The Rare Earth Reckoning Has Begun. The Way Out Runs Through Kazakhstan.

In April 2025, three months after the start of his second term, the President of the United States issued an executive order. The order directed the federal government to take "all available actions" to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese-controlled rare earth supplies. It was not the first such order. It will not be the last. Rare earths — the seventeen elements at the bottom of the periodic table that almost no one outside of materials science can name — have become the single most consequential supply-chain story in the world. And the answer to the question of where the West gets them next has, finally, been written down on a map.

The map points to a piece of the steppe in the Kostanay region of northern Kazakhstan, about an hour south of the Russian border. The deposit there is called Akbulak. Until last year it sat on the books of Kazakhstan's national geological company, Qazgeology, with a historical resource of approximately 380,000 tonnes of rare earth oxides — including neodymium, praseodymium, and yttrium, the elements that go into the permanent magnets that make every modern electric motor work. In March 2025, a U.S.-backed mining company signed a joint venture with Qazgeology to develop it. The U.S. company took a 75 percent stake.

That U.S. company is called Cove Kaz Capital. As of April 30, 2026, Cove Kaz has merged with Skyline Builders Group (NASDAQ: SKBL) to form Kaz Resources Inc. — set to trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker KAZR. Akbulak is one of two flagship assets in the combined company. The other is the largest known undeveloped tungsten deposit on the planet. Together with fifteen additional critical-minerals concessions across Kazakhstan, KAZR has assembled the most comprehensive U.S.-backed critical-minerals portfolio outside of allied territory anywhere in the world.

This piece walks through the rare-earth story first — because that is the part of the thesis most retail investors have already heard about, in the form of MP Materials, Mountain Pass, and the long-running drumbeat about decoupling from China. KAZR is positioned squarely inside that narrative, with arguably more diversified exposure than any pure-play U.S. rare-earth name. Then we come to tungsten — which is what makes this a now story rather than a someday story, because tungsten is the metal where the supply crunch has already arrived.

⬡ Section IWhy Rare Earths Now

There is a version of this story you have heard before. Mountain Pass. NdPr magnets. China. This is not that version. This is the version where the timeline finally moved.

Rare earths are not actually rare. They are, in geological terms, somewhat common. What is rare is a deposit large enough to mine economically, in a jurisdiction stable enough to permit it, with a partner skilled enough to process it — because the processing is where China's grip is absolute. Per the International Energy Agency, China accounts for approximately 91 percent of global rare-earth separation and refining capacity. That is not a market position. That is a chokepoint.

The chokepoint did not announce itself slowly. On April 4, 2025, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce introduced export controls on seven medium and heavy rare earth elements: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium — along with their alloys, oxides, and the magnets containing them. As export volumes fell sharply through April and May, automakers in the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea reported magnet shortages. Some shut down production lines. European prices for some rare-earth products rose to as much as six times Chinese domestic prices.

On October 9, 2025, China expanded the controls. Five more elements — holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium — were added to the list. Crucially, the new rules required foreign companies to obtain a license from China to export any product containing Chinese-sourced rare earth materials, even if the finished product was assembled outside China. The mechanism was elegant in its breadth: anything containing a Chinese-origin rare earth atom now passed through Beijing's licensing apparatus.

In November 2025, in the diplomatic detente that followed the U.S.–China summit, Beijing agreed to a one-year suspension of the October escalation. The suspension is set to expire on November 10, 2026. The earlier April 2025 controls remain in force. The dual-use export framework remains intact. Industry analysts at GlobalData estimate global rare-earth mine production at 390,000 tonnes REO equivalent in 2025, with China producing 270,000 tonnes — 69.2 percent. Outside China, the United States produces 13.1 percent of global output and Australia produces 7.4 percent. For separation and refining, the figure is the 91 percent that gives China its leverage.

This is the moment Akbulak walks onto the stage.

⬡ Section IIThe Akbulak Resource

Three hundred and eighty thousand tonnes of rare earth oxides. Neodymium. Praseodymium. Yttrium. The elements that make the magnet supply chain work — held by a U.S.-backed entity, sitting in Kazakhstan, ready to be developed.

The Akbulak Rare Earth Project is located in the Kostanay region of northern Kazakhstan, registered as a private joint venture under the Astana International Financial Centre legal framework. The JV, named Akbulak REE Ltd., is owned 75 percent by Cove Kaz Capital (now KAZR upon merger close) and 25 percent by Qazgeology JSC, the geological subsidiary of Kazakhstan's national mining company Tau-Ken Samruk. The exploration license has been transferred from Qazgeology to Akbulak REE Ltd., which means the joint venture holds operating control of the asset.

The historical resource is 380,000 tonnes of rare earth oxides. The phrase "historical resource" is important: it indicates the figure is drawn from prior Soviet-era and Kazakh-era exploration work, not from a JORC-compliant resource statement based on modern drilling. Cove Kaz announced its 2025 work program at the site — including desktop review of historical geological data, surface mapping, structural analysis, targeted sampling, and metallurgical testing — as the groundwork for a staged exploration campaign that will eventually convert the historical resource into a JORC-compliant resource statement. That conversion is the work that has to happen before Akbulak can be financed at scale. It is not yet done.

What the historical work tells us, however, is that Akbulak's basket includes the rare earths the modern economy actually needs — the magnet rare earths.

For investors familiar with MP Materials and the U.S. domestic rare-earth story, here is the comparison. MP's Mountain Pass operation in California is the only producing rare-earth mine in the United States and remains the flagship asset of U.S. domestic supply. The federal government has provided MP with major contracts and equity backing, and MP currently trades at a market capitalization in the multi-billion-dollar range. KAZR's Akbulak position is an exploration-stage asset rather than a producing mine — it is earlier-stage and cheaper, but it is also a 380,000-tonne historical REO resource with the same magnet-element basket and a state JV partner already in place. The investor decision is between a known-producer at a producer multiple and an early-stage exploration vehicle on the same supply-chain thesis.

⬡ Section IIIWhy Tungsten Makes This A Now Story

Rare earths are the bigger category-level story. Tungsten is the part of the thesis where the price chart has already moved.

Akbulak is exploration stage. The Definitive Feasibility Study work has not been completed, the JORC resource has not been declared, the metallurgy has not been finalized, and the project will require multiple years of additional capital and time before anyone can say with certainty what the production economics look like. That is the honest framing of the rare-earth piece of the KAZR thesis: real asset, real supply-chain logic, real magnet-element basket, but multi-year timeline.

Tungsten is different. The KAZR tungsten asset — a 70 percent stake in Severniy Katpar LLP, which holds the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits in Karaganda — already has a JORC-compliant resource of approximately 1.4 million tonnes of tungsten trioxide. It is the largest known undeveloped tungsten resource on Earth. The acquisition closed on April 29, 2026. Definitive Feasibility Study work is set to commence in the second half of 2026. And the tungsten supply situation on the world market has already gone critical.

On February 4, 2025, China imposed export controls on tungsten. By December 2025, only 15 designated Chinese companies were permitted to export tungsten in 2026 and 2027. In February 2026, China prohibited tungsten exports to twenty Japanese entities deemed to support Japan's military. Chinese tungsten exports contracted by approximately 40 percent year-on-year. Defense-sector demand was simultaneously rising, with Argus analysts projecting 8 percent annual defense-demand growth and tungsten on track to overtake automotive as the metal's largest end-use category by the mid-2030s. The price chart did what it does when supply contracts in a market with no substitutes: it broke vertical.

The United States produced exactly zero kilograms of tungsten commercially in 2025, as it has every year since 2015. The U.S. National Defense Stockpile holds fewer than 50 metric tons of tungsten, against an annual U.S. consumption that runs into the thousands of tonnes. The REEShore Act of 2022 prohibits Chinese-sourced tungsten in U.S. military equipment by 2026 — a deadline that arrived this year, with no domestic alternative.

Tungsten is irreplaceable in armor-piercing munitions, missile guidance systems, aerospace turbines, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, cemented-carbide drilling tools, and an increasing share of EV components. There is no realistic substitute for any of these applications. There is no realistic recycling answer at scale. There is no realistic alternative non-Chinese supply at production scale anywhere in the world today. KAZR's Severniy Katpar resource is the single largest undeveloped tungsten asset on the planet, and it sits in a jurisdiction that has just signed a U.S.–Kazakhstan critical-minerals MOU. That is the part of the story that makes the timing matter now.

⬡ Section IVThe Three Pillars

Pull the lens back. The KAZR thesis rests on three independent pillars, each material on its own. The combination is what makes the setup uncommon.

⬡ Section VThe Vehicle

The combined entity, the assets, the financing path, and the timeline — laid out plainly.

What an investor is being offered, today, is a NASDAQ vehicle (currently SKBL, transitioning to KAZR upon merger close in Q4 2026 or Q1 2027) that — pending shareholder and regulatory approvals — controls a 75 percent stake in a 380,000-tonne historical rare-earth resource, plus a 70 percent stake in the largest undeveloped tungsten deposit on Earth, plus 15 additional critical-minerals concessions across the same Kazakh mining ecosystem. The asset base is real. The U.S. government financing channels are open. The underlying commodities are at all-time highs in structural supply deficits. The transition from exploration vehicle to producing company is multi-year and not guaranteed. The optionality is what is being offered.

⬡ Section VIThe Honest Risks

No critical-minerals development project is without risk. KAZR has more than its share — and an investor who has not weighed these has not actually evaluated the opportunity.

The defensible version of the KAZR thesis: rare earths and tungsten are in structural supply crunches driven by Chinese policy that is unlikely to fully reverse; KAZR controls a 380,000-tonne REO historical resource and the single largest undeveloped non-Chinese tungsten asset in the world; U.S. government financing channels are aligned; the equity is a multi-year option on those assets reaching production. Investors comfortable with development-stage mining risk and a multi-year horizon can rationally take a position in that framework. Investors who require near-term cash flows or low jurisdictional risk should not.