Business Maverick: Gates-Backed Start-Up Seeks Zambia Copper for Green-Energy Shift

KoBold Metals — which counts Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and No. 1 miner BHP Group Ltd. among its shareholders — will use its AI technology to process drilling data and optimize exploration for copper and cobalt at Mingomba. Located near Zambia’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, it’s the world’s highest-grade undeveloped large deposit of copper, according to the company.

Mingomba’s average copper grades are about six times higher than those found in Chile, the world’s biggest producer. High concentrations of the metal in the earth’s crust are becoming increasingly difficult to find, and there’s growing interest in a region many big miners had neglected for decades. KoBold is buying into what will be a joint venture with the existing owners of Mingomba, EMR Capital. That private equity company, which operates the neighboring Lubambe mine, said in 2020 the new deposit could support a mine that would cost about $1 billion to develop and produce as much as 160,000 tons of copper a year.

Sam Altman, founder of Y Combinator and chief executive officer of OpenAI, has invested personally in KoBold through his Apollo Projects vehicle. So has T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Andreessen Horowitz, known for investing in Airbnb Inc., Lyft Inc. and Slack.

Why would he risk that knowing they’re likely to steal everything and destroy the rest?

Tentacles spreading

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