I love the speculation. Great fun.

As I have said before, I believe LAC needs a battery materials/cathode partner. Not much point partnering with an OEM, if the lithium chemical they produce needs to be exported to Asia for further processing. There are a number of European and Asian cathode materials companies that have aspirations to do something in the U.S., but none of them have announced anything yet. Note that BASF is planning to build a plant in Canada, which is positive.

Then there is Redwood Materials. Huge aspirations (targetting ~50% of US cathode material market by 2030), Nevada based!!!, visionary leadership, access to plenty of capital. They are currently searching for a cathode materials manufacturing site - due to be announced this year (no prize for guessing where I think it will be!).  Ofcourse they are looking to support a US supply chain with a closed loop by recycling material, but have also said repeatedly that this must be "... augmented with sustainably mined material."  If you crunch the numbers, the ONLY way they can get close to achieving these aspirations is to access 100% of TP output (and possibly LAC's share of CO as well).

I agree with ElithX that once the judicial challenge is resolved, the announcements will come thick and fast.

Anyway, just throwing it out there folks!