USA Rare Earth, Pasqal and Riven Systems are joining forces to use quantum computing, artificial intelligence and automated laboratories to tackle one of the rare earth industry’s biggest challenges: finding faster, cheaper and more efficient ways to separate critical minerals.
The companies announced a strategic partnership Thursday aimed at developing next-generation separation technology for the rare earth supply chain. The project will use quantum machine learning to search for new chemical molecules capable of binding more effectively to rare earth elements than existing alternatives.
The goal is ambitious: smaller processing facilities that require less capital and energy while reducing material consumption and environmental impact.
At the heart of the collaboration is a combination of technologies from all three companies. Riven will use its automated, self-driving minerals separation laboratory to conduct thousands of experiments and generate chemical data. Pasqal will apply its neutral-atom quantum computing technology to benchmark quantum machine-learning models against classical approaches. USA Rare Earth will provide processing expertise and use the results to optimize extractant selection for its operations.
"The key challenge the rare earth industry outside Asia faces is to separate the Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate (MREC) produced in upstream operations into individual, separated oxides. The Chinese dominate this capability, especially for vital heavy rare earths such as dysprosium, terbium and yttrium.
"Our goal is to accelerate the path to efficient, competitive and sustainable solutions by changing how the rare earth industry discovers the chemistry it runs on, replacing years of trial-and-error," remarked Alex Moyes, Senior Vice President of Upstream (USA), USA Rare Earth.
He added: "This strategic partnership will institute an innovative discovery pipeline where new extractant molecules are identified and tested virtually, powered by a quantum machine learning model trained on real chemical data from an autonomous lab.
"Rapid discovery of an extractant built and optimized for USA Rare Earth's flowsheets could improve our capital and operating efficiency by reducing stage count, equipment needs and raw material consumption, while lowering the carbon footprint and environmental impact of our facilities. Breakthroughs like these are what could help make a Western rare earth value chain possible and accelerate our journey to being competitive on the world stage."
The work is expected to focus on feedstocks tied to USA Rare Earth’s broader materials strategy, including material expected from its Round Top mine in Sierra Blanca, Texas, third-party mixed rare earth carbonates and recycled magnet-manufacturing waste known as swarf.
That gives the project a potential reach beyond a single mine or processing stream. The companies say the experimental work could ultimately inform multiple stages of USA Rare Earth’s materials-processing operations.
"This partnership brings together three companies working at the forefront of technologies that are increasingly important to economic growth, industrial competitiveness and national resilience," said Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal.
"Rare earth materials are essential and improving how they are processed has implications far beyond a single industry. By combining Pasqal's quantum computing capabilities with USA Rare Earth's materials expertise and Riven's advanced automation platform, we have an opportunity to accelerate innovation while demonstrating how French and American companies can work together to strengthen critical supply chains."
The companies are also looking beyond the initial machine-learning project.
Their longer-term vision is an end-to-end discovery pipeline in which quantum machine learning identifies promising extractant molecules, Riven’s autonomous laboratory tests them and USA Rare Earth validates the strongest candidates at its R&D facility in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
The ultimate objective is to move promising chemistry into USA Rare Earth’s processing flowsheets.
"AI and autonomous labs are the next frontier in critical mineral processing," said Orion Archer Cohen, CTO and co-founder of Riven Systems. "We applaud USA Rare Earth’s proactive adoption of these technologies, which forge a path to significant improvements over legacy chemistry. This is exactly how the West can leverage its lead in advanced compute technologies to reindustrialize faster."
The partnership comes as rare earth processing remains a strategically important part of the global critical-minerals supply chain. The companies are betting that combining automation, AI and quantum computing can shorten the traditionally lengthy process of discovering and testing new separation chemistry.
For USA Rare Earth, the potential payoff is not simply faster research. A more selective extractant could, if successfully developed and implemented, reduce the number of processing stages, equipment requirements and raw-material consumption.
The companies caution, however, that the technology remains an area of development. The partnership’s forward-looking statements acknowledge that quantum computing, AI and autonomous laboratories have relatively limited track records in industrial rare earth processing and that the project may not produce viable molecules or deliver the anticipated benefits.
For now, the three companies are putting a new model of mineral-processing research to the test: pairing real-world chemical experiments with machine learning and quantum computing in an effort to rethink how rare earth separation chemistry is discovered.
