By Steven Porrello
Publication Date: 2025-11-13 10:35:00
MP Materials has soared 250% on the year. Can this mining company match — or, indeed, exceed — the performance of tech giant Nvidia?
Right now, in your smartphone or laptop, is an incredibly strong magnet made from rare-earth metals. In fact, wherever there is a motor or speaker near you, whether it’s a car door or a kitchen blender or an electric vehicle (EV), there’s very likely a strong magnet in it.
The sheer ubiquity of these magnets makes them a critical component of today’s world. And MP Materials (MP 3.80%), with its rare-earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, is one of the few U.S. companies capable of capitalizing on their wide use.
A 100-ton haul truck at the edge of MP’s Mountain Pass Mine in California. Image source: MP Materials (Michael Tessler).
The necessity of MP’s product, along with the strong demand expected of it, makes it a kind of mining analogue to a tech company that pretty much everyone knows — Nvidia (NVDA 3.62%).
Indeed, MP Materials could very well be the next Nvidia, if by that we mean a company supplying indispensable components to pretty much every modern innovation. At the same time, the differences between the two are just as important as the similarities, if not more.
How MP Materials resembles Nvidia
On the surface, MP and Nvidia look worlds apart. One digs for critical metals, while the other designs chips. The similarity, however, isn’t in what they make. Rather, it’s how scarcity has propelled each to the front line of their…
