Murray Nye

Murray Nye is the President and CEO of American Tungsten Corp. (formerly Demesne Resources), a Canadian-listed junior mining company advancing the IMA Mine in Idaho — one of the few tungsten projects moving toward production on US soil. Tungsten is one of the densest, hardest metals in industrial use and is classed as a critical mineral — a metal the US government deems essential to economic and national security yet vulnerable to supply disruption — because armor-piercing munitions, drilling tools, and aerospace components depend on it. The United States has had no primary tungsten mine production since 2015, and China dominates global supply, which is why a credible restart plan for a past-producing US mine draws attention from defense-focused investors.

Nye took the company's top job in April 2025 and has moved quickly since. He expanded the IMA land package by nearly 2,000 acres, rebranded Demesne Resources as American Tungsten to match the flagship asset, and brought defense-sector veterans onto the board to support the US strategy. He is slated to present on 'Tungsten in Canada/USA' at CMI Summit IV, a critical minerals industry conference. The IMA Mine carries mid-20th-century operating history, giving the project known geology and existing underground infrastructure — a head start relative to an exploration-stage discovery.

His approach is a restart rather than a search: dewater and rehabilitate the historic workings, confirm grades with bulk samples (large test lots mined and processed to verify the grade reported in exploration), and work toward a small-footprint return to production. That model shortens the path to a decision on mining compared with a greenfield project — a mine built from scratch on a new discovery — and it is built around policy already in motion: US defense stockpiling, permitting reform for critical minerals, and Canada-US supply chain cooperation. Nye frames tungsten as a defense and security story first, with industrial demand underneath it.

He discussed these themes in the Pixys roundtable 'The Arsenal of Electrification – Securing the North American Defense' (April 30, 2026). Following him is a practical way to track the North American tungsten market in real time: permitting progress, financing conditions for critical minerals juniors, and how government policy translates into contracts. The honest caveat is that American Tungsten is an early-stage junior — the IMA restart is in its early phases, and investors should weigh execution risk, financing needs, and the economics of a single-mine tungsten producer against whatever strategic premium the market is willing to pay.