Bain Capital Ventures led a US$45-million equity round for the Alameda, Calif.-based firm, co-founded by Hooman Reza Nezhad, who was raised in Waterloo, Ont. J.P. Morgan led US$30 million in debt and equipment financing. (The Logic)

Talking point: Reza Nezhad worked on resource technology as a teen at the University of Waterloo, then won the two-year, $200,000 Thiel Fellowship last May to work on Solcoa instead of attending the University of Toronto. The firm builds reactors that turn raw rare-earth oxides into metals that can be used in magnets that fill everything from electric vehicles and robots to drones, submarines and weapons systems. Solcoa claims it can produce material more efficiently, cheaper and cleaner than existing processes, and do it in Alameda to break the Chinese monopoly on the market; the Pentagon has backed other such projects. Reza Nezhad is among a new crop of Canadian founders reindustrializing the U.S. in strategic sectors, alongside the likes of Matt Loszak at Aalo Atomics, Nathan Ough at VoltaGrid and Arthur Dubois at Grid Aero.

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