Maglut Heavy Industries, a California-based rare earth and critical minerals processing startup, has raised $3.1 million in pre-seed funding to develop domestic rare earth refining technology.

The funding was backed by Wave Function, Nova Threshold, and Julian Capital. The company plans to use the capital to expand its refining infrastructure, grow its chemical and materials engineering teams, and increase commercial processing capacity.

Founded by CEO Curtis Wu and COO Azhar Yerzhanova, Maglut is developing a chromatography-based process called ARC-1 (Advanced Rare Earth Chromatography) to separate and purify rare earth elements.

The technology uses specialized resin beads and chemical compounds called ligands to separate rare earth elements based on how strongly they bind to the materials. The company says its pilot-scale process has separated real-world materials into individual rare earth oxides with 99.9% purity or higher.

“We saw what happened last year in terms of trade actions that China took against the U.S., restricting the export of rare earth materials and other critical minerals, and we were pretty shocked at the vulnerability of American industry,” Co-founder and CEO Curtis Wu said. “When we looked into it, we found that the way that we process rare earths and other critical minerals is through solvent extraction, which takes a very heavy toll on labor, on energy, and on the environment. And we thought, what if we could do this better?”

Rare earth elements are important for products such as electric motors, drones, electronics, defense systems and clean energy technologies. Much of the world’s rare earth processing is currently concentrated in China, creating concerns about supply chain security.

Maglut aims to build a domestic U.S. refining supply chain while reducing the energy use, labor requirements, and environmental impact associated with traditional solvent-based processing.

The new funding will help the company move from pilot-scale testing toward larger commercial processing operations.