Ganzhou, Jiangxi has caught NVIDIA's attention, and the "black stones" were moved away overnight.

In 2025, NVIDIA launched a silent battle globally.

The battlefield is not in Silicon Valley, nor in TSMC's wafer fabs, and not even in any public financial reports. It's in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.

Specifically, in a factory in the Economic Development Zone of Ganzhou. In the warehouse of that factory, there are piles of unremarkable black metal blocks. In 2025, NVIDIA's procurement teams flew to Ganzhou three times, each time staying for quite a while.

What they want to buy is a piece of metal weighing about two kilograms, which looks like an ordinary black metal on the outside. But the magnetic force inside it is the strongest permanent - magnetic material that humans can currently manufacture: neodymium - iron - boron.

This material will never lose its magnetism. Its magnetic strength is more than ten times that of ordinary ferrite magnets. Where is it used? In the drive motors of electric vehicles, in the rotors of wind turbines, and in the joint motors of the next - generation embodied intelligent robots that NVIDIA is fully betting on.

Jensen Huang's Computing Power Bill

In November 2022, ChatGPT was released. In less than three years after that, the expansion speed of global AI computing power exceeded the expectations of almost everyone.

NVIDIA's GPU shipments climbed from about 1.3 million units in 2022 to more than 4 million units in 2025.

In the second half of 2024, there was a strategic shift within NVIDIA that was not widely publicized: Jensen Huang began to seriously consider embodied intelligence, that is, robots.

The reason is not hard to understand. The training and inference of large AI models consumed most of NVIDIA's GPU production capacity, but Jensen Huang has expressed a judgment on multiple occasions: the next trillion - dollar market for AI is not larger models, but robots that can walk, grasp, and work.

In January 2025, NVIDIA launched the Project GR00T platform at the CES exhibition, which is specifically used to train the basic models of humanoid robots. In the same year, NVIDIA invested in several embodied robot companies such as Figure AI and 1X Technologies.

Behind these investments, there is a bottleneck that is rarely discussed publicly: the motors in robot joints require high - performance neodymium - iron - boron permanent - magnetic materials. Without this material, the torque density of the motor cannot be increased, the joints of the robot cannot be made larger, and the overall weight and battery life cannot be optimized.

What is more strategically urgent is another thing: about 80% of the global production capacity of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron is in China. And about 80% of China's medium - heavy rare earths, the indispensable raw materials for manufacturing high - performance neodymium - iron - boron, are in Ganzhou.

What lies underground in Ganzhou directly determines whether NVIDIA's robot strategy can be implemented on schedule.

The Underground Treasures in Ganzhou

No exaggerated adjectives are too much to describe Ganzhou's position in China's rare - earth industry.

The reserves of ionic rare - earth resources in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, account for more than 80% of the country's medium - heavy rare - earth resources of the same type, and its share in the global medium - heavy rare - earth supply exceeds 70%. Medium - heavy rare earths contain elements such as dysprosium and terbium, which are indispensable raw materials for high - performance neodymium - iron - boron permanent - magnetic materials.

But there has been a long historical process.

The rare - earth mining in Ganzhou can be traced back to 1970 at the earliest. The initial mining method was called the "mountain - moving campaign", which involved digging wells on the mountain and pouring ammonium sulfate solution to displace the rare - earth ions.

This method had a low recovery rate, caused serious environmental pollution, and the damage to the mountain was irreversible. Before 2011, the rare - earth industry in Ganzhou was in a long - term disordered state, with widespread illegal mining and serious waste of resources.

The turning point occurred in 2011. In this year, the official released the "Opinions on Promoting the Sustainable and Healthy Development of the Rare - Earth Industry", which identified rare earths as a national strategic resource and implemented full - process control over mining, production, and export.

Ganzhou Rare - Earth Group Co., Ltd. was established in the same year, integrating more than a hundred local rare - earth mining rights.

In the following years, Ganzhou's rare - earth industry completed the transformation from being scattered and in a poor state to being intensive. More importantly, Ganzhou no longer only sold raw rare - earth ores but began to extend to the downstream rare - earth permanent - magnetic materials.

Permanent - magnetic materials are one of the links with the highest added value in the rare - earth industry chain. The selling price of a high - performance neodymium - iron - boron magnetic steel can be more than ten times that of raw rare - earth ores.

By 2020, Ganzhou had gathered about one - third of the country's rare - earth permanent - magnetic material production capacity.

But at this time, the global AI industry had not yet exploded. The customers of Ganzhou's permanent - magnetic materials were mainly electric - vehicle manufacturers (such as Tesla and BYD) and wind - power manufacturers. The demand for robots was almost negligible at that time.

The "black stones" in Ganzhou were waiting for a customer that they didn't know at that time.

Two Graduates from the Chemistry Department

Old Cai and Old Hu were both born in the 1970s. One graduated from the Department of Chemical Engineering of Nanchang University, and the other graduated from the Department of Applied Chemistry of Jinan University.

Both of them had early experience in technical and management work in chemical enterprises, and both realized in the early 2000s that rare - earth permanent - magnetic materials were a long - term valuable field.

In August 2008, they jointly established a permanent - magnetic material factory in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.

In the rare - earth permanent - magnetic industry at that time, this was a very small and late - starting factory. There were already many listed companies in the industry, with far more technological accumulation and customer resources. Although Ganzhou was rich in rare - earth resources, most of the local permanent - magnetic material enterprises were subcontractors for large factories or produced mid - and low - end products.

Old Cai and Old Hu's entry point was high - performance neodymium - iron - boron permanent - magnetic materials. The difficulty of this choice lies in: the production process of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron is complex, involving more than a dozen processes such as formula design, melting, powder making, forming, sintering, processing, and surface treatment. The yield control of each process directly affects the magnetic performance and consistency of the final product.

High - end customers (such as electric - vehicle drive - motor manufacturers) have extremely high requirements for the consistency of magnetic performance. It usually takes one to two years for a new product to pass customer certification after being sent for sampling.

In the first few years after the factory was established, it was basically struggling with this certification cycle.

In 2010, the factory began to supply products to BYD for use in electric - vehicle drive motors. In 2012, it entered Tesla's supply chain. These two customers later became the leaders in global electric - vehicle sales.

But around 2010, the factory's revenue scale was still small, and the profit was meager. The real turning point occurred after 2018.

Three Waves Overlapping

From 2018 to 2025, the company experienced a triple - overlapping growth wave.

The first wave is electric vehicles.

In 2020, the sales volume of new - energy vehicles in China was about 1.32 million. In 2025, this figure exceeded 12 million. Each electric vehicle's drive motor requires about two kilograms of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron. The exponential growth of electric - vehicle sales directly drove the company's revenue.

In 2020, the company achieved a revenue of about 2.4 billion yuan. In 2025, this figure reached 7.718 billion yuan, 3.2 times that of 2020 in five years.

The second wave is wind power.

Wind turbines, especially direct - drive wind turbines, require hundreds of kilograms of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron per unit. China's newly installed wind - power capacity increased from about 71GW in 2020 to more than 160GW in 2025. The Ganzhou factory is one of the main domestic suppliers of wind - power permanent - magnetic materials.

The third wave is embodied robots, which started to gain momentum in 2025.

How much neodymium - iron - boron does a humanoid robot need? The answer depends on the number of joints of the robot. Taking Tesla's Optimus as an example, there are about 40 joint motors in the whole body, and each motor requires about 100 grams of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron. The total neodymium - iron - boron consumption of the whole robot is about 4 kilograms, which is twice that of an electric vehicle.

But weight is not the key. The key is the quantity. The annual global automobile sales volume is about 80 million. If humanoid robots enter factories, warehouses, and household services, and the annual sales volume reaches the level of one million, the incremental demand for high - performance neodymium - iron - boron will be very considerable.

In the first half of 2025, the factory completed small - batch deliveries of motor rotors for embodied robots and related magnetic materials.

This is not a business that can contribute a large amount of revenue today. But it is the reason why NVIDIA was willing to send people to Ganzhou three times in a row.

Capacity Expansion and Global Layout

In September 2018, the factory launched the process of going public because a large amount of capital was needed for capacity expansion.

Ganzhou is the main production base. After 2020, the company launched two important capacity - expansion projects: one is to build a new production base in Baotou (Baotou is rich in light rare - earth resources, which can complement the ionic rare earths in Ganzhou in terms of raw materials); the other is to build a high - end magnetic - material production base in Ningbo.

By the end of 2025, the factory's annual production capacity in the field of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron magnetic materials reached about 40,000 tons, with an actual output of about 34,400 tons, and the capacity utilization rate exceeded 90%. The company plans to increase the annual production capacity of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron magnetic materials to 60,000 tons by 2027.

What does 60,000 tons mean? In 2025, the global demand for high - performance neodymium - iron - boron was between about 150,000 and 180,000 tons. 60,000 tons means that the production capacity of a single company will account for more than one - third of the global supply of high - performance neodymium - iron - boron.

What NVIDIA needs is exactly the top - notch part of this supply: high - performance and highly consistent neodymium - iron - boron magnetic steel for the joint motors of embodied robots.

...

The "black stones" produced in the factory will start from Ganzhou and be transported to all parts of the world via Shenzhen or Shanghai. Some of them may finally reach Santa Clara (the location of NVIDIA's headquarters) or Austin (NVIDIA's newly built super - computing center).

A two - kilogram black metal, dug out from underground in Ganzhou, goes through more than a dozen processes and is finally installed in the joint of a robot. That robot may work in environments that humans cannot reach, including the deep sea, nuclear power plants, and space.

Or it may also appear in an ordinary person's home, helping to carry things and tidy up the room.

Regardless of which future it is, the "black stones" are no longer idle resources underground in Ganzhou. They have become a weight that is constantly increasing in the global AI industry competition pattern.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Washu” (ID: washu66), author: Washu, published by 36Kr with authorization.