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While Wall Street fixates on gold, lithium, and rare earth elements, a lesser-known critical mineral is quietly becoming one of the most strategically important materials in the world — and a growing opportunity in the small and microcap space. The mineral is antimony, and the race to secure domestic supply is accelerating fast.

Antimony sits at the intersection of defense, energy, and advanced technology. It hardens ammunition and military alloys, serves as a key component in flame-retardant materials protecting electronics and aircraft wiring, and plays a critical role in semiconductors, infrared sensors, and night-vision systems. The U.S. Department of Defense has identified it as one of the most critical minerals in its supply chain — and for good reason. Without antimony, a significant portion of America’s weapons systems simply don’t function.

The problem is stark. The United States has not mined antimony domestically since the early 1990s. China controls roughly 60% of global production and has enacted increasingly aggressive export restrictions, including an outright ban on shipments to the U.S. in late 2024. A Govini supply chain analysis found that more than 80,000 individual weapons parts across nearly 1,900 DoD weapon systems incorporate antimony or related critical minerals. That is not a supply chain vulnerability — that is a national security exposure.

Washington has responded with urgency. The Department of Defense has deployed nearly $400 million in investments and stockpile contracts around domestic antimony production, the most concentrated federal mobilization around a single critical mineral in recent memory. Earlier this year, the DoD disbursed $27 million under the Defense Production Act directly to United States Antimony Corporation (NYSE American: UAMY) — the only domestic processor and finished antimony product manufacturer in the country — to modernize and expand its refining facility in Thompson Falls, Montana, with capacity expected to double to 320 tons per month by year-end.

The other name drawing serious institutional attention is Perpetua Resources (NASDAQ: PPTA). The company broke ground on its Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho in October 2025 after years of permitting work. The project holds 148 million pounds of antimony and is positioned to become the only domestically mined source of the mineral, potentially supplying 35% of annual U.S. antimony demand in its first six years of production. Perpetua has already secured over $70 million in DoD awards and a preliminary $2 billion financing term sheet from the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

From a market standpoint, the global antimony market is currently valued at roughly $2.4 to $2.5 billion. Analysts project it could reach $4.1 to $4.4 billion by the mid-2030s, representing steady annual growth of 5% to 6% over the next decade. Prices have moderated from a record high of nearly $60,000 per tonne reached in mid-2025 following China’s export ban, settling around $25,000 per tonne — still nearly double where they sat two years ago.

The broader context matters here. With the Iran conflict still rattling global supply chains and reshoring emerging as a defining economic policy, the U.S. government’s push to develop domestic critical mineral production is not a trend — it is a structural shift backed by federal dollars and bipartisan political will. For small and microcap investors, that combination of government demand, supply scarcity, and growing commercial applications across defense and advanced technology creates a genuinely compelling long-term setup in a sector that most of the market is still sleeping on.

Antimony may not be a household name yet. It probably will be.