U.S.A F-35 Lightning II
Mobix Labs, Inc. (Nasdaq: MOBX) today announced it has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent to acquire Special Project Delivery LLC (“SPD”), a strategic infrastructure platform building sovereign U.S. supply chains for rare earth elements, critical minerals, and energy storage.
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The proposed acquisition would expand Mobix Labs — already a supplier to advanced U.S. and allied defense and aerospace systems — directly into one of the world’s most strategically important industrial sectors.
Key Facts at a Glance
- ~418 kilogramsof rare earth materials are estimated to be used in each F-35 Lightning II.
- ~4,500 kilogramsof rare earth materials are estimated to be used in each Virginia-class nuclear submarine.
- Tens of billions of dollars are already being deployed globally toward strategic critical-minerals infrastructure, with potential to reach hundreds of billions over the coming decade.
- China dominates significant portions of global rare earth mining and refining, according to widely cited industry and government sources.
- NATO, AUKUS, and Five Eyes nations have publicly identified rare earth independence as a defining geopolitical priority of the coming decade.
- Beginning in 2027, new U.S. Department of Defense restrictions on certain Chinese-origin rare earth magnet materials are expected to accelerate allied demand.
Why This Moment Matters
“In my decades leading Microsemi, I watched our defense and aerospace customers grow increasingly dependent on a narrow set of strategic materials they could not always source securely,” said James Peterson, Chairman of the Board of Mobix Labs and former Chief Executive Officer of Microsemi. “Today, rare earths and critical minerals have become one of the defining competitive battlegrounds of the next decade. SPD is the right platform at exactly the right moment — federally aligned, technically validated, and assembled by an exceptional team. We believe the combination with SPD provides Mobix Labs and its shareholders substantial long-term opportunity.”
A Platform Built for America’s Critical Minerals Push
Founded in 2019, SPD has assembled a U.S. critical-minerals and energy platform aligned with the major federal initiatives reshaping the Western industrial base — including Project Vault, the recently announced $12 billion U.S. Export-Import Bank public-private partnership for critical-resource resilience, the Defense Production Act, and the DOE Loan Programs Office.
SPD’s work includes recovery of rare earth elements from underutilized domestic feedstock — including legacy U.S. coal ash — using extraction technologies validated by U.S. defense-research partners. SPD is publicly aligned with the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, two of the largest U.S. utility participants, and three institutional financial partners.
SPD is led by Co-Founder and CEO Paul Singarella, a former Latham & Watkins partner trained at MIT, and Co-Founder and CFO John Dewey, who brings over $2 billion of cumulative infrastructure-development responsibility.
No F-35. No Submarine. No Missile. Without Rare Earths.
There is no F-35 Lightning II without rare earth materials. No F-22 Raptor. No F/A-18. No Virginia-class submarine. No Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. No Patriot or THAAD interceptor. No Tomahawk. No Javelin. No advanced radar. No defense satellite. No AI data center.
Rare earths and critical minerals are increasingly viewed as the oil of the modern defense, aerospace, AI, and advanced-industrial economy — and the same platforms that depend on them already incorporate Mobix Labs technologies today.
An American-Led Supply Chain Backed by Washington and Our Allies
>From the United States and United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and India, allied nations are racing to build independent, non-China supply chains for strategic materials. The proposed Mobix–SPD combination would sit directly inside that transformation.
“SPD was built to onshore the materials, technologies, and infrastructure defining national sovereignty in the 21st century — rare earths, critical minerals, and the energy systems powering the AI Industrial Revolution,” said Paul Singarella, Co-Founder and CEO of SPD. “A combination with Mobix Labs would pair our platform directly with a publicly traded defense and dual-use technology company already operating inside the defense and aerospace ecosystems our materials are built to supply.”
Mobix Labs intends to help build the sovereign industrial infrastructure powering that future.
Transaction Status
The Letter of Intent with SPD is non-binding and establishes a framework for due diligence and negotiation of definitive agreements. No assurance can be given that a definitive agreement will be executed or that the proposed transaction will be completed.
