Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat, Panel
The Founders Who Left Tesla to Rebuild America | a16z
- The U.S. faces a 50-year lag in critical mineral supply with risks of remaining perpetually behind China unless domestic innovation accelerates, noting that even reduced permitting burdens cannot allow the U.S. to outpace China without such innovation.
- Mariana Minerals targets a roadmap of launching 10 projects over the next 10 years, aiming to address project delivery timelines where construction takes five years and reaching operational rate requires an additional three to five years post-licensing.
- Initial phases of Mariana Minerals' lithium and copper projects are expected to generate over 500 construction jobs plus additional full-time roles within the next 18 months, while Heron Power's first large factory is projected to create approximately 500 jobs, representing the start of a broader manufacturing expansion.
- Heron Power plans to utilize silicon and software to replace steel, oil, and copper in power conversion for data centers and energy installations, contingent on the U.S. leveraging its status as the leading silicon carbide producer to avoid transferring technology benefits to other nations.
- Operational strategies include Mariana Minerals making a significant investment in refinery autonomy using reinforcement learning to remove humans from decision loops and integrating software engineers directly into operations to replace manual processes and fragmented data tracking.
- Manufacturing competitiveness in the U.S. is projected to rely primarily on supply chain co-location and energy infrastructure rather than labor costs, which are expected to remain less than 10% (potentially under 5%) of cost of goods sold compared to China.
- Material expectations for the next 12 to 24 months include potential speed-ups in onshore manufacturing if concerted efforts successfully identify co-located supply chains, creating high-paying technical jobs and unlocking significant economic value.
- Key risks identified include the potential for private capital markets to fail if incentive structures are not established, supplier and financier uncertainty due to a lack of durable industrial policy, and the threat of AI development placing undue strain on a faltering grid regarding energy capacity.
- Advocacy efforts focus on establishing a federal highway trust fund for grid infrastructure to enable a master plan that connects manufacturing and energy zones, requiring alignment across local jurisdictions to ensure permits are granted and reindustrialization is viewed as a priority.
- A strategic philosophy for new ventures involves persisting through challenges to achieve autonomy outcomes, rejecting industry norms where projects are abandoned after one year, with the long-term goal of rethinking the industrial stack from critical minerals to transmission.