Want to build an AI datacenter? Gas turbines have a multi-year waiting list. Bloom Energy slipped into that gap: it makes fuel cells that turn natural gas into electricity with no turbine at all, and the stock soared. Doomberg has covered the company favorably, but one thing kept nagging: the fuel cells need rare earth metals, yet the company insisted it had essentially no China exposure. Short seller Hunterbrook hit exactly that spot. Its report claims the key ingredient, scandium, is effectively a Chinese product, traces four supply routes leading back to China, and calculates that Bloom's growth plan would require several times the world's entire scandium output. The stock fell 12% intraday. Doomberg goes through both sides' arguments to see whose logic actually holds.
Why it matters · The AI power bottleneck just moved upstream. It is no longer turbines, it is the metals inside the thing that replaces turbines.