This week, the TikTok ban becomes a bargaining chip. While the statutory deadline looms in September, President Trump says negotiations with China over TikTok’s sale may begin Monday or Tuesday. He claims a deal is “pretty much” done. That leaves a simple question: done for whom? Whether the app ends up in American hands, Chinese control, or split across both will signal how this White House intends to treat cross-border tech—transactionally, politically, or ideologically.

For all past editions, visit epistrophy.beehiiv.com. As always, I’m focused on three things:
1) Technology-driven change;
2) the latest in innovation and startup trends, and;
3) stock fraud.

Companies Discussed

In This Note:

• Companies Discussed

• Rock of Ages

• Lombardi Chart O’ The Month

• 📆 of Epistrophy Events

• Availability This Week

Rock of Ages

Electric vehicles can’t exist without batteries. And EV batteries can’t exist without hard-to-find metals: lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. Enter TMC the metals company (TMC: NASDAQ) which takes the search for clean energy a step further: why mine the land, when you can vacuum the ocean? CEO Gerard Barron, who describes the company’s product as “a battery in a rock,” says these metallic nodules just lie there on the Pacific seafloor waiting to be scooped up like seashells. No blasting, no tailings, no strip mines—just a high-tech Roomba delivering clean tech and national security.

Until recently, this sounded like something from a TED Talk on mushrooms. Then, in April, President Trump signed an executive order calling for expedited seabed extraction. The Metals Company’s stock took off. Volume surged more than 1,300%. Suddenly, it looked like federal policy was supporting “battery in a rock”.

The TMC leadership team could pass for a casting call. Barron, the leather-jacketed Australian CEO, paid himself $3.2 million in cash and stock last year, despite the fact that the company has never made a penny. His wife, Erika Ilves—TMC’s Chief Strategy Officer and former moon-mining entrepreneur—took home another $1.6 million. Their pitch deck features renderings of autonomous robots, their Ted Talks reference Marcus Aurelius and the kind of climate messaging that’s easier to buy when you’ve never operated a mine. Together, they’ve helped push the stock to a valuation above $2 billion, despite having no revenue, no buyer, no refinery and no license to operate.

This isn’t Barron’s first trip to the ocean floor. He made a reported $31 million on Nautilus Minerals, a deep-sea mining startup that left the Papua New Guinea government with a $120 million loss, an unfinished ship and a failed business. That project was backed by a now-familiar cast: sanctioned Russian oligarchs, Omani financiers disciplined by the SEC, and penny stock promoters with more busts than drill holes. It collapsed in 2019. Some of its wreckage was quietly recycled into The Metals Company.

That cast, improbably, keeps reappearing. The Metals Company’s partners and shareholders include former Nautilus executives, shell companies in the British Virgin Islands and a financier facing rape charges in San Francisco. At least one insider has a securities ban for money laundering. One of its sovereign sponsors—Nauru—is better known for hosting a one-room bank used to launder $70 billion by the Russian mob than for enforcing technical standards.

TMC is running out of cash. But its ESG narrative—metals for the EV transition—has attracted attention from tech-focused family offices and retail investors. At the same time the global market is moving away from metals like cobalt and nickel. Most Chinese EVs now use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Even Tesla has shifted in that direction for its Standard Range Model 3 and Model Y vehicles globally. Nickel and cobalt prices have declined since 2022. TMC still has no processing facility. No proven output. No buyer agreements.

And there are technical standards. Or rather, there would be, if TMC followed mining industry norms. Unlike conventional miners, TMC has published no feasibility study, no verified reserve estimate and no drill data. Its resource claims are based on box cores—literal scoops of mud. Its technology has never been tested at scale. Its refining process is largely theoretical. There is no operating plant. There is no supply agreement. The metals in the nodules may well be real; the path to turning them into revenue is not.

Even its optimistic forecasts call for more than $10 billion in capital investment. Meanwhile, the company is burning cash, issuing equity and operating under a temporary agreement with one vessel and one offshore contractor—Allseas—who can walk away at any time. Its licenses with island nations like Tonga and Nauru expire in 2026 and 2027.

It’s possible The Metals Company will succeed. It may even retrieve a battery in a rock. But the harder part may be everything after that: processing, scaling, delivering and keeping the company alive long enough to see that day.

Lombardi Chart O’ The Month

📆 of Epistrophy Events

Availability This Week

II’ll be in San Francisco all week and available for in-person or virtual meetings. For those watching the ByteDance/White House negotiations, I’m closely tracking which suitors are in play (which we wrote about in February), what terms the U.S. is demanding and whether this sets precedent for future app bans or carveouts.

Written reports are available to clients, with video summaries on YouTube, and of course our popular summaries of the summaries on Instagram and TikTok and YouTubeShorts.’m available all week so email or even text if you don’t hear back right away. I’d love to expand on the thoughts I’ve share, and I’ll be right on top of all the earnings reports outlined above.  Written reports are available to clients, with video summaries on YouTube and, of course our popular summaries of the summaries (yes, the second derivative) on Instagram and Tiktok.

I hope these notes are helpful to you. I’d love to discuss them further and, as always, comments, questions and ideas are appreciated. If you have a friend or even a frenemy whom you think might benefit from this note, have them reach out and I’ll put them on the list.