Laureen Meroueh

Steel has lost its edge. We're bringing it back. Thanks for having me on to share our story @ashleevance! Thanks @corememory for having me on to talk about disrupting an industry dating back to 1850. It's not fiction. It's a tonnage-per-day pilot plant in Houston making steel in a way no one else can. corememory.com/p/america-has-…

Laureen Meroueh, Founder & CEO of Hertha Metals and feature of today’s first session, shares what this speaking opportunity has meant to her. Check out her thoughts on what makes this audience special & continue to stay tuned for more highlights of all the action in Indianapolis!

America. We have a new steel company - @HerthaMetals It uses electricity instead of coal to make steel. It was founded by Laureen Meroueh, who is something of a child prodigy. The US could very much use this technology at the moment. We dig into why here on the pod The @corememory pod, which the NYT will eventually hail as the smartest podcast on Earth, and its big ideas are brought to you by the big idea people @brexHQ. The show is also made possible by the big idea backers @e1ventures Come for the ore, stay to learn about Hertha Ayrton Full episode here, wherever you like to get pods and on YouTube down below Timestamps 00:00:00 Intro 00:04:43 Starting College at Age 13 00:09:15 Reinventing the Steel Industry 00:12:54 From Battery Tech to Steel 00:19:28 How Traditional Blast Furnaces Work 00:22:40 Eliminating Coal for Natural Gas 00:28:15 Cutting Costs and Carbon 00:32:01 Proving the Technology Scales 00:35:22 The US Steel Supply Crisis 00:40:31 Protecting the Secret Formula 00:43:49 Solving the Rare Earth Shortage 00:46:28 Timeline to Commercial Production 00:52:53 Surviving the Valley of Death 00:55:48 Why Build in Houston? 01:01:12 A Woman in Heavy Industry 01:06:10 Inside the Steel Foundry 01:14:47 Reindustrializing the United States 01:36:22 The Story Behind the Name

“We are the first in the world to make steel in a single step.” @HerthaMetals is reinventing steelmaking to produce cheap, abundant steel and high-purity iron here in the U.S. - a critical capability that will help power the future of AI. Fantastic convo on @corememory with @LaureenMeroueh + @ashleevance . corememory.com/p/america-has-…

Everyone’s talking about the rare earth crisis. Almost no one’s talking about the iron crisis hiding inside it. 🧵

1/ Congressman Morgan Luttrell, @RepLuttrell, visited our Conroe, TX facility on Aug 11, 2025. 🇺🇸 He got an up-close look at how we’re driving U.S. steel & iron independence. 🧵

The U.S. hasn’t built a blast furnace since the 1960s. We offshored steel production...and with it, a core pillar of our industrial strength. Steel is the backbone of everything: buildings, cars, rockets, iPhones, defense. The answer isn’t more massive, dirty blast furnaces. It’s something better. At Hertha Metals, we’re building steelmaking that’s cheaper, cleaner, and less capital-intensive. No coking. No blast furnaces. Just American steel done right!