An Elon Musk acolyte, Tesla driver, and serial entrepreneur, Teague Egan was imagining ways of breaking into renewable energy in 2018 while he took a vacation to Bolivia. He learned about the country’s salt flats, their lithium reserves potential and, eventually, about the industry’s antiquated lithium mining techniques.“As an entrepreneur, I knew there had to be a better way. That was my ‘aha’ moment,” said Egan, now 38. He really began to think about how the lithium-ion batteries in Tesla’s electric vehicles are made and their massive global growth potential.He quickly founded EnergyX—short for Energy Exploration Technologies—and this year became the only company mining lithium commercially in the U.S. with modern direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology at its new Project Lonestar site in East Texas. This summer, EnergyX also opened a project in Chile extracting 170 metric tons of lithium a year.But these are still just demonstration plants. The real growth is about to begin, he touted.“EnergyX is just going to keep our head down and move towards commercialization,” Egan told Fortune.The plan is to commence construction next year. EnergyX aims to bring its Black Giant lithium project in Chile online by the end of 2028 with a first phase producing 7,500 tons per year and expanding to 52,500 tons annually by 2030. Project Lonestar in Texas would quickly follow with a 15,000-ton facility in 2029 and growing to 50,000 tons by 2031.These are admittedly aggressive timelines, but Egan is confident the progress will pick up quickly after achieving a watershed moment in October of inking its largest customer.But first, let’s take a quick step back. Two years ago, The Wall Street Journal ran this headline about Egan: “He Wants to Be the Lithium King. Run for President. And Live to 150.” The wording is brash but not inaccurate—yes, he says he still wants to occupy the White House and live well past 100—and he comes across as an over-the-top tech bro. Many didn’t take him seriously.Egan went to work proving the doubters wrong. Since then, EnergyX opened its new Austin, Texas headquarters, nearly quadrupled its acreage footprint in the lithium-heavy Smackover Formation in East Texas and southwestern Arkansas, completed its Texas and Chile demo projects, and received a $225 million influx from Italian energy giant Eni.Most importantly, in October, major energy trading house Trafigura signed a $2 billion, 10-year contract with EnergyX for 100,000 metric tons of lithium from its Black Giant and Project Lonestar enterprises.“To have that type of customer is not only really encouraging for us, but also really validating to the rest of the market,” Egan said. “This is actually the single-largest DLE offtake in history. That’s a cool little feather in the cap. The major thing that investors or project lenders need to see is that type of contract.”His expectation is that more buyers will quickly follow suit, bringing EnergyX close to commencing construction. The Trafigura deal also boosts EnergyX’s pending $690 million loan with the U.S. Export-Import Bank.While EnergyX’s success is far from assured, Egan has proven his company must be taken seriously.Drilling aheadEgan’s mentor and idol is his father, Michael Egan, who became the majority owner of Alamo Rent a Car, grew the company nationally, and sold it in 1996, continuing to chair the business until 2003. Now retired, Michael Egan sits on the EnergyX board.“I’m a serial entrepreneur. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. I learned from him,” Teague Egan said. “I don’t have an engineering or a chemistry degree. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a problem solver. I feel like I have a Ph. D. in engineering from working at EnergyX for eight years.”After growing up near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Egan moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. While a college student, he started a record label and sport agency. He quickly found success in music after signing the Boston rapper Sammy Adams, who hit No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop chart in 2010.Egan said his biggest regret might be declining to sign a deal with his label and Interscope Records because Egan didn’t find much continued success in music. Then again, if he had, EnergyX probably wouldn’t exist, he said.His music profits though led him invest many of his gains. He was an early investor in Tesla in 2013 when the company still had a market cap of less than $10 billion. Today, Tesla sits above $1.5 trillion. Egan said he used some of those proceeds to help start EnergyX.Ever since, Egan has become an admitted follower of all things Elon Musk and his approach to business. And they’re both Austin, Texas-based now. “He’s transformed into arguably the greatest entrepreneur and innovator in the history of humanity,” Egan said. “People can say about what they want about his political views and stuff but, in terms of his contributions to humanity, he’s like unmatched. He’s essentially my idol other than my father. He has that same sense of curiosity and problem solving.” EnergyXLeaning into lithiumDriven by EVs and now also by battery energy storage, global lithium demand has jumped more than 400% this decade, to over 1.5 million metric tons per year. By 2035, that demand could approach 4 million tons.With the lithium business focused on traditional hard-rock mining or evaporation ponds, Egan sought another way. Evaporation ponds can take two years to extract the lithium, literally waiting for the sun to evaporate the water and help filter out the lithium. Egan isn’t that patient.He jumped into direct lithium extraction technology. He didn’t invent it, but he wants to perfect and commercialize it. Using advanced filtration technology, DLE operates much like oil and gas by drilling wells, pumping out the brine water, processing and refining the lithium, and returning more than 90% of the brine underground. DLE can take two days instead of two years, although the upfront costs are extensive.But the legacy lithium industry wasn’t ready to embrace DLE, and especially not the required financial investments.“Our original business model was just to license our technology to the existing pond producers. We said, ‘Hey, we have a better mousetrap. This will be much better for you,’” Egan said. “They strung us along and, finally, we realized that, and we said we’re going to have to go acquire our own resources and vertically integrate to prove this and scale it and realize the technology.”That’s when EnergyX began acquiring its own acreage in Chile and the Smackover. Chile and Argentina count among the top lithium producers globally—with Australia and China—but the U.S. only accounts a little more than 1% of global lithium supplies. Those U.S. projects are concentrated in Nevada, including Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass project currently under construction. EnergyX also is exploring a project in Utah.“A decade ago, the total volumes of lithium demand didn’t warrant new innovation and investment,” Egan acknowledged. Everything has changed very rapidly.But the Smackover region is believed to have the greatest potential to boom in the U.S. The challenge is the lithium is found in high concentrations within an underground aquifer that requires DLE. Vancouver-based Standard Lithium is scheduled to start construction on the first major DLE project in the Smackover early next year, at least a few months ahead of EnergyX.Because of the similarities to oil and gas, ExxonMobil and Chevron are fast followers, having acquired massive acreage footprints in recent years.“The U.S. is definitely at a tipping point for lithium production,” said Standard Lithium CEO David Park. “The area that has the greatest potential is the Smackover basin. When you think of the Smackover, you should really think of it as lithium’s Permian Basin. Through the introduction of relatively novel technologies, we’re able to open a once non-economic resource in a manner that can bring on projects of scale with world-class economics.”While there’s room for multiple winners, Egan said he’s convinced EnergyX’s in-house lithium filtration technology will make it the choice producer for customers going forward. The lithium reserves in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia in South America have fewer impurities than in the U.S., Egan said, but the Smackover is still a fantastic resource, and the U.S. needs to build up its own domestic supplies.Long-term lensEven though EV sales are slower in the U.S. than the much of the rest of the world, Egan sees the path forward from his Austin hub in a city that serves as the unofficial lab for self-driving vehicles and robotaxis—nearly all of which use lithium-ion batteries.Early this month, Tesla said it is discontinuing the costly Cybertruck to make way for the self-driving Cybercab, while Waymo, Avride, and Zoox are all betting on robotaxis. Egan sees them daily. “Living in Austin is seeing the future, and that is only going to spread.”That future requires EnergyX growing exponentially, he said. “I’m a long-term goals kind of guy. A lot of people call me the ‘king of lithium.’ We’ve taken steps, especially this year, to continue to build upon that. Our goal is to be producing between 500,000 and a 1 million tons of lithium per year by 2040 and become the biggest lithium company in the world.”And, yes, after that, he does still have his eyes set on the White House and running for president.“That’s still a long-term goal. I don’t think it’s unreasonable. The mindset of America has changed a lot over the past 10 years into who can lead the country. With [President] Trump, for better or worse, anything is possible now.”This story was originally featured on Fortune.com