> What I'm somewhat surprised about is that we've not seen synergies with desalination and ocean mineral extraction.

I think these guys are basically using desalination tech to make lithium extraction cheaper: https://energyx.com/lithium/#direct-lithium-extraction

As I understand it (which is far from perfectly) it's still not using ocean water, because you can get so much higher lithium concentration in water from other sources. But it's a more environmentally friendly, and they argue cheaper, way to extract the lithium from water than just using the traditional giant evaporation pools.