The U.S. is 50 years behind on critical mineral supply.

We are too slow at designing, building, and ramping up new minerals capacity, even after we have licensed operate.

Even though there's so much innovation happening at the edge of the grid, on the other side of the wire, there's really been no change.

You both came out of Tesla.

What does the Tesla model give you that a traditional industrial company doesn't have?

The belief that you can innovate on systems that are old and archaic, if the outcome is worth

it, Tesla will fight through the challenges of getting to that outcome.

We're making a big bet on autonomy and refineries, where we use reinforcement learning

to actually remove humans from the loop and determining how refineries operate.

The world's leading producer of silicon carbide, which is a key power semiconductor,

is based here in the U.S., and so we should be leveraging the applications of that technology

here first, manufacturing here at home, and if we don't.

The U.S. power grid runs on mechanical systems designed before World War II.

American critical mineral supply sits 50 years behind China,

and demand for both is accelerating faster than at any point in history.

For decades, the bet was that innovation at the edge,

better batteries, smarter software, faster chips, would be enough. It wasn't.

The infrastructure underneath never kept up. Grid transformers are still steel, oil, and copper.

Critical minerals still flow through refineries the U.S. doesn't own or control.

Two founders who built the megapek, the 4680 battery cell, and Tesla's global mineral supply chain, think the same playbook that rewired the auto industry can rewire the grid and the mine.

The constraint is an ambition. It's whether American industry can move fast enough to matter.

Turner Caldwell and Drew Baglino speak with Aaron Price-Rite about megawatts, minerals,

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