I-Pulse Inc., a closely held startup co-founded by billionaire mining magnate Robert Friedland, has been awarded $250 million by the Department of Commerce’s CHIPS programme to develop next-generation silicon-carbide semiconductors and pulsed-power technology – a grant that fuses two of the Trump administration’s most urgent industrial priorities, semiconductor supply chain security and domestic energy independence, into a single bet on a technology platform that has applications extending from underground mining to national defence. FinancialMediaGuide assesses the award as a case study in how the CHIPS programme’s research and development funding has evolved beyond conventional chip fabrication subsidies into a broader competition-era industrial strategy.
I-Pulse operates laboratories in New Mexico and has been developing pulsed-power technology – systems that generate controlled surges of high-voltage electricity – for applications that include geothermal drilling, underground rock crushing, and advanced manufacturing. The specific semiconductor components being developed under the CHIPS award are intended for a geothermal drilling technique that uses those electrical surges to penetrate hard rock formations far more efficiently than conventional rotary drilling. The technology, if commercially viable at scale, could open geothermal resource development in geological formations that are currently considered uneconomical – potentially transforming geothermal from a niche energy source into a broadly accessible baseload alternative to fossil fuels.
Friedland, who has built one of the world’s most valuable mining empires through discoveries including the Voisey’s Bay nickel deposit and the Kamoa-Kakula copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has positioned I-Pulse explicitly within the AI energy narrative. “The limiting factor in artificial intelligence is clean energy, and you can’t do AI with solar or wind,” he said in announcing the CHIPS award. “The best answer is geothermal.” That framing – connecting semiconductor development, energy infrastructure, and AI compute capacity in a single argument – resonates directly with the Trump administration’s stated objectives of ensuring domestic AI leadership depends on domestically produced clean energy rather than intermittent renewables. FinancialMediaGuide situates Friedland’s energy thesis alongside the broader infrastructure buildout debate currently consuming hyperscaler capital expenditure planning, finding that the question of what energy source can reliably power AI data centres at the scale now being constructed has no settled answer.
The grant is the latest expression of Friedland’s alignment with the Trump administration’s supply chain security agenda. His copper mining company, Ivanhoe Electric Inc., is working with the US Export-Import Bank on a debt package for an Arizona copper project. He attended the Oval Office unveiling of a critical minerals stockpiling venture in February 2026. I-Pulse itself exceeded a $1 billion valuation a decade ago and counts Rio Tinto Group and Newmont Corp among its investors – institutional names that provide the kind of technical and commercial credibility that a purely venture-backed startup in a capital-intensive hardware category would struggle to assemble. Friedland said the company is likely to become a public company within a few years.
The CHIPS programme’s Research and Development funding stream, from which this award originates, is distinct from the direct fabrication subsidies that have attracted more public attention – the multi-billion-dollar grants to TSMC, Samsung, and Intel for new fab construction. R&D awards are designed to support earlier-stage technology development in areas where commercial investment alone would not produce sufficient domestic capability. The I-Pulse award fits that model: pulsed-power semiconductor technology operates in a niche where commercial returns are uncertain, development timelines are long, and the national security and energy security benefits are too diffuse to be fully captured by a private investor. Financial Media Guide delineates the boundary between CHIPS fab subsidies and CHIPS R&D awards to clarify what the government is actually buying with I-Pulse funding – not near-term manufacturing capacity, but optionality on a technology platform whose most valuable applications may not yet be fully understood.
The broader implication of the I-Pulse award is that the Trump administration’s industrial policy toolkit has expanded significantly beyond the traditional definition of semiconductor strategy. A CHIPS grant to a geothermal drilling company, justified through the pulsed-power semiconductor components that enable its technology, signals that the administration views energy infrastructure and chip supply chain security as inseparable – and is willing to use federal funding to make that connection concrete rather than treating them as parallel policy tracks that happen to serve similar geopolitical ends.
