TBPN · 3 min · Oct 27, 2026

Rare-earth processing, not scarcity, is the bottleneck

Gavin Baker says rare earths are limited by dirty refining, not scarcity. His firm backed a chemical refining process, pointing to a less obvious part of the supply chain.

Gavin Baker is managing partner of Atreides Management.

Runs the Atreides Management investment firm, a technology investor and former Fidelity OTC Fund portfolio manager.

John Coogan, Host · Co-host, TBPN
Co-founded Soylent and Lucy; OpenAI bought his show TBPN in April 2026.
Jordi Hays, Host · Co-host, TBPN
Founded Branded Native; co-founded fintech Capital, which Rho bought.

About this segment

Gavin Baker says rare earths are limited by dirty refining, not scarcity. His firm backed a chemical refining process, pointing to a less obvious part of the supply chain.

From “Gavin Baker on Anthropic's S-1, GPU Prices, and SpaceX”, Oct 27, 2026. Watch the full episode

“the problem with rare earths, it's not that they're rare. It's that refining them is a very dirty process.”

Gavin Bakerat 33:48 · TBPN33:48

Takeaways

Rare earths are not necessarily rare; refining is the hard part.
Baker says his firm backed a company with a chemical refining process.
He tracks energy and materials but focuses the portfolio where his firm has an edge.

In this episode

12:46GPU supply is tight despite the capacity coming online6:56
7:56AI agents are helping investors route information faster3:51
34:35Public listings could unlock more capital for AI3:49
0:18Anthropic’s S-1 shows a broader customer base than expected7:31
31:23Rare-earth processing, not scarcity, is the bottleneck3:14
38:51Baker favors giving people shares over foundation grants2:21Up next

Transcript

From the transcript TBPN publishes with the episode.

31:25
Jordy mentioned, getting sharp on bio, starting to think about opportunities there. How deep have you gone in the AI stack? I saw a a funny post that was like, you could spend all your time thinking about OpenAI and Anthropic and Google or... And then, you know, meet all the neo clouds and, meet Lynn and Tuan and figure out what's going on in the private markets, or you could just buy copper. And you could just sit there and hold copper.
31:49
Right? Because, like Yeah. It's almost a perfect proxy or something like that. But how far have you gone down into energy infrastructure, commodities? Like, how how sharp are you on those? How how relevant or interesting is the... Are those markets to you in this world since they do seem adjacent?
32:05
No. I pay close attention to all of those. I ran a diversified fund in Prior Life for nine years. You know, I was an energy investor. Yeah. You know, natural resources. I always... For many years, did would do, like, kind of marketing meetings with the with the gold analyst at at at my my prior employer, Fidelity. So I'd always, you know, knew about the merits of gold from a portfolio construction perspective, but always have it in the fund. By the way, just because it triggers people, I wanna say it.
32:35
I find it so amusing how upset gold bulls get at the idea of asteroid mining. Like, what? It is the idea of asteroid mining. Oh, yeah. No one no one has ever been... I've never gotten more hate Yeah. Than from the gold crowd about the idea of asteroid binding in the in the asteroid space.... I mean, was like, talk about a challenge to your world's view. Wait. Are are
33:03
they mad about that? It's like it's one of the things you have to... Like, you need to imagine technological disruption. Right? Like Oh, yeah. Look at the diamond industry.
33:11
Yeah. Right? Like Totally. Yes. Absolutely. If you understood that that technology disruption was possible, you probably built labs, like, you know, twenty years ago.
33:21
Maybe you would have done something different with that, you know, with the diamonds in your family. But but as far as... I mean, I do... We have spent a lot of time on, like, energy, on the industrial infrastructure, on on natural resources, but we have not made it a big part of the portfolio. We've done some things in private markets as far as trying to help with rare earths. Mhmm. And... But this is not through acquiring minds. Yeah. It's more... You know, the problem with rare earths, it's not that they're rare.
33:53
It's that refining them is a very dirty process. And so we we've we've, you know, that we've invested in a company that, know, has a chemical process for refining rare earths. And, you know, I actually think DARPA has done some pretty smart stuff. Like, they kinda have a a lot of different efforts around this. But... Yeah. I mean, I try to pay as close attention to all of it as I can because you you know, as an investor, you you you never know where a weak but important important signal is gonna come from. And so I wanna cast as wide a net as possible. Mhmm. But then also kind of focus maybe the portfolio on the areas where I do feel like maybe we have the the biggest competitive advantage as a firm.