Highlights:

  • In order to uncover mineral reserves that would otherwise go unnoticed, the company combines both more conventional machine learning techniques and generative AI technologies to help explore historical geophysical data sources.
  • Notwithstanding technological advancements, the industry’s demand for metals has increased due to the drive toward AI and greener automobiles.

KoBold Metals raises USD 527 million in the equity funding round. This Berkeley, California-based startup specializes in leveraging AI to spot new metal deposits crucial for renewable energy and batteries.

Durable Capital Partners and current investor T Rowe Price co-led the Series C fundraising round. Along with new investors like StepStone, the round also included other current backers including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and billionaire Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

In order to uncover mineral reserves that would otherwise go unnoticed, the company combines both more conventional machine learning techniques and generative AI technologies to help explore historical geophysical data sources. The majority of deposits that are easy to locate have already been found and mined, while future discoveries will be more expensive to access and more difficult to find. Project failure could result in losses ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

It is especially profitable to find rare earth metals and minerals like copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt that are essential to semiconductors, renewable energy systems, electric car batteries, and other technologies. They rely on the analysis of vast quantities of prospecting data. According to the company, it helps with this search by investing over USD 100 million a year in over 70 initiatives on five continents.

Notwithstanding technological advancements, the industry’s demand for metals has increased due to the drive toward AI and greener automobiles. According to the International Energy Agency, just 80% of the world’s copper demand will be satisfied by global copper mines by 2030. Only half of those needs will be met by current mines and construction projects for cobalt and lithium.

KoBold claimed to have found an unexplored copper resource in Zambia in February. According to the business, this has created a USD two billion underground mining site that will begin producing at least 300,000 tonnes year in the 2030s.

Kurt House, the CEO and Co-founder of KoBold, told that approximately 40% of the new capital would be used to turn current projects into mining sites. The majority of that will go to the Zambian project.

According to House, in order to expand the workforce, the company plans to start recruiting geoscientists and data scientists to assist with surveying and gathering data. The KoBold is probably going to go public in the next three to five years, he continued.