The Founders Who Left Tesla to Rebuild America | a16z

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Turner Caldwell and Drew Baglino about what it will take to close America's critical minerals gap and modernize the power infrastructure that underpins the AI economy. With the US more than 50 years behind China in critical mineral supply and grid infrastructure built on systems designed a century ago, they examine where the real bottlenecks are and how to move faster. The conversation covers how automation, reinforcement learning, and vertically integrated operations can compress the timelines for mining and refining, and why co-locating supply chains matters more than labor costs in the race to reshore manufacturing. Baglino explains how solid state transformers can replace aging mechanical grid equipment with silicon and software, while Caldwell outlines how Mariana Minerals is applying autonomous systems to remove the know-how bottleneck from critical mineral processing. They also discuss the lessons both founders carried from Tesla — techno-optimism, appetite for risk, and mission-driven talent — and what durable industrial policy, smarter permitting, and a federal grid investment framework would unlock for American competitiveness. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:47 AI Needs Physical Infrastructure 02:23 Meet the Builders 03:11 Mariana Minerals Explained 04:19 Heron Power's Grid Upgrade 05:31 Why Onshoring Matters 07:48 Tesla Lessons and Workforce 21:09 Policy Asks and Wrap Resources: Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/tbc415 Follow Drew on X: https://x.com/baglino Follow Erin on X: https://x.com/espricewright Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

• 0:00Speaker 1

  The US is 50 years behind on critical minerals supply. We are too slow at designing, building, and ramping up new minerals capacity. Even after we have licensed operate.

• 0:09Speaker 0

  Even though there's so much innovation happening at the edge of the grid on the other side of the wire, there's really been no change.

• 0:15Speaker 2

  What does the Tesla model give you that a traditional industrial company doesn't have?

• 0:20Speaker 1

  The belief that you can innovate on systems that are old and archaic. If the outcome is worth it, Tesla will fight through the challenges of getting to that outcome. We're making a big bet on autonomy in refineries where we use reinforcement learning to actually remove humans from the loop and determining how

• 0:35Speaker 0

  refineries operate. The world's leading producer of silicon carbide, which is a key power semiconductor is based here in the US. And so we should be leveraging the applications of that technology here first, manufacturing here at home. And if we don't

• 0:50Speaker 2

  know it's tempting to talk about the AI race as a competition of models and chips. But the truth is that AI dominance and re-industrialization more broadly are physical projects. They are energy projects. They are mining and refining projects. They are manufacturing projects. They are grid scale projects. Every breakthrough model, new factory, an autonomous system that we'll talk about here today has a real world requirement underneath it. Materials, energy, and the ability to move electricity where it's needed when it's needed. We increasingly hear concerns that AI will put an undue strain on an already faltering grid, will demand more energy than we can give, more build-out than we can keep up with.

• 1:37Speaker 2

  And in many ways, these are fair concerns. But rather than taking this at face value and putting our pencils down on progress, we see this as a call to action, an opportunity. We can do great things in this country. We have rallied around national projects before, accomplish things few dream possible, and we can do so again. This is the next chapter of American dynamism. If we want to rebuild the industrial backbone of the United States, we have to rethink the entire stack from critical minerals to energy generation to transmission to how we build and interconnect new infrastructure at the speed that it's needed. This next conversation brings together two incredible entrepreneurs building a cross that stack to talk about what it will take to do just that.

• 2:28Speaker 2

  Please join me in welcoming co-founder and CEO of Mariana Minerals, Turner Caldwell, and founder and CEO of Heron Power, Drew Baglino. We'll spend a lot more time in this room today talking about AI, but the constraint on America's AI future. And in as I mentioned, I think reindustrialization more broadly is in many ways atoms and not algorithms. So you two are both building piece fundamental pieces of this physical infrastructure for the that the future AI economy can't live without. So maybe just for the audience to get started, why don't you briefly explain what you both build and why these physical industries matter

• 3:11Speaker 1

  uh yeah. So uh Mariana Minerals is a software first minerals mining and refining company. Um when I say software first, what that means is that about a quarter of the company is software engineers, machine learning engineers uh that are developing three core operating systems uh to accelerate project delivery uh and uh increase the amount of autonomy that we see in minerals operations and and in refining operations. Um Capital Project OS is basically a product lifecycle management tool uh is the way to think about it, but that goes from process development and mine development all the way through engineering construction and procurement um and doing a gen tech workflow automation kind of through that stack. Uh Plant OS is how we use reinforcement learning to control refineries, uh, and mineOS is again how we use reinforcement learning to control, do short interval autonomous control of mining operations.

• 3:58Speaker 1

  Um but we do not sell software, we are not a SaaS company. Uh we develop uh we we engineer, build and operate minerals projects. And so we have a copper mine that's operating in Southeast Utah that's producing high-grade copper materials today, uh high purity copper materials today. Uh and we're building a lithium refinery in Texas with the goal of building 10 projects in the next 10 years.

• 4:18Speaker 2

  How about you, Drew?

• 4:19Speaker 0

  Yeah. So uh first, thank you for having me today here, representing the Heron Power team. So at Herm Power, we build um power electronics to accelerate the electricity sector. Um over the last four decades, you know, in parallel with the uh Moore's Law improvement of transistors in compute, there's been a similar improvement in power transistors. Uh and over those decades, it's enabled uh more and more applications. You know, we see them in our how we charge our phones, in telecommunications, uh in data centers. Um, but really that that improvement hasn't been brought to the grid itself. And in a time of growing demand uh for electricity for so many different reasons, all of them positive. And the fact that electricity growth and energy growth is correlated with economic growth and prosperity, uh, we need new solutions.

• 5:08Speaker 0

  And luckily the power semiconductor space is uh is ready to bring those solutions, and I'm excited to do that at Heron Power. We're focused on uh building solid-state transformers to use silicon and software to replace steel oil and copper in power conversion at data centers, uh large-scale energy installations like solar and battery projects and others.

• 5:30Speaker 2

  Amazing. Um the US government has made it a pretty clear and loud priority to reshore critical supply chains from critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and you know, there's also been a lot of focus in the AI race against China. Um so maybe in plain terms, where does it leave us if American companies like yours don't exist and win?

• 5:52Speaker 0

  Um Yeah, I can take that first. Um, this power semiconductor capability that is enabling solid-state transformers actually is the outgrowth of uh many decades of partnership between the federal government and uh academia and industry. Um, both the DOE and the Navy have focused a lot on advanced semiconductors. Um so it just makes sense that the place where you know this technology was first developed should be the place where it all the benefits are commercialized. Um the world's leading uh uh producer of silicon carbide, which is a key power semiconductor is based, you know, here in the US. Um so we should be, you know, leveraging the applications of that technology here first, manufacturing here at home. And if we don't, we're basically losing the all the benefits that accrue from that technology to other other company other countries.

• 6:43Speaker 0

  And I don't think we should do that.

• 6:46Speaker 1

  Yeah, I think put plainly, um, you know, the US is 50 years behind on critical minerals supply. Uh and so if we're not innovating in the critical minerals space, we will be perpetually behind. And the things that China does right now to accelerate uh when you say

• 6:59Speaker 2

  behind, you mean pr specifically behind China.

• 7:02Speaker 1

  Uh specifically behind China. But I would say also globally we have a couple of decades of flag. Um the the things that we can do at the top level are uh accelerate permitting, we can make uh project level finance more available, but that doesn't actually solve the underlying problem, which is that we are too slow at designing, building and ramping up new minerals capacity, even after we have licensed operate. And so Mariana's laser focused on that phase of project development, which is you have to get things permitted, yes, but once you start building, it can take five years to get something built, and then it can take three or three to five years to get something actually operating at rate. Uh and that's why we're laser focused on that, so that even if we kind of start to lower the burdens to play catch up with China, we actually have to go faster than China does.

• 7:48Speaker 2

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, both both of you spent a long time at Tesla. Drew, you spent 18 years at Tesla. You're like something of a deity among power electronics nerds, I would say. And now you work on grid scale power systems, which is which is different. Um so when you looked at the grid, what convinced you to leave Tesla and tackle this problem? This I I think seemingly unsexy uh unsexy problem and in this way. Um and maybe all adding on to that. What is it actually take in terms of time, cost, regulatory hurdles to to do this in the US.

• 8:24Speaker 0

  Big question there.

• 8:25Speaker 2

  Two questions. I apologize. Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 0

  Um, I was I had a front row seat to an amazing set of impactful innovations at the grid's edge, right? EVs becoming more affordable, you know, uh not just more affordable, but more omnipresent around us, uh, building the supercharging infrastructure uh to support those electric vehicles, and then working on grid storage. I was responsible for you know the mega pack and scaling the energy business at Tesla. Um all along the way, what what I saw was even though there's so much innovation happening at the edge of the grid, on the other side of the wire, there's really been no change. You know, the the systems underpinning the grid today are the same largely mechanical systems that were developed over a hundred years ago. And you don't get control, you don't get monitoring. Um you end up with an overbuilt system that is fragile.

• 9:16Speaker 0

  Uh and also there's not a lot of suppliers providing that equipment, and most of them are actually headquartered overseas. And that just doesn't seem like a secure position for such critical infrastructure for us to have here in the United States. Um what does it take to get things done here? Um I think you can. I mean, I I built the megafactory uh with my team. You know, my team was super awesome. Uh in Hello in Lathrop, California uh in 11 months. It was a JCPenney warehouse 11 months later, the first product came off the line. Um but ultimately what it comes down to is alignment. You know, when you're working with your local jurisdiction, they can use the process for a code compliant project to say no at every step, or they can say yes. At every step. And so how do we as a collective, you know, gain alignment that building reindustrializing the US, building critical infrastructure and supporting our critical supply chains here in the US is a good thing.

• 10:11Speaker 0

  And identifying ways to say yes at every step along the way and really accelerate these processes versus no. And when you do find that, it can be magical. That's been my experience.

• 10:22Speaker 2

  And I know in particular, you've talked, we, you know, we've talked about sort of labor costs and labor shortages. And oftentimes people point to that as the reason why they can't get things done in the US. But what's your experience, Ben?

• 10:33Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, these today's factories are really automated. If you're building a new factory today, you know, in China or the US, the labor differential is less than 10% of cost of goods sold. It might even be less than 5%. But what actually is driving the competitiveness of the of the different locations in my mind is it comes down to supply chain. And how do we develop co-located critical supply chains in the United States where the logistics costs are much, much shorter and much, much lower because the logistics time is much, much shorter. If you look at, you know, China, they are so thoughtful about building these industrial areas, you know, everything that you could possibly need to build a car which has 7,000 parts in it, you know, is with within less than a three hours drive.

• 11:18Speaker 0

  Getting to that kind of co-location of the supply base in the United States would be a major unlock along with automation, uh, while still providing immense numbers of of like high paying, you know, uh important jobs. Uh I think that's a vision that I I'd like to advocate for.

• 11:35Speaker 2

  Yeah. And i i mean, when we're talking about jobs on the it w within factories, this isn't, you know, your grandfather, great grandfather's supply chain uh uh assembly line factory floor. These are, you know, technical jobs may require training, but you know, ha have skill and and and the pay associated with that.

• 11:56Speaker 0

  100%.

• 11:57Speaker 2

  Okay, Turner, um, the US government ranks onshoring critical minerals as essential to economic and national security. It's been in the news a lot for the last year, rare earths, critical minerals, you know, these things feel very bottlenecked. Um so much of the processing capacity for these materials sits overseas, especially in geopolitical rivals, namely China. Uh so given that vulnerability, how does Mariana Minerals work help the US reclaim not just the extraction side, the actual mining, but processing and supply chain sovereignty for critical minerals?

• 12:30Speaker 1

  Yeah. So we focus on the full chain from mining all the way through refining. Uh you have to focus on the full chain. That handoff in the middle leads to a lot of actual like market inefficiencies. Um, we've we're making a big bet on autonomy fundamentally. Like we're making a big bet on the fact that we can build systems that enable us to engineer things faster using large language models, accelerate the pure the procurement lifecycle uh and do autonomous short interval control of construction operations where you're really doing resource balancing between what materials do you have on site, what's your list of tasks, a list of tasks, and what people do you have on site and kind of like doing that optimization is all things that can be done algorithmically. Um and then we're making big bets on autonomy and refineries where we use reinforcement learning to actually remove humans from the loop and determining how uh refineries operate.

• 13:17Speaker 1

  And so when you have a highly variable feedstock, because the Earth is heterogeneous, um, you need to constantly be tuning the temperatures, the flow rates, the chemical addition rates, the residence times of a of a highly complex refining circuit. Um and we don't have that labor pool here that has that embedded know-how uh that can walk up to a refiner and quickly get it operating on spec and then also manage that variability. Uh and the same is true on the the mining side of things where um mining at at those mine sites were making thousands of decisions a day. Um and when you don't have that labor pool of folks that are able to make the right decisions, the right thousand decisions, that can cascade into low productivity, low availability of equipment um and low utilization of equipment. Um but the the software angle is really not enough, and we kind of talked about how we're vertically integrated.

• 14:03Speaker 1

  The the the gate to uh software penetration, really not the gate. What sets the rate of software penetration and technology penetration into these into these plants and into these mines ultimately is the operating teams. It's like what is the tech stack that they're comfortable with? And then for the most part, it is pen and paper and maybe 150 spreadsheets that are kind of scattered around an operation. And um what what you need to do in order to actually accelerate software uptake in the space is you have to go down into that operating layer, understand the core problems that they're facing, but then also really control the culture and make sure that the software tools themselves are designed for the folks that are have gonna have to be interfacing with them. Um that's why we think that sitting the software engineers right next to the operating teams, but not in like a forward deploy engineer type way where everyone has the same incentives is what's going to yield the best results when it comes to trying to optimize these assets.

• 14:57Speaker 2

  Um you both, as I mentioned before, you both came out of Tesla. It's one of the companies that proved the template for American dynamism success, built factories in America for the first time in a long time. Uh Turner, you led Tesla's uh mineral minerals and metals team, Drew, you ran Power Train and Energy. What does the Tesla model give you that a traditional industrial company doesn't have? Um what is genuinely different maybe about building in your new respective sectors uh that you didn't expect relative to Tesla.

• 15:31Speaker 1

  Yeah, I'd say they're I'd say they're three big ones and that they might overlap a little bit with with truce, but um, I think that the general like techno optimism and like the what technology can do in this in these sectors is much, much higher at Tesla, right? The belief that you can innovate on systems that are old and archaic is like at the core of the company. Um the other is a general like appetite for risk, which enables super fast decision making um and enables the teams to move really quickly with without being burdened with you know fear of making the wrong decision. Um the last is like a clear, you know, firm commitment to not giving up on projects that have the outcome. Like if the outcome is worth it, like we that Tesla will like fight through the challenges of getting to that outcome. And I think what we see, at least in in in the minerals industry is like folks will give it a shot for a year.

• 16:19Speaker 1

  You know, people have tried to do autonomy and mining for a long time. Um and generally a lot of companies will just end up, you know, they'll fail, they'll put it on the shelf, uh, or they'll isolate it into a small team that goes and they don't get really tapped again. Um and Tesla does a really good job of just like barreling through the challenges as long as the outcome is worth it.

• 16:40Speaker 0

  Um I would add a couple more uh I uh aspects of it. I, you know, many times in Tesla's history, uh, you know, the company's future success, really like whether or not the paycheck will clear, you know, was bet on the team within the company executing well. Um that is a very like focusing reality. Um and it drives people to do their best work and I and and like you end up needing to manifest that outcome. You know, it's I hate to say do or die, but it's equivalent to that. Um so that's that's something that exists uniquely within startups. I mean, I think, you know, Turner and I are going to try to bring that, are bringing that to our own teams, but um, and and wouldn't be in an in a legacy industrial, you know, you know, company. Uh the other thing is um there was always a clear vision of the purpose of the company.

• 17:29Speaker 0

  And that's like a beacon for talent, right? People like, oh, I I want to work on that. That's like that sounds amazing. And so you get to basically pick from the best already. Um and then you're in this high growth environment. You know, anybody who is excited about their career trajectory and and and having a trend in the in a good direction is also going to want to work there and then is also going to want to stay there and see it through because their the their impact is real. They see the the impact of their actions on the outcomes around them. And then those outcomes result in their own growth, right? They they move from one part of the company like Turner did uh to another, uh uh or or myself. I mean, my my my career history. So I think those are our are in stark comparison to like a you know multiproduct conglomerate industrial conglomerate that's selling the same thing today that they they were selling, you know, decades ago or a mining company that's got 150 years of heritage.

• 18:27Speaker 0

  So um that's a hard thing to replicate not in a startup, and it's a hard thing to maintain within a startup, but I I think it's really important to getting things done.

• 18:38Speaker 2

  Yeah, yeah. Totally. Um talking about kind of getting things done and building that team and uh being able to hire, you know, one thing that jumps out is both of your companies are building real facilities that will create real jobs. Uh, Turner, your initial lithium and copper projects should add you know over 500 construction jobs um and additional full-time jobs in the next 18 months uh with many more as you scale operations. Drew, uh your Heron is getting ready to build out its first large factory, which should also be something around 500 jobs and you know, that's just the first factory of many. What have you both learned about building an industrial workforce in the US in 2026?

• 19:21Speaker 0

  Uh I think you have to be creative here in the US. We are reindustrializing, and I can't just go to like a phone tree of power electronics manufacturing engineers or or or production associates. Uh and I mean, in my background, uh I built uh I was responsible for building along with my team uh the 4680 program manufacturing facility, a 50 gigawatt hour battery facility in Texas. And, you know, at that point, there were really not a lot of battery operations in the United States. So you instead have to look for analogs. So I was hiring people out of high speed bottling plants and out of, you know, uh syringe manufacturing facilities where they're making billions of syringes. And you know, if you can get that creative. Hack going, you find that there's immense depth of talent in the US. And people are excited to work in new industries and you build that shared vision of the future.

• 20:10Speaker 0

  And I'm I'm very positive about what you can get accomplished here. Yeah, I would say

• 20:14Speaker 1

  that looking at analog industries is a great point. It's the, you know, for the mining industry, we're in a similar position where we're kind of we've had 35 years of just meaningful attrition in the in the labor pool. Um, but the oil and gas sector has a bunch of extremely good talent. Um the the software space, um, you know, a lot of the underlying optimization algorithms that we're writing for our plants, they look very, very similar to uh the optimization algorithms that are in dog walking apps and uh Uber right optimization, uh underwriting loans, uh, ad optimization. Um there is transferability in the in the like broader US talent pool. Um what's important is building that talent magnet. Um and it's a it's an interesting one for us because you know the the mining industry, um like the villains in every movie are the the resource extraction folks.

• 21:01Speaker 1

  And so we have to we have to like combat that and kind of save

• 21:05Speaker 2

  mining sexy again.

• 21:06Speaker 1

  That well, that's that's right. That's yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 2

  Um finally I know we're at time, but if you had one specific and actionable ask for the people in this room that would materially speed up production, umufacturing, create jobs in the next 12 to 24 months. What would what would you say? You have the floor.

• 21:26Speaker 1

  Um I'll go I'll go first. I think the um, you know, if we have a minerals mandate, what we should do is we should look at everything that was done in the last 50 years for oil and gas when we had an energy mandate and we still have an energy mandate. Um, you know, that's a lot of asks boiled down into one. Um but there are a lot of tools in the toolkit. Uh and I think the most important thing is providing uh the right incentive structure that mobilizes the private capital markets behind uh these projects so that they're confident that there is a market in the long term uh and that the rug isn't gonna get pulled out from under them uh in an industry that you know for the last 30 years really hasn't been built out in the US.

• 22:03Speaker 0

  Yeah, I I think durable industrial policy that you can plan around. Um I mean, I'm very pro uh manufacturing in the United States, building these technologies in the United States. Um, but you know, my suppliers, maybe my financiers are not as certain. So yeah, durable industrial policy driving in this direction. Uh I think a concerted effort between the federal government and the states to identify areas of like energy and manufacturing build out, like so you can get those co-located supply chains that I mentioned before would be a major win, you know, where where the local jurisdictions are getting to yes with you rather than trying to find ways to say no all the way along the project. And then the last thing uh is um I I'm a fan of the electricity sector.

• 22:49Speaker 0

  I think it's enabling so much growth. I like the idea of a federal highway trust fund for the for the for the grid. Um it never has existed. Um that's sort of why we have this patchwork. How do we find a you know master plan of build out of linear infrastructure that maybe connects those you know, manufacturing energy build-out zones to improve resilience, reduce costs, and really move us forward as a nation.

• 23:14Speaker 2

  Awesome. Thanks so much. You heard it here.

• 23:17Speaker 0

  Thanks. Thank you.