US Startup Modal Motors Develops Small Lightweight Motors Without Rare Earth Magnets for Drones and Robots
US startup Modal Motors is developing small lightweight motors without rare earth magnets, targeting drones, fans, blowers, actuators, and robots, and will participate in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt next month.
Founder Michael Van Steenburg has spent the past decade manufacturing various motors in the US and North America. The new company aims to remove rare earth materials from its supply list to cut dependence on the Chinese supply chain. He noted that China has repeatedly restricted rare earth product exports; during the same period, US imports of rare earth magnets declined before the summit meeting. He believes many "reshoring" projects are merely replicating Chinese motors in the US, still betting that domestic magnet production capacity can catch up in time, stating that "it will take a while to truly replace China."
There are two parallel product lines. One is a small motor designed for drones, emphasizing weight reduction while increasing torque density and efficiency, which can also be used for fans and actuators. More aggressively, there is a flat motor called Hybrid Enigma Drive, designed for low-height spaces. Van Steenburg has a background in the automotive industry; in the late 1990s, he was involved in a hybrid powertrain that China once wanted to install in a "national car," claiming that the clock started ticking twenty-five years ago, during which he witnessed the gradual monopolization of mines and mining rights.
The report did not disclose the financing amount or mass production customers. The company focuses its narrative on material politics: drones and robots must be assembled in the US, with magnets being the shortest link in the chain. The flat motor targets positions in the body and joints where traditional cylindrical motors cannot fit, while the small motor is aimed at the weight budget of multirotors.
In market mechanisms, buyers are drone and robot manufacturers that need to comply with NDAA and are wary of export quotas; sellers are motor suppliers that still include neodymium-iron-boron in their BOM. Funding will flow to those who can prove that torque density does not drop and can provide samples with non-Chinese materials. Beneficiaries will be design firms pursuing non-magnetic or ferrite routes, while those under pressure are manufacturers trying to make reshoring a matter of "changing factories on the same blueprint."
Additionally, companies like India's Vimag and the UK's AEM are also promoting rare earth-free or virtual magnetic synchronous motors, primarily in the automotive sector; Modal is focusing on the weight of drones and flat installations, and has yet to disclose efficiency curves, peak torque, and certification progress.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Van Steenburg is making motors into geopolitical components. If reshoring still relies on Chinese magnets, the factory address changes but the bottleneck remains. Removing rare earths shifts the risk from mining to electromagnetic design: torque density, heat, and controllers must be compensated with copper, steel, and algorithms. The Battlefield stage serves defense and drone procurement officials, not consumer fan retail.
Capital wants rotating parts that can be written into compliance lists. After the US imposed tariffs on imported drones and advanced robots and listed foreign systems as restricted, manufacturers must answer where the motors come from. Whoever first delivers flyable, installable, and traceable rare earth-free samples can enter small-batch aviation and ground robotics. Automotive-grade non-magnetic motors have a longer cycle; drones allow for performance to trade off against supply chain certainty.
Similar structures include the localization of solid-state rocket engines, gallium nitride replacing some RF components, and the old route of ferrite motors in home appliances being restarted. The industry is in a window of policy-driven supply chain disassembly, with domestic magnet production capacity not yet ready. China's export restrictions themselves are a pricing signal: when magnets tighten, non-magnetic solutions shift from laboratory topics to procurement terms.
Essentially, this is a reconstruction of the supply chain. The mechanism is that rare earths are not the most expensive parts in motors, but they are the most irreplaceable licenses; removing magnets equates to removing the veto power of export quotas over design. If torque can approach that of permanent magnet solutions, procurement will first tolerate size and controller costs, as downtime is more expensive than efficiency loss.
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Factories move back to the country, but magnets remain abroad; reshoring only changes the address.
The shortest link in the supply chain determines whether the whole machine can be delivered.
When policies restrict exports, laboratory solutions become procurement terms.