Inside The Startup Whose Technology Promises An American Energy Transformation

. It’ll have a capacity of 1,000 tons of finished magnets and a long-term agreement to supply General Motors. Two other U.S.-headquartered firms, Quadrant Magnets and USA Rare Earth, as well as the German company Vacuumschmelze, have plans to establish U.S. magnet manufacturing facilities by 2026.

“I think, ‘I need to work on this, I need to explain this, otherwise no one in industry will step in because they feel it is controversial,’” he says. For half a dozen years, Wang hunkered down with a student, doing basic research and publishing nothing. “I know it’s controversial and there had been debate before so we needed to make sure we had everything right,” he says.

In 2014, the company spun out of the University of Minnesota with early investment from Artiman Ventures. Wang, who was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors, was the firm’s first chief technology officer; he remains on the board of directors and is chief scientific officer today. More recently, Niron has signed on Volvo and hard disk-drive maker Western Digital, both of which have large needs for permanent magnets, as strategic investors.

Today, Tymphony is running tests on Niron’s magnets, a key step toward bringing them into commercial production. Hellerman says he sees potential for Niron’s magnets to bridge the gap between rare-earth magnets and ferrite magnets, which are widely available but less powerful. “We see indications that Niron’s magnet material roadmap could disrupt the rare-earth magnet supply and help to provide alternatives to the existing China supply of rare-earth magnets,” he says.

In January, Rowntree, 52, formerly an executive at Henkel and Rogers Corp., took over the CEO role from Blackburn, 64, to expand the company. A mechanical engineer by training, Rowntree had spent nearly 30 years building plants and scaling operations in electronic materials. Since joining, he says, Niron has made “tremendous progress” in getting ready to scale up, while also bringing its capital costs down in order to “significantly lower” its breakeven point.

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