When AI builds everything, someone still has to supply the ingredients

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Biggest commodity boom in the history of our planet coming?

Soon to be reaching other planets?

Over the last couple of weeks I have written about how human longevity PLUS superintelligent AI PLUS billions of robots building anything we want will drive a new insatiable demand for commodities and critical minerals.

Possibly more minerals than we have on Earth.

(and it’s coming quicker than you think - rumours are out this week of the first “AI designed by AI” source - it’s called “recursive self improvement”. Next comes billions of AI designed robots that will build everything for us)

There are three ways to get the commodities and critical minerals needed for this future:

Mine it

Recycle it

OR

A third and less talked about option:

Build a giant, sentient, marauding robo-planet that floats around space and literally eats other planets, crushing and processing their entire contents and efficiently pulling out the critical minerals we need...?

Kinda like your stomach does to get the nutrients out of your breakfast.

I first saw this concept as a kid in the 80’s in “Transformers: The Movie”.

There was this gigantic, armoured metal “planet” surrounded by a Saturn-like ring, with two enormous curved pincers on either side of a circular “mouth” full of crushing mechanical teeth.

Its name was Unicron - think of it like the Death Star crossed with an industrial woodchipper...

except that it “eats” entire planets and extracts all their valuable minerals for its own uses:

A pretty extreme way to get access to critical minerals supply...

No exploration, no pre-feasibility studies, no permitting, no mine build financing, no mine construction...

Just Om Nom Nom Nom Nom critical minerals.

Here is an even more terrifying adaptation from modern Transformers movies:

(It's all fun and games until some other alien civilization's planet-eating robot planet comes to eat your home planet for its critical minerals)

Anyway, the important thing to consider here is:

If this hypothetical robot planet Unicron eats another planet and extracts just the strategic critical minerals...

What happens with the billions of tonnes of useless waste rock like feldspar, basalt and granite?

Surely it would need to discard these barren materials?

Begging the question, does Unicron do poos?

(source: I used AI to create this image, diverting precious compute away from somebody else trying to find a cure for cancer or a new longevity treatment, it took a lot of revision cycles to get the forehead sweat beads just the way I wanted them)

Ok, so our current choices are build mines, recycle scrap or build giant marauding planet-eating robot planets?

Well I haven't seen a pitchdeck to invest in a giant planet-eating robot planet... yet.

(closest thing is asteroid mining from the SpaceX IPO prospectus)

And even IF you could invest in building a giant robot planet to go around eating other planets for their critical minerals, the amount of critical minerals you would need just to build said robot planet would defeat the whole point.

Millions of tonnes of copper, iron, magnesium, niobium plus rare earths to build a planet-eating robot planet.

Which would exacerbate the urgent critical minerals shortage problem on Earth, not solve it.

And at this stage the human race is still just trying to build our first generation of human-designed and human-built “entry level” AI and basic humanoid robots.

(remember the first generation of mobile phones?)

Critical minerals demand is going to skyrocket when the first human-made entry level AI and robots start rapidly designing and building better AI and robots...

AI designing AI, robots building robots - needing even more critical minerals.

(again, rumours around of the first AI designed by AI this week - it's happening...)

And then better and better AI and robots let us humans design and build anything we want = EVEN MORE commodities and critical minerals needed.

So with nobody looking likely to ship a planet-eating robot planet any time soon, we are left with two options...

1. Build hundreds of new mines

AND

1. Recycle the critical minerals that have ALREADY been mined and are sitting in piles of scrap, waste electronics and old tech.

We are already loaded up in critical minerals mining stocks.

And I think recycling critical minerals from scrap and retired models of technology is going to be a faster way to satisfy the near term demand.

Which is why...

This week we announced our 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year as Iondrive (ASX:ION)

ION has developed a critical minerals recycling technology that can extract MANY types of critical minerals from different types of electronic waste, scrap, old magnets, old industrial equipment etc.

The technology is based around chemical mixtures called “Deep Eutectic Solvents”.

In simple terms, think of them as special liquids that you put onto the scrap and it dissolves ONLY the desired critical minerals - allowing them to be extracted.

ION’s tech can be modified to target many different critical minerals from many different types of e-waste/scrap.

(even planet-eating robot planets would probably use this technology to extract the critical minerals from the planets it eats, before it poos out the left over waste materials)

Again, ION’s tech can be applied to recover many critical minerals:

(source)

Note: the above chart shows metals amenable to Deep Eutectic Solvent chemistry in general, and have not necessarily been specifically tested by ION.

BUT ION has quietly positioned itself in an industry where there is the most urgency, the most money and the most attention.

Recycling of MAGNET rare earths (MREOs) - specific rare earths used in AI, Robotics and Advanced Weapons ...and in the USA where its the most urgent:

And in the last ~9 weeks both US president Trump AND the G7 group of nations have called out the strategic importance and urgency of recycling rare earths from scrap and e-waste.

US President Donald Trump said: STOP exporting scrap that contains critical minerals, immediately!

He signed an Executive Order to restrict the export of e-waste, black mass (old batteries) and old magnets - that contain critical minerals.

SO that the critical minerals inside them can be recycled and extracted INSIDE the USA.

(exactly what ION is doing)

(source)

Now, ION’s got a plan to build a plant in Oklahoma (where the US government is spending billions on building a rare earths and magnet hub).

We think ION’s got everything it needs to attract some of that US capital sloshing around looking for a home in domestic critical minerals exposures.

Here is the short version of the 10 reasons why we made ION our 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year:

1. ION doing magnet rare earths recycling in the USA - where there is the most urgency, money and attention.
   
2. ION is moving fast - and the pieces are in place.
   
3. Trump executive orders are positive for ION
   
4. The G7 group of countries is also bullish critical minerals recycling
   
5. Recycling can be a lot faster than mining
   
6. US$243M NPV for each module - ION can build multiples of them around the US (and more globally) at ~US$11.9M CAPEX for each module.
   
7. A facility in Oklahoma, USA would be next door to $6BN USA Rare Earths
   
8. Critical minerals recycling and processing tech is getting funded
   
9. ION’s tech works on other critical minerals too
   
10. ION also has the “minerals processing” X factor

For the deep dive version check out our ION 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year note here

A Quick segue into the near future - AI designing it, robots building it

Remember how I said to remember first generation mobile phones earlier?

We generally get a new generation (new models) of mobile phones every ~3 years.

~1.26BN new mobile phones were shipped in 2025,

~5.3BN phones are retired every year.

Right now only ~22% are recycled.

And they contain relatively small amounts of critical minerals...

Imagine when all the forecast humanoid robots, electric vehicles and other modern tech starts ramping up production...

Things that use kilograms of critical minerals each, versus grams like in mobile phones.

And eventually new models start replacing older models - recycling the critical minerals from the old models into the new models is going to be mandatory.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

In the near future, newer and better models of ALL technology are going to be released at faster and faster rates.

(when AI is designing it, robots are building it, and exploding human populations that live for hundreds of years demand more and more of it)

Here is an ultra fast summary of how we will get there (read the full article on this from a few weeks ago here)

1. Intelligence becomes free and infinite (AI)
   
   
2. Labour becomes free and infinite (billions of robots).
   
   
3. Disease gets solved by AI - No one dies anymore, except from old age...
   
   
4. Then aging gets solved by AI - People stop dying of being old.
   
   
5. In an age of infinite intelligence, labour and lifespan - work becomes optional.
   
   
6. You can think of and design anything you want, and it just... appears.
   
   
7. Nobody is “poor” - Goods and services cost approximately nothing, because labour costs nothing anymore.
   
   
8. Bored humans with infinite free time will start banging each other a LOT more... meaning more kids. Human race numbers explode and more and more “stuff” is needed
   
9. [IMPORTANT] Then it all starts compounding - AI designs a better AI. That AI designs a better one again. Robots build better robots, and those robots build better robots again - each generation smarter, faster and cheaper than the one that built it.

Progress stops happening at “human speed” and starts happening at machine speed - the next generations of tech arriving in months, then weeks, then days.

THIS is where recycling the critical minerals from previous generations of robots, AI chips and other technology is going to become standard.

(mine once, use many times)

This helps to solve the one MAJOR problem with this potential future of infinite abundance.

The one thing that is NOT infinite in this scenario.

You still have to build everything out of “something”: minerals, metals and materials - physical “stuff”.

And if you have already mined the critical minerals and it's sitting in a bunch of soon to be retired robots, robo-taxis or AI glasses etc...

The quickest way is to recycle it into the new models.

(using critical minerals recycling tech like ION’s)

Especially with the speed at which newer and better models will be designed and built every year/month... by self improving AI and robots.

I reckon that in the future you won’t actually “OWN” your personal fleet of robot helpers or your self-driving electric vehicle, or any of your technology (or the critical minerals inside it).

You’ll be required to give it back to the company when you retire it to upgrade the model so they can recycle it to claim back their critical minerals to build the next generation.

(I always imagined ION’s deep eutectic solvent to be a nice bright green)

(source - ION’s latest investor presentation)

Critical minerals and the items and tech they live inside, scrap - likely won't ever leave a countries borders (or a companies control).

(Remember, Trump just banned the export of e-waste and scrap that contains critical minerals)

It will simply be quickly and efficiently recycled into generations of tech and new use cases.

And who knows, once we have mined every gram of every metal out of the Earth, we’ll have no choice but to recycle it if we want to make anything new.

Using versatile critical minerals recycling technology like ION’s.

(unless of course we manage to build that planet-eating robot planet - but does anyone really want that thing floating around?)

That's the blue sky case for the future of recycling critical minerals.

And part of why we made ION our 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year.

But mainly because ION is making fast progress in recycling magnet rare earths in the USA.

An industry where there is currently the most urgency, the most money and the most attention.

Check out our ION 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year note here

Have a great weekend.

Next Investors

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