# Ames Laboratory Uses Physics-Informed AI to Design Rare-Earth-Free Magnets

> Permanent magnets are the quiet workhorses inside electric motors, wind turbines and hard drives, and the strongest ones lean on rare-earth elements whose supply is dominated by a handful of countries. Researchers at Ames National Laboratory are trying to design around that dependency, using what they call physics-informed AI to hunt for magnet materials that skip rare earths entirely. The twist is in the method. Rather than training a model only on lists of known materials, the team bakes the underlying physics into the AI so it can reason about why a material behaves the way it does, then pairs that with high-throughput simulations to test candidates far faster than a lab bench allows. The work is part of the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, which is betting on AI to shore up energy and critical-mineral security. If it pans out, the payoff is less about a single magnet and more about a repeatable recipe for inventing materials that sidestep geopolitical chokepoints, a reminder that some of AI's most consequential uses are happening far from chatbots.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Ames Laboratory · Published Friday, July 10, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Permanent magnets are the quiet workhorses inside electric motors, wind turbines and hard drives, and the strongest ones lean on rare-earth elements whose supply is dominated by a handful of countries. Researchers at Ames National Laboratory are trying to design around that dependency, using what they call physics-informed AI to hunt for magnet materials that skip rare earths entirely. The twist is in the method. Rather than training a model only on lists of known materials, the team bakes the underlying physics into the AI so it can reason about why a material behaves the way it does, then pairs that with high-throughput simulations to test candidates far faster than a lab bench allows. The work is part of the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, which is betting on AI to shore up energy and critical-mineral security. If it pans out, the payoff is less about a single magnet and more about a repeatable recipe for inventing materials that sidestep geopolitical chokepoints, a reminder that some of AI's most consequential uses are happening far from chatbots.

## Source

[Read the full story at Ames Laboratory](https://www.ameslab.gov/news/ames-lab-scientist-provides-ai-driven-roadmap-for-future-permanent-magnet-design)

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