Some companies make noise. Others move tectonic plates. And this week, Ionic Mineral Technologies just did the latter, raising $29 million in an oversubscribed Series B, topping their $25M target without blinking. Based in Provo, Utah, they’re not just scaling a business; they’re building the backbone of a domestic battery supply chain with some of the most sophisticated nanosilicon materials the industry’s seen.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about buzzwords or battery dreams. This is halloysite in motion, where 35-million-year-old nanotubes meet a patented top-down process that skips the synthetics and taps straight into the future. You want scale? Try 74,000 square feet of vertically integrated capability, from mine to magnesiothermic reduction, now gearing up for 2,000 tons/year in 2024, 5,000 shortly after, and 20,000 more through a heavy-hitting partnership with ANDRITZ. That’s enough to electrify over 1 million EVs, and that’s just the warmup.
Founder and CEO Andre Zeitoun didn’t stumble onto this. He spent a decade commercializing halloysite clay nanotubes at Applied Minerals, backed by Wall Street chops from Bear Stearns, Citi, and RBC. The man knows scale, structure, and when a market’s about to break. He brought in Dr. Sunho Kang as CTO, a heavy lifter from Argonne, Apple, Samsung SDI, and VW, in October 2024. Add Dr. Ismail Yildirim (Production), Dr. Rajan Patel (Battery Materials), Keith Brooks (COO), and Betty Lankry (CMO), and you’ve got a team straight out of central casting for “How to Win the Battery Wars.”
And it’s a war. One that’s about supply chain independence, next-gen capacity, and scaling with purpose, not pitch decks. Their Ionisil nano-silicon doesn’t just stretch battery capacity up to 7x, it does it without silane, without synthetic inputs, and without disrupting existing production lines. It’s drop-in, turn-key, and drop-the-mic smart.
They’ve got control of over 550 acres at Halloysite Hills, a 4,000-acre lease at Silicon Ridge, and the IP to turn geology into chemistry at a fraction of the cost. This is what vertical looks like. Not “nice to have,” but necessary, for EVs, grid storage, and defense sectors that don’t have time for PowerPoint promises.
So yeah, Series B closed. Oversubscribed. No investor names dropped, but rest assured: the smart money knows where gravity’s shifting. By 2026, commercial shipments go live. And by then, we won’t be talking about Ionic Mineral Technologies as a battery materials player. We’ll be talking about them as a cornerstone of the entire clean energy transition.
This isn’t just a win for Ionic Mineral Technologies, this is a signal. America’s next great industrial movement won’t be led by legacy manufacturers. It’ll be built by mining visionaries, materials scientists, and founders like Andre Zeitoun who see 35 million years of clay and think, fuel for the next century.
