He Predicted the Lithium Boom in 2016. Everyone Called Him Crazy. — Jeremy Wrathall, Cornish Lithium

Show Notes

When China cut off rare earth exports, the American car industry came within two weeks of shutting down. Two weeks. That is not a hypothetical, that is the world we live in now, and Jeremy Wrathall saw it coming a decade ago.

Funding stage: Series A Plus. Cornish Lithium has raised well over £100 million cumulatively, including a £53.6 million institutional package from the National Wealth Fund (then UK Infrastructure Bank), TechMet, and EMG, plus follow-on rounds and multiple regulated crowdfunding raises. This is deep institutional capital, not early-stage money.

In 2016, Jeremy was a mining engineer and investment banker walking to work in London when a friend's comment about lithium in Cornish mine water sent him down a rabbit hole that would change his life. Everyone thought he was insane. Lithium? In Cornwall? The county famous for pasties and Poldark? But Jeremy knew two things most people didn't: the energy transition was going to need staggering amounts of critical minerals, and the West had voluntarily handed its supply chains to China because digging in the dirt wasn't glamorous enough for Wall Street.

Ten years later, Cornish Lithium employs 100 people, has raised institutional capital from the National Wealth Fund, TechMet, and EMG, and holds the patents on one of the only lithium extraction technologies on Earth that China does not own and cannot switch off. The company is reviving a brownfield china clay pit at Trelavour, mining land that has been worked for 275 years, going deeper into rock nobody else bothered to look at. Cornwall itself has been mining for 4,000 years. The Bronze Age started there. Now the AI age might too.

This conversation covers the two-week near-collapse of the US auto industry, why President Trump is invoking the Defense Production Act for minerals, how a $200 drone made the $2 million tank obsolete, why Jeremy handed the CEO seat to oil and gas veteran Jamie Airnes while keeping his hands on the wheel as Executive Chairman, and the outdoor clothing store failure that taught him to stick to his knitting. Plus: why he thinks Elon gets his billion robots, and why every single one of them needs what comes out of the ground in Cornwall.

Frameworks from This Episode

The Second Tree Framework

Jeremy's answer to realizing you've missed a decade-long trend.

›The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, which is exactly when China planted its critical minerals tree.
›Trying to catch up to the leader head-on is fatal, they are over the horizon.
›Giving up is equally fatal.
›The move: plant the second tree now, build domestic capability on what you control, and compound from today.

The Switch-Off Test

Jeremy's moat framework for any critical input your business depends on.

›Ask of any critical input: who can switch this off?
›If the answer is a competitor, a platform, or a foreign government, you are renting your business.
›Cornish Lithium built and patented its own extraction technology specifically so no one else holds the off switch.
›Founders: apply this to your data, your distribution, and your infrastructure.

The Brownfield Advantage

Jeremy's case for finding value where damage is already done.

›New greenfield projects carry maximum environmental, regulatory, and community cost.
›Brownfield sites have already absorbed those costs, the damage is historic.
›Going deeper into an old asset with new technology unlocks value at a fraction of the friction.
›Applies to markets too: old, boring, abandoned industries are where the unclaimed value sits.

Stick to Your Knitting

The failure filter Jeremy built after nearly losing everything.

›Jeremy lost nearly everything on an outdoor clothing shop inspired by the Denver REI.
›Lesson: passion for a business is not the same as tools for a business.
›Inventory your actual toolkit before you commit capital.
›Failure is tuition, but only if you extract the lesson.

Founder Experiment

Run the Switch-Off Audit

This week, list the five inputs your company cannot function without: your traffic source, your cloud provider, your key supplier, your payment rails, your audience channel. For each one, write down who controls the off switch. If more than two of them can be switched off by someone who doesn't care whether you survive, pick the most dangerous one and spend the next 30 days building an owned alternative. Jeremy built a patent portfolio. You might just need an email list.

Key Terms

Critical minerals: Minerals essential to modern technology and defense where supply is at risk, including lithium, rare earths, tin, and tungsten.

Rare earths: A group of 17 elements essential for magnets in EVs, drones, and weapons systems; China controls roughly 91% of separation and refining.

DLE (Direct Lithium Extraction): Technology for pulling lithium directly from brines and geothermal waters rather than traditional evaporation ponds.

Geothermal brine: Hot, mineral-rich water deep underground; Cornwall's brines carry dissolved lithium.

Brownfield site: Land previously used for industry where environmental disturbance already occurred.

China clay (kaolin): The white clay mined in Cornwall for 275 years; the Trelavour lithium project sits in a former china clay pit.

CAGR: Compound annual growth rate; lithium demand grew roughly 30% annually over the past decade per Jeremy.

Defense Production Act: 1950 US law letting the president direct industry for national defense, now invoked for critical minerals.

Crowdfunding (equity): Raising capital from retail investors, regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority; Cornish Lithium used Crowdcube across multiple rounds.

Feasibility study: The engineering and economic study that determines whether a mining project can proceed to construction.

Tools from This Episode

Cornish Lithium

UK mining company extracting battery-grade lithium from hard rock and geothermal brine in Cornwall, using proprietary patented technology China doesn't own.

View in Resources Visit Cornish Lithium

Q&A

Why did China cutting rare earth exports almost shut down the US car industry?

China controls roughly 91% of rare earth separation and refining. When exports stopped after US tariffs, automakers had no alternative supply for magnets and components, leaving the industry an estimated two weeks from shutdown according to Jeremy Wrathall.

What is Cornish Lithium and what makes it different?

Cornish Lithium is a UK company founded by Jeremy Wrathall in 2016 that extracts battery-grade lithium from hard rock at Trelavour and from geothermal waters in Cornwall, using proprietary, patented low-carbon extraction technology that China does not own.

Is lithium mining bad for the environment?

Extraction has impact, but Cornish Lithium operates on a brownfield china clay site where disturbance is historic, uses low-carbon processing, and points to metal's infinite recyclability: roughly 60% of world copper supply is already recycled, and lithium will follow as battery stock builds.

How did Cornish Lithium use crowdfunding?

After overwhelming retail interest, the company raised capital through FCA-regulated Crowdcube rounds, later letting retail investors participate alongside institutional backers including the National Wealth Fund, TechMet, and EMG. One round saw £1 million invested in 27 minutes.

When should a founder hire a CEO?

Jeremy handed day-to-day leadership to Jamie Airnes when the board determined the company needed drilling and oil and gas expertise for its brine operations, while Jeremy stayed on as Executive Chairman steering overall direction. The signal was a skills gap, not burnout.

Links from This Episode

Cornish Lithiumhttps://cornishlithium.com/
Jeremy Wrathall on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-wrathall-ba7891b/
AI for Foundershttps://aiforfounders.co