After striking copper, a Bill Gates-backed metals startup says it’s not finished yet.
KoBold Metals is using its AI technology to find deposits of high-demand metals, such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, that can be used in the production of renewable energy products like solar panels and electric vehicle batteries. To discover deposits, the company collects satellite imagery and drilling data, then uses AI to develop maps of the Earth’s crust and search them for metals.
In early February, KoBold Metals announced it had found an expansive copper deposit in Zambia, telling Quartz the Mingomba deposit will be “one of the world’s biggest, high-grade large copper mines.”
“They are feeling delighted about this news because this is what we set out to do,” Josh Goldman, president of KoBold Metals, told CNBC about the company’s investors after its discovery of the deposit. “The point of the company is to discover, find, and develop mineral resources that we need for the energy transition.”
KoBold has more than 60 exploration-stage projects in progress across four continents, and the company invests over $60 million a year on them, it said. The group is backed by a cadre of billionaires: In addition to Gates’s climate and technology fund, Breakthrough Energy, KoBold Metals counts Andreessen Horowitz and mining giant BHP as investors. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio count themselves among Breakthrough Energy’s investors.
Goldman said KoBold Metals is focused on continuing its project in Zambia, and anticipates copper production to begin within the decade. Goldman has compared the size of the copper deposit to the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is the world’s fourth largest copper resource. In 2023, the Kamoa-Kakula mine produced nearly 400,000 tons of copper.
“It is not just that there haven’t been deposits like this,” Goldman told CNBC. “It’s that there are more to be found. Here is Mingomba — and then where is the next Mingomba after this? This is the part of the world and style of deposit where we can find resources of this scale and quality, and Zambia provides an operating environment that is really extraordinary.”
While demand for the metals is high, the deposits are low in supply. According to the International Energy Agency, current investments in deposit discovery “fall short of what is needed to transform the energy sector.”
Goldman also said the company plans to go public in the next three to four years to finance its operations.
“The point of the company is to be serially successful in exploration — and to improve exploration success overall and to decrease the capital intensity of discovery,” Goldman told CNBC. “We think the potential for discovery is great. There is a lot more to be found in Zambia.”