Jeffrey Whalen, CEO, Magnetics Corporation

In an interview with Invest:, Jeffrey Whalen, CEO of Magnetics Corporation (MagCorp), discussed the company’s organic growth model and its role in developing and delivering permanent, resistive and superconducting magnets. “Across the board in the magnetics and superconductivity industries, the United States is positioned to experience transformative advancements in not only technology, but also supply chain control that will dramatically increase national and economic security,” Whalen said.

How is MagCorp positioned within the broader advanced manufacturing and electronics sector?

In 2025, we got into larger contracts working on superconducting magnets. Most people think of refrigerator magnets, but these are a different type of magnet. The most familiar example of a superconducting magnet is an MRI machine. These are massive superconducting magnets, and are the type of magnets that we build now.

In 2025, we grew the company by 2X, all organic growth, with no investment, no debt, no grants, nothing like that. We hit 2026 and started to see a trend and an opportunity pipeline where we were never going to be an investment-style company that was going to grow 10x or 100x in 18 months, but we were a healthy, value-position-driven company that could expect two to three times growth year over year.

Our business model is a little different from other development companies we compete with. Instead of being a vendor where partners come to us and say they know exactly what they want us to build, the types of partners we look for come to us and say they have a problem and do not know how to solve it. That usually shows up in three ways. They have an idea and do not know how to build it.

They have a product and tried to build it, but it is not working and they need us to fix it. Or they have a product that is working well, but they want a next-generation version and need us to make it wildly better in all ways. We sign joint development agreements with our partners that tightly couple our company missions and project efforts across all business fronts. Our main sectors of activity are manufacturing, medical, compute, and energy. Specific industries include MRI machines, fusion nuclear reactors, magnetic orthopedic implants like knees and hips, radiation oncology systems where we build accelerators and beamline magnets, superconducting wire manufacturing, and quantum technologies. 

With growing demand in both the healthcare and energy sectors, how has that influenced your business and strategic priorities when it comes to innovation?

Rather than trying to propose something and sell a dream, we were trying to look at what was happening in real time and where we could see opportunities to advance the mission of our partners. One of the things that became clear to us a few years ago was that we would create these large B2B networks and connect with companies across the spectrum, from large multinational corporations down to tiny startup companies in Florida, out of Florida, and even outside the United States. We knew we were not going to do deliverable-based contracts with all of them, but we had synergy and wanted to put deals together where everybody was getting a win.

That drove us to start developing a relationship with the state of Florida government. We began working closely with the Florida Department of Commerce and asking what to do with companies that were looking to expand and potentially site their operations in Florida. If those companies had relevance to our supply chain or partner networks, then having them as our neighbors was a huge driver for MagCorp. If the state of Florida could incentivize them sufficiently to move here, then we could be closer geographically and work more easily together.

We started developing relationships with different ecosystems beyond Tallahassee, including Fort Walton, Orlando, Tampa, Melbourne, Lakeland, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and all the way up through Space Coast. We were asking where the best sites were that we could bring companies together and drive innovation. Tampa really rose to the top in certain ways. We developed relationships with Moffitt Cancer Center, the Tampa Medical and Research District, Hillsborough, Polk, and Pasco County governments, and universities there as well.

We started seeing a bigger picture where we asked whether we could build ecosystems around our industries and co-locate key supply chain partners, even within the same industrial parks. A good example is a current effort to site a superconducting wire manufacturer right next to us so we can fabricate magnets from that wire, and right next to the integration partner that can put that into an MRI machine or radiation oncology suite, all in the same park, so that instead of shipping stuff across the ocean, we are walking it across the street.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities to navigate today’s changing environment and continue building organic growth?

When you think about reshoring or domestication of the supply chain, the downstream portion of those supply chains is not where the United States has lagged. If the raw materials are secured, building components, making components into full systems, and packaging those systems into finished products, that part of the supply chain has a great partner landscape in the United States across many of our industry sectors. The issue has always been that far upstream side of the supply chain in our industries: where do we get the raw materials?

The reason this is so important is because our magnets and superconducting systems require special (often rare) materials.  We can’t make our products out of just wood or steel, and they always require materials like rare earth elements. People have seen magnets, rare earths, and other critical materials in the news, and all of the instability of that supply chain has arisen because of decades of complacency around getting it cheaply from China or elsewhere outside of the United States.

Everything was fine doing this for a long time, until the geopolitical instabilities resulted in embargos and heavy tariffs that began to totally disrupt the supply chains about 10 years ago. Mining rare earths is one of the most environmentally risky forms of mining, and in the United States, you are not going to get away with what can be done in a place like China to dispose of tailings and waste streams. That creates a big challenge in the supply chain for the United States and its allies when China decides to halt exports.

Our main interest has been on a pivot; a fundamental mindset shift. We have magnets all around us, and we are throwing them in the garbage when we are done with the products containing them. Cellphones, old cars, and other widespread products are being discarded even though the magnets could be recycled. 

The other major opportunity is valorizing (capturing and turning into supply chain feedstocks) the rare earth materials found in tailings from other mining operations. When mining for coal, phosphate, copper, or other domestic feedstocks, tailings are produced, and often times rare earths are being concentrated in them. The tailings can be utilized to make a co-product instead of just sitting there as a valuable but completely unutilized material. Recycling and valorization are the two areas where we think there are major innovation opportunities to increase the resiliency, stability and long-term security of the magnet and superconductor supply chains.

Looking toward the next five years, where do you see those opportunities expanding for MagCorp and for the broader business community?

In the five-year timeframe, there are two main reasons we will continue to be involved in the magnet and superconductor supply chains. One is that it secures our upstream feedstock and the availability of the materials we need to build what our partners need. The second is that it improves the health of the entire ecosystem’s supply chain and stabilizes the markets we work in so that customers do not come to us wanting to buy something but cannot move forward because of a supply chain problem.

We do not mine, and instead we work in partner-centered development of revolutionary valorization technologies. We are an integrator, team-builder and business development leader for these efforts. We often take the role of the project owner or project facilitator and bring together the partner networks that have the technologies needed to implement a real and scalable solution. 

One of the main areas we are most interested in is the use of phosphate mining tailings in the state of Florida. Florida is one of the largest producers of phosphate for commercial agriculture in the world, and it produces millions of tons of tailings in the central Florida region. Those tailings have rare earths in them. We are building the partner teams needed to bring projects to life in the form of valorization pilots and eventual full-scale deployments.

Do I think we are going to see full-scale deployments within five years? I hope so, I think it is possible. But do I think in that same timeframe we will see pilot-scale deployments that prove the economics work and that they scale? Absolutely, yes.