MP

Mp Materials Corp. / De

A US miner that digs up and processes rare earth elements — the metals powering electric-vehicle motors, wind turbines, and smartphones — from Mountain Pass in California's Mojave Desert, the country's largest rare earth operation, and turns them into neodymium magnets in Texas. Founded in 2017 by hedge-fund manager James Litinsky, it bought the mine out of bankruptcy after former owner Molycorp collapsed in 2015. Fun fact: the mine was discovered in 1949 by a uranium prospector whose Geiger counter went off — for the rare earth mineral bastnäsite, not uranium.