The AI behind this headline is most likely CICERO, a semi-autonomous laboratory workflow developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to find better ways of recovering critical minerals from industrial waste. In PNNL’s tests, its agents recommended recovering neodymium, praseodymium, and samarium from magnet waste. That is a meaningful step toward domestic supply, but the evidence supports a narrower claim than the headline makes. The fair reading is that CICERO could help reduce U.S. reliance on imported rare earths. The evidence does not show that it has already cut imports.
A separate AI effort at the Department of Energy is often confused with CICERO. That one looks for rare earths in domestic geology rather than in waste, and it is covered in its own section below.
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What CICERO is
CICERO stands for Computer Intelligence for Critical Elements Recovery and Optimization. Its purpose is to speed up the work of evaluating and optimizing how critical elements can be pulled out of waste streams: which elements are worth targeting, and under which chemical conditions they can be separated. It is a laboratory system. PNNL’s account describes experiments and recommendations, not a commercial recovery plant, so “AI helps recover rare earths” should be read as a description of a research workflow.
How the workflow runs
PNNL describes a sequence in which software and a robot handle most of the planning and execution, while people remain responsible for the final analytical step.
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- Recommend targets. CICERO’s agents evaluate a waste stream and recommend which critical elements to recover from it.
- Generate the experiment plan. The team drew on published literature to produce a plan for 96 simultaneous experiments, including chemical recipes, the order in which materials are added, and timing. PNNL says the plan was generated within a day.
- Run the liquid handling by robot. A robot executed the liquid-handling steps of the plan.
- Prepare samples for final analysis. Human operators still prepare the samples for final chemical analysis.
Elias Nakouzi, a PNNL materials scientist and the CICERO team lead, is the named spokesperson for this work.
What the tests recommended
The table below lists the waste streams and recovery targets reported in PNNL’s May 27, 2026 account, along with PNNL’s industrial-scale status for each route.
| Waste stream | Recommended target | Industrial-scale status (PNNL) |
|---|---|---|
| Magnet waste | Neodymium and praseodymium | Magnet recycling process not yet done at industrial scale |
| Spent-magnet stream | Samarium | Magnet recycling process not yet done at industrial scale |
| Petroleum wastewater | Not stated in PNNL’s account | Recycling process not yet done at industrial scale |
These are recommendations from laboratory tests. They identify which routes the system thinks are worth pursuing; they are not production figures.
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How fast is “fast”?
The phrase “reduced to days” and the “within a day” planning figure describe different steps, and they should not be merged.
- Experiment planning: a plan for 96 simultaneous experiments within a day, built from published literature (PNNL, May 2026).
- Planning and optimizing laboratory work: Nakouzi says, “We have reduced that time to days with CICERO.” In context, “that time” refers to planning and optimizing laboratory experiments, not to mineral production.
- Industrial throughput: not established by PNNL’s account.
Why it has not cut imports yet
PNNL is direct about the central limit: the magnet and petroleum-wastewater recycling processes behind these results have not yet been carried out at industrial scale. Three gaps sit between a laboratory recommendation and a measurable change in import figures.
- Scale-up. A recovery route that works in a laboratory must be shown to work in production equipment and at production volumes.
- Economics. The evidence does not establish whether recovered material can compete on cost with imported supply.
- Feedstock. A recovery operation needs a steady supply of collected waste. That requirement is discussed below, using battery-sector data.
The separate AI effort: finding domestic deposits
The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) uses AI through its GAIA group to assess unconventional domestic mineral sources, including coal, clay, shale, and sandstone. DOE’s June 3, 2025 account says the effort has uncovered a rare-earth deposit at Brook Mine. This is a geological-assessment problem, not a waste-separation one, and the two should not be treated as the same breakthrough.
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NETL researcher Gabe Creason is cautious about what this means: “The U.S. may have more unconventional sources of rare earth elements and other critical minerals than traditional ones, but we need more data to confirm this.” His colleague Dr. Kelly Rose is hopeful about commercial uptake: “I am hopeful that it will be adopted commercially because our partners are so invested and are working with us to meet the energy sector’s needs.” That is an expression of optimism. It is not evidence that commercialization has occurred.
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The two efforts are complementary rather than interchangeable. One reduces the cost of processing material you already have; the other tries to find material you do not yet have.
| Factor | CICERO (PNNL) | GAIA (NETL, DOE) |
|---|---|---|
| What it acts on | Waste streams and separation chemistry | Geology: coal, clay, shale, and sandstone as potential sources |
| Maturity | Laboratory workflow | Resource-identification effort |
| What has been demonstrated | Experiment plans and recovery recommendations for neodymium, praseodymium, and samarium | Uncovered a rare-earth deposit at Brook Mine, per DOE (June 2025) |
| Remaining needs | Industrial-scale demonstration and economics | Additional data to confirm unconventional-resource potential |
Why the stakes are high: concentration and export controls
The IEA’s 2026 analysis notes that rare earths support energy, transport, AI, aerospace, medical, and defense applications. Its concern is supply concentration, with China as the dominant supplier in its analysis.
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China’s April 2025 export controls covered seven heavy rare-earth elements, related compounds, and magnets. Export volumes dropped sharply in April and May 2025, and some automakers cut utilization or temporarily shut production. China expanded those controls in October 2025. The IEA reports that the expansion was suspended for one year in November 2025, which would put its expiry around November 2026 unless it is extended. The IEA also reports a further tightening on dual-use goods destined for Japan in January 2026. Licensing conditions change quickly, so check the current status before relying on any date.
The IEA estimates that full implementation of the described controls could put USD 6.5 trillion per year of downstream production outside China at risk, including more than USD 1.5 trillion each in the United States and Europe. That figure measures the value of exposed production, not output already lost.
Capacity is the other constraint. The IEA finds that current and announced diversified capacity, meaning supply outside the dominant supplier, covers only part of projected 2035 demand:
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| Stage | Share of projected 2035 demand met by current and announced diversified capacity | Expansion needed beyond planned capacity (IEA) |
|---|---|---|
| Magnet rare-earth mining | About 50% | About 2 times |
| Refining | About 25% | About 4 times |
| Magnet production | Well below 20% | About 6 times |
The expansion multiples are the IEA’s estimate of what meeting projected demand outside the dominant supplier would require, on top of planned expansions.
Recycling: the potential and the timelines
The IEA estimates that rare-earth recycling could lower the need for primary supply by up to 35% by 2050. That is a global potential, not a forecast for CICERO or for U.S. imports specifically.
The timing evidence comes from a different sector. The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s July 22, 2026 assessment finds that mature battery recycling technologies could offer a pathway to reduce imports of several battery minerals within 2 to 3 years. The same assessment says the United States lacks sufficient recycling capacity, and that battery feedstock is often landfilled or exported. For semiconductor materials, substitution and recycling face longer timelines and commercialization barriers. None of these battery or semiconductor timings applies to rare-earth magnet recovery.
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What would show the claim is coming true
The headline’s promise will depend on evidence that does not yet exist in the public record. These are the signals that would matter most:
- An industrial-scale demonstration of the magnet-recycling routes that PNNL identifies.
- Economics showing that recovered material can compete with imported supply.
- A steady, collected feedstock of magnet waste.
- Independent confirmation of unconventional deposits such as the Brook Mine result.
- Stable export-control conditions for the controlled elements and magnets.
Until those signals appear, CICERO is a promising laboratory tool for rare-earth recovery, and the import question remains open.
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