or recycled materials, allowing simultaneous production of battery-grade ceramics at the positive electrode and pure metal at the negative.
“It took us 10 years to get it right,” Busbee said. “We started with cobalt for electronics. We can take an ore concentrate, dump it in, and it dissolves,” he said. “We can immediately electroplate the metals out. It’s fast, modular, low-footprint, and uses less energy than conventional methods.”
The cost advantage is notable: at pilot scale, Busbee said Xerion’s process is almost half the cost of comparable Chinese operations, which he estimated at roughly $350 per pound of cobalt versus $650 per pound using traditional Western methods.
Xerion’s cobalt plating process was recently named one of Time Magazine’s inventions of the year. He said the modular system allows for rapid scaling and could even be deployed in shipping containers at mines if needed.
The first production unit in Dayton will handle cobalt concentrate, with output of 50 tonnes per year and scaling up to 2,000 tonnes annually. A second plant is planned to combine cathode electrode production with cobalt refining, allowing Xerion to produce battery materials alongside metals output.
The company is focusing on supply chain alignment, working with domestic and international cobalt producers as well as downstream battery manufacturers.
“We’re having people analyse our materials — we’re working with engine manufacturers, with the guys that do rotating-grade cobalt, and trying to get our products approved,” he told Fastmarkets. “It’s one thing to have the material, but you want people aligned and ready to use it at the same time.”
Xerion is also diversifying beyond cobalt, exploring gallium, germanium and antimony, with an eye on critical minerals for power electronics and defense applications.
“It’s not just about the size of the market,” Busbee noted. “Some of these metals are critical for military electronics, and our system can deploy quickly. Speed to market matters as much as volume.”
Busbee’s vision extends beyond a single battery type, encompassing a range of chemistries to meet different applications. The company has worked with lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), nickel-based chemistries and manganese variants.
“Cobalt is still the best material for certain uses,” he said. “The fact that we can process it cheaper means you can go to lower feedstock purities and still stay profitable, opening new sources of supply,” he added.
Busbee also keeps an eye on emerging battery chemistries, including sodium-ion technologies.
“Sodium is going to be slow,” he said. “It’s hard to get past the incumbent, lithium. In the long term, sodium is so abundant that it’ll continue to grow at its own pace, but it’s not going to replace lithium quickly.”
Geopolitical pressures add urgency. China dominates global production of many critical metals and has already imposed export restrictions on some of these, including gallium, germanium and antimony.
This dominance gives Beijing significant leverage over industries ranging from batteries and consumer electronics to defense and aerospace.
“China recently flexed its muscles with rare earths,” he said. “Our response can’t just be about replacing lost capacity – it’s also about how fast you can replace it. That speed to market is critical, and our system allows us to deploy quickly.”
Despite the technology being ready for scale, Busbee reiterated that sustained capital and patient funding are essential.
“We have to fix the funding outlook more than anything else. Without deliberate, sustained investment, even promising technologies struggle to reach scale,” he said, highlighting the role of public-private partnerships to reduce risk and attract institutional investors.
In Hotter Commodities, special correspondent Andrea Hotter covers some of the biggest stories impacting the natural resources sector. Read more coverage on our dedicated Hotter Commodities page here.