monopoly

break China’s monopoly on rare earths

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If in the 20th century the powers fought over oil wells, in 2026 the battle will be fought on the periodic table. Lithium, cobalt, gallium and rare earths have become the new barrels of crude oil, essential for manufacturing everything from the battery of an electric car to the guidance system of a hypersonic missile. In this scenario, Donald Trump’s administration has encountered an inescapable geological reality: the rhetoric of “America First” has a physical limit. To win the technology race of the 21st century, Washington needs its neighbors. In an unprecedented diplomatic and economic maneuver, the United States has launched an offensive to recruit Mexico, Argentina and a bloc of global allies, with the declared objective of shielding themselves from the vulnerability posed by China’s almost absolute dominance over critical minerals. The peak of strategic anxiety. The epicenter of this Copernican turn was the State Department in Washington, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance They served as hosts at the “Ministerial Meeting on Critical Minerals”. The call was no less: 55 international delegations sat at the table, under an urgent premise that the free market has failed. The American diagnosis is severe. China controls 90% of rare earth processing capacity and has begun to use that monopoly as a geopolitical weapon, imposing licensing requirements and restricting exports to pressure American industry. “The international market for critical minerals is failing,” said Vice President Vancearguing that Beijing floods the market with low prices to ruin Western competition and then raise prices at will. Project Vault and the lapse. To counter this, the White House has presented tools that rewrite the rules of global capitalism. Trump announced the creation of a strategic mineral reserve valued at 12 billion dollars (10 billion in Ex-Im Bank loans and almost 1.67 billion in private capital). Like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve created in the 1970s, this “vault” —call Project Vault— will accumulate stock to protect giants such as General Motors, Stellantis and Google from future supply crises. But the White House mentality has gone from business to war, literally. In a Freudian slip or statement of intent, the Trump administration’s official documents on these investments list the Pentagon under its 19th-century name: Department of War (War Department). Under this anachronistic headingWashington is already financing mining projects in Alaska and North Carolina, making it clear that resource extraction is no longer a matter of the market, but of pure and simple national defense. The FORGE alliance and “price floors”. To support this scheme, has been launched he Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), initially chaired by South Korea, to coordinate a “preferential trade zone.” The revolutionary idea here is floor prices: if China pulls down global prices, the members of the bloc external tariffs will apply to maintain high internal value, thus guaranteeing the profitability of mining investments in allied countries. However, the market has reacted with skepticism to this interventionism. Paradoxically, after the announcement, the shares of American mining companies such as MP Materials and USA Rare Earth plummeted between 6% and 9%. According to analysts cited by Reutersthe fear is that the Trump administration will withdraw direct subsidies for individual projects to focus on this complex global price engineering, leaving local companies exposed to regulatory uncertainty. This entire American strategy draws a two-speed map of the world. On the one hand, there is the technological “VIP club”: the United States, Japan and the European Union will sign a binding trilateral agreement in 30 days to coordinate their industries. On the other hand, there are the suppliers of raw materials: Latin America. Argentina and the delivery of Lithium. In the south, Javier Milei’s administration has decided to unconditionally align its resources with Washington’s interests. Argentina, the world’s fifth largest producer of lithium, signed a framework agreement that ties it to the American supply chain, using RIGI as bait (Incentive Regime for Large Investments). For the White House, Argentina is the key piece to deal a blow to Beijing. At the moment, more than 70% of Argentine lithium travels to China, a flow that the US is determined to cut off and redirect towards its own factories. The operation is already underway. While diplomacy was signing papers, money was moving: the giant Glencore has agreed with the Orion consortium (backed by the US) to acquire assets, demonstrating how Western capital is beginning to take positions on the ground. Secretary Marco Rubio He did not hide his enthusiasm for this total provision: “Argentina is going to be a key partner for the world,” he stated, highlighting not only the extraction, but the country’s capacity to process the materials that the US needs. In practice, this makes the South American country a primary link in American national security. Mexico: The treasure map and the threat of the “Menú”. The situation in Mexico is one of forced pragmatism under threat. With the T-MEC review scheduled for July, the Mexican government accepted an “Action Plan” 60 days that goes far beyond commerce. The agreement opens the door to something that strikes a chord with national sovereignty: the US Geological Survey will collaborate in the “geological mapping” of Mexican territory to locate deposits, an x-ray of the neighbor’s resources carried out from Washington to “provide transparency.” The Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, justified the transfer with a phrase of brutal realism: “If you are not at the table participating, you are on the menu.” But for many, Mexico is already being devoured. The “Cambiémosla Ya” collective has issued a fierce alertdenouncing that this plan is a “return to neoliberalism” that subordinates national sovereignty to the industrial needs of the north. They warn that the rush to comply with Washington’s quotas will cause “the dispossession, displacement and destruction of communities”, relaxing regulations to turn the territory into a sacrifice zone for the US energy transition. Passport for rocks, walls for people. The backdrop of this great mineral alliance reveals a contradiction that defines the current era. While … Read more

break SK Hynix’s monopoly on AI

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Samsung Electronics will imminently begin manufacturing HBM4 memories in February, the next generation of high-speed chips that power AI accelerators. It has already passed qualification tests from both NVIDIA and AMD, according to industry sources cited by Reuters and Korea Economic Daily. The first deliveries will go to NVIDIA for its platform Vera Rubinwhose CEO, Jensen Huang, has confirmed that it is already in production with a launch planned for the second half of 2026. Why is it important. This move is set to change the balance of power in the AI ​​memory market, where SK Hynix has been the dominant supplier to NVIDIA. Demand for HBM chips has skyrocketed with the rise of generative AI, and that has made them one of the most critical bottlenecks in the tech industry. For NVIDIA, diversifying supply reduces the risk of relying on a single supplier when demand for its accelerators far exceeds its capacity. For Samsung, regaining ground means accessing revenues worth tens of billions annually at a critical time: need this boost because precisely SK Hynix has eroded part of its business. Between the lines. Samsung has played a risky card: adopting a sixth-generation (1c) 10-nanometer DRAM manufacturing process before anyone else, despite suffering from very low initial yields. Also has integrated a 4 nanometer logic chipmore advanced than that of SK Hynix. The bet is paying off: Samsung’s HBM4 chips reached speeds of 10.7 gigabits per second in NVIDIA tests, surpassing the 10 Gbps threshold. SK Hynix recorded 8.3 Gbps and Micron around 8 Gbps, according to a technical source cited by Korean Herald. The change in qualification criteria has favored Samsung. Nvidia and AMD have tightened speed requirements but relaxed thermal limits because they prioritize raw performance. This comes after accelerators like Google’s TPUs have demonstrated performance comparable to NVIDIA GPUs. Yes, but. SK Hynix is ​​already working to avoid losing ground: it has redesigned its HBM4 chips and is awaiting the results of new qualifications that will give it an advantage. In February it will begin deploying wafers in its new M15X plant in Cheongju to produce HBM chips. In addition, SK Hynix closed all HBM supply agreements with its largest customers in October for 2026. Samsung arrives later, trying to grab whatever share it can, thanks to all manufacturers operating at the limit of their capacity. The geopolitical background. South Korea concentrates more than 70% of global HBM chip productiona component so critical to AI that it determines who can train the most advanced models and who cannot. China, despite its enormous investments in semiconductors, is still a few years behind in this technology due to Western restrictions on advanced lithography equipment. South Korean dominance in HBM It is one of the most valuable advantages that the Western technological bloc maintains. And now what. Both companies have to publish their quarterly results this Thursday. And it is to be hoped that they will take the opportunity to provide more details about HBM4 orders and real demand. Those numbers will say a lot about who is winning this battle for the most valuable component of the AI ​​era. In Xataka | There is an unexpected victim of the rise in RAM memory prices: the very modern connected cars Featured image | Samsung

ASML’s “invisible monopoly” is indisputable. Although without the technology of these companies would not have reached the top

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“In 1997, Jos Benschop, the leader of the Investigation Department of ASMLreassess whether extreme ultraviolet technology (UVE) was a viable option. After the first tests he realized that Zeiss was able to develop extraordinarily sophisticated mirrors that would be necessary to transport ultraviolet light. Everything began to change: The puzzle pieces began to fit in their holes and that impossible machine was acquiring little by little. ” These lines come from the chapter entitled “An invisible monopoly” from the very interesting trial book “Focus: The Asml Way” written by Dutch journalist Marc Hijink. We have resorted to them to open this text for a weight reason: they perfectly condense the complexity of the lithography machine that has allowed ASML to lead the industry of the manufacturing equipment of chips alone. And it is that Europe has a voice in the integrated circuit industry thanks to this company of the Netherlands. ASML has no competition since its first UVE photolithography team placed on the market. Japanese Canon and Nikon companies, their natural competitors, also tried to develop this machine, but failed in the attempt. The technical and economic resources that were necessary to make it possible were so numerous that They decided to retire from the struggle with Asml. Free road. Today the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing machines that we can find in the TSMC, Intel, Samsung or SK Hynix plants produce ASML. Currently his reign seems imperturbable. Canon has developed a team of nano -impression lithography that it seeks to compete from you to you with the UVE machines of ASML, but for the moment it is not clear that this technology will be able to rival the most advanced team of the Dutch company: the machine of High Opening Photolithography (UVE). Intel is already testing it, and it is expected that TSMC and Samsung do so for the next few months. Presumably thanks to it they can produce chips of less than 1 nm before this decade expires. ASML does not walk alone UVE photolithography equipment is extraordinarily sophisticated. The GPUs for artificial intelligence more advanced from Nvidia; The most powerful soc that Apple or the CPUs with the highest AMD performance are possible thanks to them. Of course, none of these companies make their own chips. They design them, but they are produced by the Taiwanese company TSMC using ASML UVE lithography machines. However, this European Corporation has not developed solo all innovations that have made its most advanced integrated circuit production equipment possible. One of its most important allies is the American company Cymer. This company founded in 1986 specializes in the manufacture of lasers and deep ultraviolet light sources (UVP) and extreme (UVE). It has a very close relationship with ASML for many years; In fact, the role that Cymer manufactures in lithography machines is so relevant than in 2013 ASML bought this San Diego company with the purpose of investing in it to accelerate the development of the technologies involved in UVE lithography. The ultraviolet light transports the geometric pattern described by the mask to the surface of the Silicio wafer Somehow Cymer gives ASML the raw material that their photolithography machines need. And that raw material is none other than the ultraviolet light that is responsible for transporting the geometric pattern described by the mask so that it can be transferred with great precision to the surface of the Silicon wafer. Understanding what is the mask is simple: it is nothing other than a physical template that contains the design of the integrated circuit that is necessary to transfer to the Silicon wafer. During this transfer process a fine sheet of a substance sensitive to ultraviolet light is placed on the wafer and exposes the latter. The mask blocks or allows the passage of light in concrete regions of the wafer, thus transferring the chip pattern. Then the development, engraving and deposition processes follow each other whose purpose is, in broad strokes, transfer the different layers of the circuit integrated to the wafer and consolidate the transistors and interconnections that shape the chip. Interestingly, as we have just seen, the photolithography process is very similar to the chemical development of photographs. Of course, it is much more complex and requires working with resolutions that until a few years ago were unimaginable. Precisely thanks to the very high resolution with which it is possible to transfer the geometric pattern that describes the circuit integrated to the wafer today we enjoy Integrated 3 Nm circuits. And for 2025 they will be available The first 2 Nm semiconductors. Since we are involved in flour, it is worth investigating a little more in the characteristics of the light used by UVE lithography equipment. And its most striking property is that it belongs to the most energy portion of the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, its wavelength extends in the range that goes From 10 to 100 nanometers (NM). The problem is that it is not easy to generate and deal with this form of electromagnetic radiation. And it is not, among other reasons, because it is so energetic that it alters the structure of the physical elements with which it interacts inside the lithography machine. In addition, the UVE light must travel from the source to the silicon wafer without interacting with the slightest dust particle, so it is necessary that the entire chips production process be carried out inside a camera designed to provide a very quality vacuum. Anyway, the transport of ultraviolet light from the fountain that produces it to the wafer is only possible thanks to the intervention of the mirrors that the other great ally of ASML designs and manufactures: the German company Zeiss. If the mirrors involved in the propagation of the UVE light are not manufactured with enormous precision the geometric pattern defined by the mask will be altered The role of Zeiss’s optical elements in these lithography equipment is crucial. And it is because they are responsible, … Read more

A startup claims to have the weapon to end China’s monopoly on rare earths: hard drives

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In the technological era and Energy transition to renewables and the electric car In which we are, the Rare earth They have become the most valuable currency. This set of elements has become essential for many industries, but there is a problem: China dominates both mining and, above all, Rare Earth Metals Productionand he does not hesitate to use them as a throwing weapon in the Technological and Commercial War in which we are. While west Decide which are the next steps In the search for the gold of the 21st century, there are already those who work to obtain rare earth elements from wherever it is thanks to recycling. And that hard drive that has been in the drawer for years is a treasure. ‘Chrysistunity’. “Rare earth” is the name with which we call a group of 17 minerals that are used to manufacture components of electric car batteries, precision medical instruments, speakers or elements of wind turbines, among many other applications in virtually all sectors. Taking them out of the earth is not as much problem as their refining, since it is a process that does not get along with Western pollution restrictions. That is why we were delegating this task to China and, now, the Asian giant dominates practically 90% of production. So important are that the country usually uses the export of rare earth metals when it receives a new western commercial blow and even in the Ukraine War we have seen Trump condition US support to the supply of rare earth. But before each crisis, there is an opportunity. Old hard drives. In the absence of being able to produce them, why not get those elements through recycling? With the plastic we do not do it very well, but with other elements, and in the case of rare earths, it is something that can work. That is precisely what the company has proposed Hypromaga startup founded by personnel from the Metallurgy and Materials School of the University of Birmingham that, as we read in Financial Timeshas focused on the recycling of hard drives. These components once dominated our PCs and, although they remain of great value as external discs and, above all, as components for NAS systems, they have gradually been separated by much faster SSDs and that have been lowering price. And these hard drives have some components that are manufactured thanks to rare earth elements, such as magnets that allow their operation. Recycling. Gavin MUDD is the director of the Critical Mineral Intelligence Center of the United Kingdom and comments that the country imports between 5,000 and 10,000 tons of rare earth magnets every year in the form of finished products and components, but only 1% of that figure Recycle. He affirms that it is not an isolated case and that it is an amount similar to that of other industrialized nations. “We need to consider future domestic production, and that leads us to consider recycling,” he says. And that is where Hypromag technology comes into play. They claim that their technique allows them to extract the magnets that contain rare earths, which weigh between 10% and 15% of the hard disk itself, and obtain the elements sought. To do this, they have a great drum that they fill with even a ton of waste at the same time and, after closing the hermetic doors, introduce pure hydrogen inside. Then, hydrogen unstals enter the fissures of the magnets, causing them to break and separate them from the surrounding material. After this process, which lasts between four and eight hours, a powder composed mainly of the ingredients of the magnet – the neodymium – falls to the bottom of the container, while other elements such as steel, nickel and aluminum are separated and also can also be recycle. Subsequently, they grind the sifted material and an alloy occurs that can become a magnet again. Different approaches. There is another company that is in garlic and that has also spoken with Financial Times with a tone of competition that, in the end, is the one that can advance the industry of rare earth recycling. This company is called Material Cyclic And he affirms that his method is better than that of “magnet to magnet” because he allowed to crumble each component of the elements instead of separating magnets, on the one hand, iron and steel on the other. Ahmad Ghahreman is the executive director of this company and affirms that its approach allows companies to use the rare lands as they want, not only as magnets. And he compared the two approaches with the recycling metaphor of a pizza: “When recycles pizza with our technology, raisins from flour pizza, salt, pepper and all other ingredients. With the other, pass from pizza to the dough. ” An ambitious patch. Despite competitiveness in his words, Ghahreman considers that both methods are valid and “profitable.” In 2024 they produced 100 tons of rare earth oxides, but they hope to reach 600 tons for the end of this year. In addition, they have plans to open another plant in the United States with a capacity of 1,200 tons per year and have plans to open facilities in Canada and Europe in 2028. Hypromag, on the other hand, hopes to produce between 25 and 30 tons per year in its first phase, but with extension plans to 350 tons thanks to a new plant in Germany and another 1,000 tons of annual alloys with a projected plant in Texas. They are less concrete plans, but the objective of both companies is the same. Clue. Allan Walton, the founder of Hypromag, comments that this technology “is a way of extracting large amounts of rare earths and creating a domestic supply,” and the truth is that the recycling of rare earths is something that has been speaking for years, but It was always a challenge. And it is something that is being sought in various parts of the world. For example, … Read more

The companies of AI know that competing is of losers. All seek to become the AI ​​monopoly

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“If you are creating a company, what you will aspire to create a monopoly and avoid competition. The competition is of losers“. Those words were pronounced by Peter Thiel In a talk that gave Stanford students on October 7, 2014. Who gave way to talk, by the way, It was Sam Altman. During those 50 minutes Thiel – Paypal and Palantir co -confounder, billionaire, successful investor, and obsessed with rejuvenation– It raised precisely that fundamental idea: that all companies aspire to become a monopoly. They do not say it publicly, of course – that entails legal and regulatory problems – but the goal is that. It has happened in multiple cases in the world of technology. Windows is a de facto monopoly in desktop operating systems, Android and iOS are an accepted duopoly in mobile platforms, and Google is an indisputable monopoly in the world of searches. In all those cases, those who have tried to compete – and there have been attempts – have failed. The competition was indeed of losers. Another monopoly in sight: that of AI And here we are facing a situation that reminds us of all the above. In the world of AI we are living fierce competition. One in which dozens of companies try to develop their models and applications of AI to win the items to the others. To become monopolies. OpenAi carries the lead. The question is whether you can maintain that leadership. What model of AI is better than others? It is not entirely clear. The appearance of Grok 3 seems to have opted the balance in its favor, but its theoretical superiority in some tests sounds like the same as other previous releases sounded: if it is really the best, it will not last long to be. In fact, competition between these models has made us in a situation in which, sincerely, they are all quite good. There will be, of course, use cases in which some will stand out on others – this best program, this writes better, this looks better – but everything seems to point to the differences will be less and less evident. The improvements we are seeing in the market are getting smaller and, above all, more expensive. Grok 3 has been trained in the Gigantic Supercluster of XAI with at least 100,000 GPUS H100 of NVIDIA, but despite all those resources and that investment, which has achieved the startup of Elon Musk is to put themselves at the level of its compeditors, not to offer A product that suddenly is remarkably better. The same With the imminent GPT-4.5. What are Ia companies trying now? Two things: Try to make your products simpler to use: Less variety of models, or at least hide that variety, as Openai proposes in the future and simplified chatgpt version. As traditional models do not advance so much, they raise New models reasoning (Deepseek R1, O3-mini) or agents (Operator) that encourage us to pay for increasingly faces. That strategy is once again intended for the same: that their products stand out on the competition and achieve the desired objective: create the next great monopoly. In that race there is for now an outstanding protagonist, at least if we take into account the number of usuals of each model. According to CNBC data and others collected By Ed Zitronthe estimated current situation is as follows: ChatgPPT: 400 million weekly active users Deepseek: 27 million active users monthly Gemini: 18 million active users monthly COPILOT: 11 million active users monthly Perplexity: 8 million active users monthly Claude: 2 million active users monthly Especially the few users that Claude has theoretically, but what is evident is that Today for millions of users IA = chatgpt. Arriving the first here has made the difference for Openai, which has also constantly iterated to maintain that leadership. Will they keep doing it? Will they become the de facto monopoly of AI? Of course they have ballots for it, but it is still very soon to be able to say it. The frantic advance of this technology makes it more difficult than ever who will win the race … if there is only one winner. In fact, here the situation is very different because there are forces that Openai does not control. And they are too relevant forces. Windows: there is 1,400 million active PCs with Windows worldwide. That number includes both Windows 10 Machines with Windows 11. Android: there is 3.5 billion active devices based on Android. iOS/iPados: there is 2,350 million IOS active devices. Do you think Microsoft, Google and Apple are going to let Openai take the cat to the water? Not much less. They will do everything they can so that the AI ​​we use on their devices is yours. That’s why The idyll between Microsoft and OpenAi FLUQUEAand that’s why Google and Apple are little by little –too little by little In the case of Apple – integrating more and more functions of AI in its mobile phones. These companies, de facto monopolies already in their markets, have as clear as Peter Thiel that competition is for losers. They probably have it much clearer, especially because they have been since before Thiel gave their famous talk. We are therefore facing a situation that is analogous to that of the rest of the digital businesses with which we have lived. In the spotify audio streaming world it is almost a monopoly (31.7% share), while in the video the thing is much more distributed for the moment although Netflix stands out. In the world of Electronic Commerce Amazon marks the passage, on social networks to Facebook there are almost no one to have more examples such as Uber, LinkedIn, Match Group (Tinder, Okcupid), or PayPal, which are also clear leaders in their respective markets. Is there competition? Of course. Does competition change things? Normally, not too much: Firefox has not changed them In browsers, mobile operating systems that They tried to give options … Read more

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