Alternative Investing Report - November 6, 2025

*as of 11/5; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, CL50

A pair of rare earths startups secured a $1.4 billion funding deal from the Trump administration and private investors, as interest in the sector heats up. U.S.-based startups Vulcan Elements, a rare earth magnet manufacturer, and ReElement Technologies, a rare earth mineral ore processor, are receiving a $620 million loan from the Department of Defense, $50 million of federal incentives, and $550 million in private investment. This funding follows a deal in July where the DoD invested $400 million in MP Materials, which runs the only American rare earths mine.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Rare earths are a term for metals that are difficult to mine and are essential for advanced technologies in smartphones, clean energy infrastructure and — most important to the government — military arms such as drones and missiles. The market is currently dominated by China, which accounts for 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of its processing. The effort to onshore more rare earths production is a boon for U.S.-based startups in the sector, and a number of public stocks have seen significant gains this year as well.

🪙 Ripple fundraise: The fintech best known for its XRP token raised $500 million at a valuation of $40 billion, nearly four times its $11.3 billion valuation from January 2024.

⚾ October card sales: Nearly $400 million of trading cards were purchased online last month, the second highest total on record, and 2.7 million cards were graded in October, setting a new record.

🏡 First-time home buyers: In the 12 months ending in June, first-time homebuyers made up a record-low 21% of all buyers, with the average age of a first-time buyer reaching a record-high of 40, showing just how difficult the market is for younger cohorts.

💵 Private equity warnings: Institutional investors in private equity are worried that firms’ growing focus on attracting retail investors will lead to a need for greater dealflow and lower quality investments.

🏢 Industrial outdoor storage: For many of the same reasons that the industrial sector has been hot - the growth of AI and e-commerce - industrial outdoor storage facilities have been seeing a boost in demand and rent growth.

🍃 Wind farm acquisition: Apollo Global Management agreed to buy 50% of the world’s largest offshore wind farm for $6.5 billion, a major deal for a clean tech sector that has been facing (no pun intend) considerable headwinds in the past year.

AI agents, which are essentially bots that help people complete tasks online, have received a lot of attention for their potential ability to transform the way people interact with the Internet. There is a lot of new ground being broken, and as such, there are bound to be disputes, as with Amazon’s recent legal action against Perplexity, demanding the startup stop letting its agents make purchases from the tech giant’s online marketplace. Amazon expressed concerns about a degraded user experience, but it also seems clear that bot shopping could harm its advertising business and that Perplexity might also compete with its own in-house AI agents. This dispute comes despite Perplexity being a major customer of Amazon’s cloud service and Jeff Bezos being an investor into Perplexity. For now, AI agents are not quite advanced enough to be efficient shoppers, but that day will come soon.