Every now and then, something so wildly off-the-wall pops up in the data that I have to make sure my screen didn’t glitch. That was the case this morning when I saw John Paulson (the man who’s known for the “greatest trade ever”) dropped just under $100 million into a microcap Idaho mining company that most investors couldn’t identify if you handed them the ticker, the company name, and a shovel. For those keeping score at home, the company is Perpetua Resources. You’re welcome.

To recap: Paulson made $15 billion for his firm (and pocketed $4 billion for himself) by betting the housing market would collapse in 2008 while the rest of Wall Street was drinking from the punch bowl labeled “AAA-rated.” Now his firm is a family office, and when he writes a nine-figure check into a single name, I’m gonna guess it’s not just for funsies. It probably means something. He purchased 7.6 million shares at $13.20, which just so happens to be the same price institutional investors paid in Perpetua’s recent $325 million public raise. His stake came via a $100 million private placement, topping off a $425 million capital raise… money that now goes straight toward building Perpetua’s pride and joy: the Stibnite Gold Project.

So what is Stibnite? Other than sounding like a fictional town in a Hardy Boys book, it’s a large-scale, gold and antimony project buried deep in Idaho’s hills. It’s expected to produce about 300,000 ounces of gold per year once operational. At current gold prices, that’s roughly $690 million in annual revenue, which is a nice start. But who really cares about gold anyways?

Because gold isn’t even the headline act. The real story is antimony, a critical mineral that’s essential for things like semiconductors, EV batteries, and military-grade everything. The U.S. currently imports all of it… most of it from China and Russia, which isn’t exactly an ideal setup given, well, geopolitics. Perpetua controls what’s believed to be the largest domestic deposit of the stuff. Better yet, they already have federal permits in hand.

And no, this isn’t one of those pitch-deck fantasies with clip art and conditional verbs. The $425 million raise is only step one. Perpetua has a $2 billion loan application pending with the U.S. Export-Import Bank, royalty financing discussions in the $200 to $250 million range, and they’re working on securing a $155 million reclamation bond guarantee. If all goes according to plan, they’ll be able to fund project construction and account for cost overruns.

Construction is tentatively slated for late 2025, assuming state-level permitting behaves itself. If everything clicks into place, Perpetua transitions from “high-risk junior miner” to “domestic supplier of two strategically critical materials,” with Paulson sitting in the captain’s chair.

Post-financing, Paulson now owns about 31% of the company. His partner, Marcelo Kim, is Chairman of the Board. That level of insider alignment is not something you typically see outside of a biotech startup run out of someone’s basement. It’s the kind of setup that screams, “We’re either very right or very wrong, and we’re not hedging” (and if you know anything about Paulson, he’s a risk on kind of guy).

Despite the nearly 96% run-up in the stock over the past year, Perpetua still hasn’t made its way into mainstream coverage. No CNBC articles. No WallStreetBets memes. I can’t find anyone other insightful news source talking about it (other than us). It’s flying almost completely under the radar. The market cap sits just above $1 billion, which, based on gold production alone, implies a 1.4x forward sales multiple. That’s not including any value for antimony or the fact that this project is a Pentagon fever dream come true.

The stock still trades like it’s pre-revenue and pre-everything, but in reality, it’s far further along the track than most people realize. The permits are there. The capital is lining up. The government’s interested. And John Paulson (the man who shorted the housing market into submission) is putting his money on it.

Sure, there are risks. It’s still a mining project. Permitting, construction timelines, commodity prices, global instability… pick your flavor. But in a market obsessed with overhyped tech plays and AI stocks that can’t spell profit, this is a tangible, cash-flowable, shovel in the ground story with national security implications and real institutional backing. I’m not saying go all in, but definitely keep this one on your watchlist.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News doesn’t hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.