Mobix Labs (MOBX) stock was up as much as 81% in trading Thursday after the company announced plans to acquire Special Project Delivery LLC, a platform focused on building U.S.-based supply chains for rare earth elements and critical minerals.
The stock had jumped 58% in premarket trading before extending those gains as the session opened.
SPD recovers rare earth elements from domestic feedstock — including legacy U.S. coal ash — using extraction technologies validated by U.S. defense-research partners. The company was founded in 2019.
The proposed deal would move Mobix Labs beyond its current role as a supplier of advanced components and wireless technologies to defense and aerospace systems.
Mobix Chairman James Peterson, the former CEO of Microsemi, said rare earths and critical minerals have become “one of the defining competitive battlegrounds of the next decade.”
SPD CEO Paul Singarella, a former Latham & Watkins partner with MIT training, called the potential combination a direct pairing of SPD’s platform with “a publicly traded defense and dual-use technology company already operating inside the defense and aerospace ecosystems.”
The numbers behind rare earth demand in defense systems are eye-catching. An estimated 418 kilograms of rare earth materials are used in each F-35 Lightning II aircraft. Each Virginia-class nuclear submarine requires approximately 4,500 kilograms.
Those figures underscore why allied governments have made supply chain independence a priority. NATO, AUKUS, and Five Eyes nations have all publicly identified rare earth self-sufficiency as a key geopolitical goal.
Starting in 2027, the U.S. Department of Defense is expected to restrict certain Chinese-origin rare earth magnet materials, which is expected to accelerate demand from allied supply chains.
SPD is aligned with several major federal programs, including Project Vault — the recently announced $12 billion U.S. Export-Import Bank public-private partnership for critical-resource resilience — as well as the Defense Production Act and the DOE Loan Programs Office.
The company is also publicly aligned with the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, two large U.S. utilities, and three institutional financial partners.
SPD co-founder and CFO John Dewey brings more than $2 billion of cumulative infrastructure-development responsibility to the table.
Mobix Labs is headquartered in Irvine, California, and trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker MOBX.
The LOI is non-binding and establishes a framework for due diligence and negotiation. No assurance has been given that a definitive agreement will be executed or that the transaction will be completed.
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