Vulcan Elements

Overview

Vulcan Elements is a North Carolina startup that makes rare-earth magnets — the small, powerful components inside drones, satellites, munitions, and guided weapons. Founded in 2023 by former U.S. Navy officer John Maslin, it spent its first two years as an obscure defense supplier before the Pentagon announced a $620 million conditional loan to the company in November 2025, the largest commitment the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital had ever made (TechCrunch). Months later, a ProPublica investigation found that the loan had been initiated not through the office’s normal process but at the direct request of Peter Navarro, the White House’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing — and that the request came about three months after 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, took a stake in the company (ProPublica). Everyone involved denies political favoritism, and no finding of wrongdoing has been made.

The company: magnets, contracts, and a pilot plant

Before the loan made it famous, Vulcan was a genuine — if tiny — manufacturer. Maslin started the company while studying at Harvard Business School, and by August 2025 it had quietly landed nine Defense Department contracts worth more than $10 million across every branch of the U.S. military (Defense News; ProPublica). Its first manufacturing facility opened its doors on March 31, 2025, and the company was delivering on initial contracts within 60 days (Defense News).

The product is sintered neodymium magnets, which Maslin calls the “invisible building blocks of our economy” — found in every advanced military system from motors to sensors to actuators and generators. “If you don’t have them, you can’t build the end item,” he told Defense News (Defense News). At the time, the company’s Durham pilot facility produced about 10 metric tonnes a year — “a drop in the bucket,” Maslin admitted — but it had already demonstrated several magnet grades validated by the Department of Energy, and its process, validated by DOE’s Ames Laboratory, used U.S. and allied inputs exclusively (Defense News).

That mattered because of China. China produces 94% of the world’s rare-earth magnets and cut off magnet exports in April 2025; Congress had already directed the Pentagon to brief lawmakers on a magnet manufacturing strategy, and new rules effectively ban Chinese inputs in U.S. defense systems by requiring proof of provenance (Defense News). Vulcan’s pitch was that it was fully “decoupled” from China at every level — ownership, equipment, software, and raw materials (Defense News).

The supply chain behind that pitch took shape in mid-July 2025, when Vulcan signed a deal with Indiana-based ReElement Technologies to buy rare-earth oxides sourced outside China — “thousands of metric tons” annually for five years beginning in 2026, at prices “significantly below” the $110-per-kilogram floor the Defense Department had guaranteed MP Materials, achieved through a chromatography process rather than the industry’s standard solvent extraction (Reuters). “This pricing will enable Vulcan to be competitive in global markets,” Maslin told Reuters. “We wanted to make sure the unit economics made sense” (Reuters).

In August 2025, Vulcan announced a $65 million Series A led by Altimeter Capital with participation from One Investment Management — and, ProPublica later established, from 1789 Capital, the venture firm Trump Jr. had joined as a partner after his father’s 2024 election win (Defense News; ProPublica). Neither 1789 nor Vulcan has disclosed the size of the firm’s stake (ProPublica).

The $620 million loan

In November 2025 the Pentagon announced it would lend Vulcan $620 million — plus $80 million to its partner ReElement — as part of a $1.4 billion package with the U.S. government to expand domestic magnet supply, alongside $50 million in Commerce Department incentives; in exchange, the government would take a $50 million equity stake in Vulcan with the right to buy more later (ProPublica; TechCrunch). It was the largest loan the Office of Strategic Capital had ever made (TechCrunch). Vulcan, which at the time had fewer than 50 employees, said it would use the money to build a large new facility turning out thousands of tons of magnets a year and adding hundreds of jobs (ProPublica).

The Office of Strategic Capital itself was part of the story. Started under the Biden administration with an open application process meant to vet companies methodically, it was repurposed under Trump: lending authority was expanded from about $1 billion to $200 billion, and the office shifted from waiting for applications to sourcing deals through officials’ personal networks (ProPublica; NPR).

The White House’s fingerprints

On May 28, 2026, ProPublica published its investigation, based on Defense Department records and interviews with multiple Pentagon officials. Its core finding: the request to lend to Vulcan came from Navarro. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, one Pentagon official said (ProPublica). After the White House request arrived — staff learned of it around September or October 2025 — defense officials had Pentagon staff complete in weeks a vetting process that normally takes months; employees worked late nights with little sleep. “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” one person involved told ProPublica (ProPublica).

Navarro and Trump Jr. had grown close in recent years: Trump Jr. visited Navarro in prison during his sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, was among the small group Navarro thanked in his book’s dedication for having “my back when it was against the wall,” and hosted him on his streaming show about a week before the Vulcan deal was announced (ProPublica). The deal was a financial windfall for Vulcan’s investors: Bloomberg estimates cited by ProPublica put the company’s valuation at around $200 million near the time 1789 invested and around $2 billion after the loan announcement — a tenfold increase (ProPublica; NPR).

Denials and fallout

Every party named in the reporting denies impropriety. Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he does not discuss his investments with federal officials, did not speak to Navarro about Vulcan, and “has no knowledge about how this deal came together”; a 1789 Capital spokesperson said the firm played no role in the loan and did not learn of it before it was public (ProPublica). The Pentagon said “no company receives preferential treatment” and that political connections play no role in funding decisions; the White House said the team was working “in the best interest of the American people” to secure the critical mineral supply chain; Vulcan’s founder told reporters the company received no political favoritism (ProPublica; TechCrunch).

The political response was swift. Democratic senators including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal and House members including Jason Crow wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles calling the reporting evidence of “a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling,” asking whether Navarro acted at someone else’s direction, whether the president knew, and whether White House officials had contacted agencies about other Trump-family-linked companies (Rep. Jason Crow). Navarro texted back “Staggering level of hyperbole. More fake news” and later called the story “fake news on steroids” on X (Rep. Jason Crow). House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump Jr. over the deal but were blocked by Republicans (ProPublica). Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, told ProPublica that presidential aides should not intervene in agency lending decisions affecting the president’s family: “This is our money they’re spending. This is corruption we pay for” (ProPublica).

The Defense Department was already expected to deploy billions more in loans to critical-mineral and military-technology companies in the coming months — with the Vulcan deal as the template under scrutiny (ProPublica).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert that Donald Trump Jr. influenced the loan — his spokesperson denies any involvement, and ProPublica found no evidence he did. It does not state 1789 Capital’s stake size, which neither side has disclosed. It does not treat the valuation figures as audited — they are Bloomberg estimates. It does not claim Navarro’s request was an order rather than a recommendation; ProPublica said that was unclear. It does not assert wrongdoing by any party: the loan’s origins are reported as ProPublica found them, alongside every on-record denial. And it does not cover the later-reported possibility that the Pentagon might not fund ReElement’s companion $80M loan, which was not fully verified here.