Phoenix Tailings, a Woburn, MA-based rare earth metals refining company, raised an additional $33m in Series B funding.
The second close was anchored by Escape Velocity, a venture vehicle founded by former Goldman Sachs executives Ganesh Ramani and Ram Sundaram, along with new investments from Builders Vision, Yamaha Motor Ventures, M Power, and Presidio, the venture arm of Sumitomo Corporation, among several other key investors.
The funding brought the amount raised in Series B, led by Envisioning Partners, to $76m.
Led by Nick Myers, co-founder and CEO, Phoenix Tailings is a U.S.-based rare earth metals production company, currently operating a domestic refining facility in Massachusetts and shipping final metal products globally. The company has developed innovative technology that enables the economic and safe processing of rare earth elements into final metals and metal alloys. Phoenix is currently operating a 40-ton-per-year commercial facility and is constructing a new commercial facility in New Hampshire to scale the production of final metals and metal alloys. At present, Phoenix Tailings sources rare earth concentrates from domestic and allied producers. In the long term, the company aims to recover rare earths from mining waste, or tailings, as part of its commitment to building a truly stable and circular supply chain.
the company intends to use the funds to expand its proven rare earth processing technology, which integrates both separation and metallization to transform U.S. and allied raw materials into finished rare earth metals domestically. The new Exeter, New Hampshire facility will have a total capacity of 500 tons per year of rare earth metal output, equivalent to the entire annual demand of the U.S. defense industrial base. Initial production will begin in summer 2025 with 200 tons per year.
Exeter will be a standalone rare earth refining operation capable of accepting feedstocks from mines, recycled products, coal fly ash, and other byproducts, processing them into finished metals. These metals will be sold to domestic and allied magnet manufacturers supplying critical components to the defense, medical device, and automotive sectors.
Phoenix Tailings will initially produce neodymium-praseodymium, ferro-dysprosium, dysprosium, and terbium at the Exeter facility. These rare earth metals are essential for manufacturing permanent magnets used in technologies ranging from electric vehicles and MRI machines to transformers and jet engines.
FinSMEs
01/05/2025