Lithium's Epic Comeback in 2026 - 'Huge Increase' in Demand as Price Soars: Teague Egan

The following podcast is brought to you by EnergyX.

Enjoy.

This is the Commodity Culture Podcast, where we interview prominent investors, fund managers,

analysts and companies CEOs to give you an edge when it comes to investing in the commodity

space.

Hello everybody and welcome into Commodity Culture where our goal is to make you a better

investor in the commodity sector.

My name is Jesse Day.

Today is March 16th, 2026 and before we dive in standard disclaimer, nothing here is

investment advice, do your own due diligence.

Today's guest is the CEO of EnergyX, a company that has developed radical innovations impacting

all aspects of the battery supply chain, including Brian Lithium extraction.

We're going to dive into it as well as discussing the Lithium market today.

It's Teague Egan.

Welcome to the show.

What's up Jesse, thanks for having me.

Great to have you here.

I want to kick things off with your current assessment of the Lithium market and where

it stands.

Demand is rising and the supply shortage is very real.

Can you walk us through some of the numbers and explain why Lithium presents an opportunity

for investors today?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, today's a very exciting time to be investing in Lithium.

About five years ago, we were at a low in the price, kind of like the $15,000 per ton range.

And then in 2020, 2021, we saw a huge spike, actually kind of a detrimental spike.

And the price of Lithium went from 15,000 a ton up to 80,000 a ton.

Companies that need Lithium, like EV companies, battery companies, we're all scrambling to

get their supply of Lithium.

And that's obviously what caused the huge price spike.

And then when they got all of that, the price crashed.

And in 2023, 2024, even as recent as 2025, the price went down to like $8,000 a ton.

But now that that lack of supply is happening again.

So we're seeing the price start to come up.

And that's always when you want to look at potential investments.

Like the price hit the bottom and now it's coming up and it just passed $20,000 a ton.

We as a Lithium company want it to be somewhere in that $20,000 to $30,000 a ton.

But that's a really good price when you're thinking about the growth of the commodity.

If you're investing like into Lithium as a commodity, of course, then you want the price

of Lithium to continue to rise.

But for us, in terms of the growth of the demand, today Lithium is at about 1.2 million

tons per year sold.

And all the projections have it going over 3 million tons by 2030 and over 5 million

tons by 2040.

So we see this huge increase in the actual demand and supply of the commodity.

And that's what we're betting on as a company that we see that growth in Lithium for the

use in batteries, for the growth of electric vehicles, for the growth of energy storage

system.

So that's kind of how we're playing the game right now.

Well, I want to talk about some of the constraints on the supply side that have emerged recently.

In February this year, the government in Zimbabwe enacted a sweeping immediate ban on the

export of all raw materials and Lithium concentrates.

In addition, China has moved the power to grant Lithium permits from local provinces to

Beijing, creating a backlog and idling some mines, including the Jiang Xiaowomine in Jiang

Xi, which accounts for 3% of global Lithium supply.

How much of an impact do you think these events will have?

And do you expect more of the supply bottlenecks coming from different jurisdictions around the

world up ahead?

Yeah, I mean, when you say 3%, like that might not seem like very much, but it's a signal

from China that more production may come offline, right?

Same thing with Zimbabwe, like they produce spodgaming ore, which is the feedstock to produce

lithium hydroxide.

And if they're stopping all exports of that and trying to get that value add in their

country, like that pinches supply chain.

So for the countries that need lithium, the United States being one of them, you know,

5% to 10% of demand coming offline, like we're seeing it right now in oil in the

straight of hormones, where about 20 or 25% of the world's oil supply comes through that

straight.

And the price of oil just shot up over $100 a barrel.

So when you talk about, you know, 3 or 5 or 10 or 15% of a supply chain, like that can

have a meaningful impact on global supply and how these commodities move into the next

phase of their development in terms of lithium, it's going into the cathode or the component

that goes into the battery and ultimately to the end consumer.

So you know, we're building lithium plants in Chile and right here in the United States

in Texas to try to mitigate some of that global supply chain risk.

And I think that, you know, we're looking to bring on 100,000 tons of lithium by 2030,

which today that would be close to 10% of global supply by 2030.

I mentioned that will be at 3 million tons of total global demand.

It will be 3% at that time, but 100,000 tons is about $2 billion of revenue.

So you know, it's, it's, these are meaningful amounts when you're talking about hundreds

of thousands of tons and we need, you know, if we're at 1.2 or 1.3 million tons today,

we're talking about, you know, a really substantial number of mines needing to open by 2030 to

meet that demand.

You know, we're doing our part by bringing on an extra 100,000 tons, but there still

could be a drastic supply shortage, which again is where you see that huge price spike

if everybody needs lithium and there's none to be supplied.

I'd like to talk about two different aspects of the lithium market.

One is the electric vehicle story and the other is at battery energy storage systems because,

you know, we're hearing that the narrative on EVs, things aren't quite working out as

projected, however, we are also seeing things like China ramping up their EV production

with those BYD vehicles, which are very cost effective.

And then we're also seeing the fact that some estimates are placing installation growth

of battery energy storage systems up by 40 to 50% this year.

Now notably, these systems use almost exclusively lithium iron phosphate.

So I'd love to get your thoughts on both.

How do you see the trajectory of the EV market and that impacting demand and also battery

energy storage systems?

Yeah.

Well, look, Jesse, you said it yourself, energy storage systems, which are like these

big utility scale battery backups and, you know, what data centers need to ensure that

they don't have lapses in power are up 40%.

And that is massive.

It's like adding an extra million tons of lithium demand to the industry.

And we're only going to start to see that increase.

Data centers are like one application of energy storage systems.

But there's heavy industry, there's commercial, there's industrial, there's even residential,

like people putting, you know, these power packs are home batteries in their houses, which

help mitigate some of those, some of those spikes during the daytime of high energy.

Man, my energy bill for the past couple of months was much higher than usual, right?

And a battery can help even that out.

In terms of the EV story, honestly, I think that's a huge misnomer that it hasn't necessarily

met projections.

I think that it's a natural human instinct when something comes and is new to think it's

just going to like, oh, like every electric vehicle or every vehicle on the road by 2030

is going to be an EV.

You know, it's easy to say that I'm 2020 when like Tesla's booming and all the other car

companies like General Motors and Ford, and that's just US, but even in Europe, like Volkswagon

and BMW, every car by 2035 is going to be electric, like that's an unrealistic expectation.

The facts though, are that electric vehicles have increased substantially every year.

And in 2012 or 2015, the total number of EVs on the road globally was like 100,000.

Last year in 2025, 20 million new electric vehicles.

So at each year, it's gone, you know, not 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, but like the

growth has been well, 300,000 in 2016 and then 600,000 and like, it can't double every

year.

It can't go from 300 to 600 to 1.2 to 2.4.

You can't double every year, right?

Like, at some point, the cager, the compound annual growth rate has to come down and now

we're seeing, you know, 15 or 10% increase.

But if you're at 20 million, a 10% increase is now 22 million, right?

And then, you know, so and then the next year, it's 24.2 million.

So we're seeing that that growth in electric vehicles and adding 2 million new electric

vehicles is a lot, right?

But it's especially happening in China and you can go online and watch some of these interviews

from the CEO of Ford, which is Bill Farley and he's scared for the future of Ford because

these Chinese EV companies like Xiaomi and BYD are just kicking our butt and again, the

fact of the matter is is that electric vehicles are better cars than ice, than not the other

ice, but the, you know, the internal combustion engine cars, they're faster, top-end speed,

they have faster pickup and now BYD just announced that they have cars that can go a thousand

kilometers and charge in seven minutes faster than a gas station.

So the technology is innovating and growing so much faster.

And I mean, we see it with Tesla, like Tesla cars are better, like there's less parts,

which means that they break down a lot less, which means your maintenance and repair cost

is substantially lower.

Like, I got my Tesla in 2013 and I've had to bring it in like one time in 13 years,

like, you know, there's, I don't know the exact number of fewer parts, but there's far

last parts because you're not, you don't have this like super sophisticated complex engine,

right?

It's just a battery and a motor.

So China is building, BYD is building a factory to produce millions, 5, 10 million EVs a year.

That's bigger than the city of San Francisco.

Mexico already has BYD cars.

Canada just announced they're importing BYD cars, like the U.S. is getting left behind

and if these companies, like, and we're so cyclical with administration to administration,

like under Biden, it was like all gung ho, like EV transformation and now under Trump,

it's like Ford writes off their whole EV investment, GM is, you know, slowing it down.

That's the wrong move.

That is the absolute wrong move.

And we're going to be sitting here in four years and China, you know, we're talking about

how China beats us and everything, beats us in critical minerals, they're going to be beating

our ass in auto.

And if we don't innovate and continue to invest in the future, which is EV, we're going

to be sitting here with our horses and carriages and it's going to be pathetic.

So I don't think that that's going to happen.

I think that in three years, we're going to be back to like major investment and maybe

we lost a little bit of time, but as it relates to your original question with the projections

and expectations of the EV story, like there's a blip in the transition, but we are going

to fully or near fully transition to EVs because they are better cars across the board.

Yeah.

That was a great summary.

I think a lot of the narrative also is being driven by social media where everything

is either pictured as the most bullish, amazing thing ever or doom and gloom and it's

about to fall apart tomorrow.

And so I like your thought process of looking at it more on the long term.

And I want to talk about Project Volt now, a $10 billion initiative to establish a strategic

critical minerals reserve in the United States.

This includes lithium and of course, this is an addition to the U.S. government taking

a direct stake in lithium America's last year, showing a strong domestic push for the

sector.

Do you expect more favorable government policy ahead and how can it help drive companies

like NRGX, particularly in regards to your project Lone Star in Arclatex?

So a few things there.

One, I think vol is 12 billion actually better for us critical mineral companies, but many

billions and Project Volt is initiative by this administration to shore up and secure

critical minerals in the United States.

Critical minerals ultimately are the foundation for the AI and what we'll call it the AI

and electrification revolution.

Like all call it industrial 4.0 revolution starts with these critical minerals that make

semiconductors, that make robotics, that make magnets that are the foundation of EVs

or nuclear reactors or chips, et cetera.

And that's what Project Volt is doing.

So securing our lithium, our nickel, our cobalt, our rare earths, both heavy and light,

our copper, our cobalt, like these critical minerals are foundational to staying ahead

with innovation and ingenuity.

And we're putting 12 billion dollars into it, I think we need a lot more.

But that's key.

As far as lithium America's, that was actually the Biden administration who originally invested.

They did a $2.3 billion loan from the Department of Energy.

This administration said, hey, that's a pretty big loan.

We actually want a little bit equity in the company too, but a cornerstone anchor kind

of showcase to say, hey, we're actually going to invest in critical mineral production

here domestically in the United States.

And lithium America's has a huge deposit in Nevada.

You know, while I think that that project has pretty high costs in terms of the CapEx

and OPEX, I actually don't think that I, you can look at what their costs are and compare

it to other projects costs.

They were, they were leading edge and they've been working on that project for 10 years.

So the government said, hey, we're going to support this because they're going to produce,

you know, 40,000 tons of lithium from that project.

To compare it to energy X, their CapEx per ton is 72,000 as compared to our project in

the U.S. that's about 21,000.

So like if they're building a 40,000 ton plant, you multiply that time 72,000, you're looking

at $2.8 billion to go build that plant.

For us, we're building a 50,000 ton plant at $21,000, you're looking at a $1.1 billion plant

to produce 10,000 tons more lithium.

Anything with the OPEX, which is how much it costs per ton to produce per year.

So like my input, my labor, et cetera, they're at about $6,000 and change.

I can't remember the exact number per ton, we're at about $3,500 per ton.

So if the price of lithium is high, sure, everybody makes money, it doesn't matter when

the price of lithium comes down to what we just saw a few years ago, two years ago, and

it was $8,000, $10,000 per ton.

Their plant needs to shut down and go on care and maintenance because they're losing money

because their OPEX is 6,000, 7,000 and then you have to amortize that CapEx, whereas

we can still stay alive because we're still profitable.

So the economics of projects obviously really matter, especially when it's a commodity,

you want to be on the bottom of the cost curve in terms of how much it costs to make the

commodity that you're selling because those prices do fluctuate.

But overall, project vaults, super positive thing for America and our industry, and I'm

excited to see how they deploy some of that money.

Well, let's pivot to discussing how EnergyX fits into this whole picture.

Why don't you start by giving us an overview of the company?

I started EnergyX back in 2018, been at it for seven, eight years now, and it's been

a fun ride.

We started with developing what's now known as Direct Lithium Extraction Technology

or DLE is the acronym.

That is the concept of replacing these big evaporation ponds, these big salt water ponds.

If you're a floating in San Francisco, you see these huge salt ponds.

There's salt in water, obviously, ocean water is about three and a half percent salinity.

The brines that we get the lithium from can be as high as 30 percent salinity.

You think like the Dead Sea, it's so salty you float in it.

But the salt that makes up that percentage is a mixture of all these minerals, or the

great salt lake, for instance, is like eight or nine percent salt, and that's everything

from your table salt, sodium chloride, to potassium chloride, which is fertilizer, very important

for growing food, to magnesium, there's sulfates, and lithium.

Sodium is a salt as a lithium chloride, or lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide.

What we do is, we said these evaporation ponds are a really inefficient way to extract

lithium, because it takes 18 months, you're literally using natural sunlight to evaporate

water, and it goes through a series of ponds.

They only recover 30 to 40 percent of the original lithium is there, because you lose some

to a co-precipitating, et cetera.

We said, get rid of all that, let's build like a chemical refinery plant, and extract it

using 21st century technology, like membranes that you have under your sink, or solvent

extraction, or absorption, like you put it through a column, and we have beads that absorb

the lithium.

So we spent four years developing that technology, and looking to license it, to companies that

have these existing salt ponds, we thought that would be a smart way to go about it, and

then none of them wanted our technology, and we're sitting there scratching our heads,

and then we realized, oh, of course they don't want to adapt new technology that potentially

threatens their business, and two, they've already spent billions of dollars on these

huge evaporation ponds that are 10 square miles, like the size of New York City, hundreds

of football fields, and it's expensive to go, you know, I talked about numbers earlier,

like building a billion dollar plant, like that's a big investment decision.

Ultimately, what ended up happening was it forced us to vertically integrate, because we

couldn't keep beating a dead horse, and putting the future existence of our company into

hoping to get a technology license, from, you know, a handful, a small handful of groups

that were otherwise pretty resistant.

So we had to go acquire our own lithium resources, and vertically integrate to control our

own destiny.

So in 2023, we acquired our first lithium resource in Chile, in Chile, there's this area known

as the lithium triangle, it's northern Chile, northern Argentina, and southern Bolivia,

in the high and in mountain range, and you typically see these desert salars in high mountain

ranges, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, you know, that's at height, better evaporation

through the natural formation of these big mountain ranges, lithium salt flats have formed,

but we acquired 100,000 acres in Chile in 2023, a great lithium resource, and started

developing that project using our own in-house proprietary technology.

Then in 2024, slash 2025, our board decided that it would be prudent to have a resource

in the United States to mitigate some of that foreign country risk, while Chile is, you

know, a first world country and a partner to the US, there still is some risk in terms

of permitting and things like that, and you know, we wanted a project domestically.

So we've accumulated 50,000 acres of lithium deposits in the smack over formation, which

is between Texas and Arkansas, and we're developing project loan star there.

So now we're building demonstration plants, which are larger than pilot plants, smaller

than commercial plants, but each of these plants cost roughly $30 million, so not by any

means a small investment, but obviously smaller than a billion dollar commercial plant, right?

So we have great lithium resources, we're sprinting towards commercialization, and now finally

that we have kind of scaled up and proved our technology on a reasonable level.

These demonstration plants can do about 250 tons per annum of lithium.

Now all the big boys that once doubted us and didn't believe that DLE would work or was

a real thing are coming to us trying to license our technology.

So it's kind of what we're in a really good position now, and over the next two years

we'll be commercializing our first plant, actually both kind of at the same time, project

black giant and chilly and project loan star in the United States, and each of those, as

I mentioned earlier, will target to produce 50,000 tons, so 100,000 tons in total.

And if lithium stays above 20,000 a ton, let's just say 25,000 a ton, we're looking at

$2.5 billion of revenue from those two projects, and we're looking to add more projects as

well.

Like I said, lithium demand will be at 3 million tons by 2030.

We want to produce as much of that as possible, so we have a nice pipeline of discussions

we're into acquire more resources, both in North and South America.

And we also are looking at additional critical minerals that are relevant for the energy transition.

So other critical minerals for the battery supply chain, as well as critical minerals

for the nuclear material supply chain.

I believe that nuclear is going to be the biggest source of power generation over the next

20, 40, 50 years.

And similar to EVs or energy storage systems that require batteries, that require these

critical minerals, nuclear reactors have a comparable necessity for critical minerals,

whether it's uranium, actually lithium is necessary in certain types of nuclear reactors,

thorium, as well as a handful of others.

So that's energy X in a nutshell.

Great summary, and you're preaching to the choir on nuclear.

I'm extraordinary bullish on the future of that sector as well.

Let's talk about the team behind the company and how you plan to leverage their expertise.

Let's start with your own background and why you're the right CEO to take the helm at

energy X.

I think that our team is incredible.

And the way that I judge a leader, including myself, is predominantly two things.

One is the vision.

Like is this person visionary in terms of making long-term bets that prove to be accurate

for the most part?

And I think that the insight of, hey, lithium demand is going to skyrocket over the next

20 to 40 years, was accurate.

In 2018, when I started the company, the total demand of lithium was 300,000, and today

we're at 1.2, 1.3 million, and projections have, so you're looking at a 10X in 10 years

or 12 years, which is exceeded even my expectations.

So then, like you just said, with your bullish on nuclear, like, well, so am I, right?

So I see uranium being a critical mineral that will have the same type of demand curve

as lithium did now eight years ago.

So as the CEO of the company, we could just stay lithium company, but I'm trying to

grow energy X into 100 billion dollar company, and that won't happen just by being lithium.

So what is my 10-year master plan?

What are these growth areas?

How can we enter into other critical minerals while being laser focused on developing and

commercializing our first lithium plant?

So what kind of vision does a leader of a company have, right?

And ultimately that correlates into the belief in your team to stand behind you and help

you execute on the vision, right?

Second is building that team, right?

There's not a single story and history of a one-man show who does it all, right?

And being able to build a team that A has the expertise that you need to execute on

that vision and B kind of can make decisions with the same type of accuracy, or at least

if they're making the decision that you would make 90 or 95% of the time, then you've built

a really good team.

And with energy X, as it pertains to lithium, we have a group of some of the foremost

world experts.

Our president of lithium came to us from SQM, which is the biggest lithium producer in

the world from Brian based resources, worked there for 28 years, led a team of 1700 people,

and was there before they were a lithium company and then turned them into the biggest lithium

producer in the world.

Having somebody like that on the team is invaluable.

We probably wouldn't be in business today if this person wasn't on the team.

So being able to bring him on to the team and having him believe that in my vision and

that I'm the right leader is the sign of being a good leader.

Our chief technology officer comes to us from Rio Tinto, which is either the number

one or number two largest mining company in the world.

They do copper, they do iron ore.

They've recently become the biggest lithium resource holder hoping to pass SQM in terms

of production.

And he was the first author on the first patent that Rio Tinto ever filed for lithium.

So he has four degrees like this guy is an absolute genius when it comes to developing

the actual technology and the processes that we're using that are replacing the evaporation

ponds, which our guy from SQM had, into what is 21st century breakthrough technology.

Then we have a whole list I could go on and on about the qualities of our team, but

being able to lead and leading from the front, like being on the site, being in the detailed

engineering meetings, like, you know, like it's being able to execute and doing what

you said you were going to do, not only for your team, but also for your investors is what

makes a good leader a good leader.

And I think that second to that is being a founder leader is incredibly important.

Like, nobody cares more about this company than me.

This is like my baby and I also have the most to gain, right?

Like I'm also still the largest shareholder, right?

So, so my future depends on this company as opposed to, you know, a CEO that has been

a lifetime CEO and can probably go get another CEO role after this.

So, you know, has the experience, right?

And you see that with the biggest companies in the world, they're essentially all founder

lead companies.

And all those founders relatively has zero experience in whatever it was before they started

doing that thing, whether it's Jensen from NVIDIA who worked at Denny's before he started

in NVIDIA or Zuck who was a college kid, like, you know, or Elon, like what makes Elon

an astrophysicist, right?

But they all, they all are founder lead companies and they're able to take risks.

They're able to, you know, they obviously all work their ass off and they all have executed

continuously, um, bezos, you know, all these companies executed.

So the day that I stop executing on the vision or the day that the vision isn't a good vision

anymore, uh, is the day that I won't be the best leader for the company.

But, you know, we've, we've made it this far and I think that we're on track to be like,

I think the first, like, true, large scale commercial, direct lithium extraction producer

in the world, um, and I think that through this energy transition, you know, I was looking

at some ridiculous numbers from the IEA on how much investment needs to go into, like,

the carbon free by 2050, it's like trillions and trillions of dollars.

Within that, we will see multiple hundred billion dollar market cap companies be created,

from the opportunity of the energy transition. And where energy X wants to play is in the supply

chain, like I mentioned, of these energy storage and energy generation. And that largely falls

to batteries for energy storage and nuclear for energy generation. And we will produce the raw

materials, uh, and maybe some of the refined materials that help power those two categories.

And within that, there is a hundred or multi hundred billion dollar market cap opportunity

for energy X. So we're marching towards that and it just comes with execution and commercialization.

And I hope to be talking to you in two years. Uh, well, we've already come, we've already built

our demonstration plant that's producing lithium. But in two years, I hope to be talking to you

and we have our first commercial lithium plant. Uh, so yeah. Well, I'm definitely looking forward

to that day as well in a couple of years time. We'll have to follow up. Um, I would like to dive

into the main catalysts, news flow that's coming up for the company that shareholders can look forward

to and that you expect to drive performance for energy X for the rest of 2026 and into next year.

At energy X, like we, we just keep crossing milestones. That's how we've raised money. That's how,

you know, I continue to inspire the team and investors. And the next big milestone, uh, is commissioning

our 250 ton demonstration plan in Texas, uh, which is actually happening this month. We've actually

the hot commissioned it already, but we're throwing our big unveiling of our demonstration plant on March 26th.

And, uh, the event is called Get Lit at Lone Star. Uh, Lone Star, of course, being the name of our project up there and Get Lit,

actually being the name of our DLE technology platform. Um, I might not be what you were thinking, but, uh, Get Lit actually stands for Get Lithium.

And, um, you know, this, this is going to be an awesome event. We have hundreds. I think we have 500 people coming, but we're also live streaming, uh, the event.

I wanted to, I wanted to make it kind of like one of these awesome Tesla events where they do AI day or, uh, robotics day or battery day.

And, uh, so anybody will be able to tune in, uh, to the live stream, uh, and see the biggest direct lithium extraction plant in the United States to date, um, albeit our demonstration plant 250 tons per

atom will be the biggest lithium plant for direct lithium extraction in the United States. So that's like the next huge, huge milestone for us and a catalyst.

Then, uh, after that, um, I have a lot more exciting stuff that I can't tell you yet. Uh, but yeah, if people, if people tune in, we're making a lot of announcements at this live event on March 26th.

So maybe if you share the link or something, uh, your, your audience can find out some of the stuff coming up further in the year.

Yeah, and I'm assuming you're going to have it on your website as well. I'll make sure to put a link to the website in the description so people can follow along and, and look out for that announcement.

Now, a couple of things I want to close on. One is that energy X isn't a publicly traded company. So how can investors get exposure.

And the other is just any additional thought you have anything we haven't covered yet that you think people should be focused on when it comes to energy X.

So, so number one, we are a private company still, uh, but we have utilized, um, an exemption under the SEC that allows everyday investors to get in to energy X at the early stage, uh, similar to what was only restricted for like venture capitalists or high net worth individuals.

Um, you can go on our website in the top right corner, click, invest and read all about our company. Um, we have a very informational website.

Uh, this is also a regulated thing. So we have SEC filing. So you can go click on our offering circular. It's very comprehensive, uh, as it is required to be, but you can see all of our financials, like all of our, you know, plans and contracts and things like that.

Um, but anybody can invest, I think it's like a thousand or 11, 1200 dollars is the minimum investment and energy X actually proudly has over 40,000.

Investors in the company to date, um, which I think is cool. And you talked about, you know, just that belief in me and like that didn't happen overnight. That's been over five years of continuously hitting milestones and making announcements and growing the company and acquiring resources and building the team and doing all these things.

Uh, but that goes alongside some of our major institutional investors, like general motors, uh, Pasco, which is a big Korean steel and battery company that does like 70 billion in revenue a year.

And any, which is the big Italian energy and oil and gas company, uh, they're the equivalent of like Chevron and Exxon, but over in Europe, they do 100 billion. So we have huge institutional investors.

To go alongside these 40,000 retail investors, but literally anybody can invest in energy X and, uh, it's, it's a pretty cool thing that, uh, the, the securities exchange commission allows startups and private companies to do.

Um, in terms of anything that you missed, I mean, that was a very comprehensive, uh, discussion. And I think that, you know, we covered a lot.

One other thing that I would mention is that in addition to being a lithium company, like, energy X has a lot of different lines of revenue.

So we talked about selling lithium, like, that's the main thing for us today. Um, we talked a little bit about, uh, potentially other critical minerals, um, like uranium or thorium, uh, or polymetallic nodules. I'm a big believer in.

Uh, we talked about licensing our technology to third party lithium resource owners. Um, there's also additional projects in the pipeline, but one thing that we didn't discuss that's, that's pretty cool is, so we have vertically integrated not only our resources and our technology, but also our upstream supply chain. So like,

people that are watching this might wonder like, well, how does DLE work? Like, we use membranes, but we actually make our own membranes.

So, or adsorption. So like, you have a huge column that's filled with these beads or resin that absorbs the lithium and it lets everything else passed by.

We actually make our own resin. So we have a security in our supply chain where, where there's no single point of failure or we're not relying on any underlying technology or material or consumable to affect our success. And that's really important.

But it's also created opportunities where like, we have this commercial membrane manufacturing line, uh, in our Austin headquarters, and we have excess membrane more than we need for our own plants. Right. So A will license that or sell it to lithium companies, but B other industries need these membranes.

So we're selling these membranes into industries like carbon capture, for instance, and these are, these can be multi hundred million dollar contracts. So we have a lot of different lines of revenue that are all part of this energy transition.

That I think is going to make energy acts of very attractive business over the long term as the energy transition continues.

Great. Well, I'm going to put a link in the description as mentioned to the energy ex website as well as social media so people can follow along with the company to this has been a blast. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Jesse.

Commodity culture is a podcast that covers investing in commodities and natural resources. If you'd like to hear more, be sure to subscribe so you were always alerted of the latest episodes.