KoBold Metals, a mining start-up that uses artificial intelligence to explore materials key to the transition to green energy, has announced the discovery of a huge copper deposit in Zambia.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, KoBold's shareholders include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, as well as T. Rowe Price Group, Bond Capital and Andreessen. Horowitz, Equinor ASA included, and are conducting the drilling with permission from Zambia. A little over a year. According to KoBold president Josh Goldman, Mingomba is becoming “extraordinary.”
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He compares the potential to that of the Ivanhoe mine just across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Kakula mine developed by China's Zijin Mining Group. The mine produced almost 400,000 tons of copper last year.
“The story of Mingomba is that it is similar to Kakula in both size and grade,” Goldman said in an interview ahead of the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town. “This will be one of the finest large-scale underground mines.”
The company is targeting first production early next decade, but has released updated resource estimates and completed a feasibility study to help decide whether to build the facility, which Goldman estimates will cost $2 billion. There is a need to. KoBold uses AI technology to process drilling data to optimize copper and cobalt exploration at Mingomba.
Focused on expected long-term shortages of materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium, KoBold is concerned about low prices currently wreaking havoc on some battery metals projects around the world. Not yet.
“We are capitalizing the company so that we can make long-term investments,” Goldman said. “We care very much about what the prices of these goods will be in 2035, but not what the prices will be in 2024.”
Mining companies have warned that copper shortages are imminent due to increased demand for copper in wind and solar farms, high-voltage cables and electric vehicles. The green revolution is spurring competition for scarce resources, with the United States trying to catch up after Chinese companies long dominated mining investment in Africa.
While Mingomba is the most advanced project in KoBold's portfolio, the company is also exploring more than 60 other areas, with much of its activity concentrated in Australia, Canada, and the United States. In December, the company announced the discovery of multiple promising lithium deposits in Namibia, Quebec, Nevada and other locations.
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KoBold spent nearly $100 million on exploration last year and expects to exceed that amount in 2024, but Goldman says its allocation is “on par with major players” such as BHP Group and Rio Tinto. It is said that
Mingomba could help the government of Zambia, Africa's second-largest copper producer, reverse years of declining copper production and further its goal of tripling production within 10 years There is.
Michael Bloomberg, a majority shareholder in Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Breakthrough, according to the company's website.
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