KoBold on a four-continent lithium hunt

Silicon Valley-based KoBold Metals is using the latest machine learning technology to expand its search for lithium across four continents that includes projects in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Zambia.

KoBold's interest in lithium began in Canada, where the high-tech mineral exploration company, backed by funding from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and others, detected this critical battery metal near Glencore's Raglan nickel mine in northern Quebec. The decision to add lithium to the company's mineral portfolio follows on the heels of successfully discovering nickel and copper in Quebec and a new copper-cobalt mine in Zambia.

In spite of a drop in pricing and demand, KoBold is optimistic the lithium market still has the potential to reach $5 trillion in the next decade.

"Two years ago, we hired lithium luminary Prof Robert Linnen to be KoBold's Chief Geologist, Lithium, and since his arrival, we've been studying the fundamentals of lithium geochemistry," KoBold Metals CEO Kurt House explained. "We're now deploying those insights [and] over the next decade, KoBold aims to develop enough new lithium to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles."

KoBold's objective is to stabilize a circular global supply of critical minerals for electrifying transportation, bridging the gap left by large mining companies who are investing less in discovering new deposits than on expanding output and streamlining existing operations.

"They're really driven by maintaining their dividend yields and they are not growth oriented," House said of the major mineral producers. "So, we need to do it and the world needs these minerals."

AI exploration tech

KoBold's global exploration for the metals needed for a clean energy future leverages the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which involves computer systems that are designed to adapt to feedback, using algorithms and statistical models to analyze and draw inferences from data. This allows computer systems to improve the performance of a specific task, providing increasingly accurate results using pattern recognition.

KoBold's AI technology has been able to more accurately locate resources missed by the techniques of traditional geologists, helping mining concerns decide where to acquire land and drill – like identifying a lithium prospect in a region of the Baie James in Canada previously thought to have no economically viable mineral deposits.

KoBold aims to map the Earth's crust, focused on copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium deposits. The company also has plans to explore in the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing much-needed safety and operational standards to the industry.

The exploratory technology collects and analyzes elements across broad datasets-from drilling results to satellite imagery-to better pinpoint where new deposits might be found. Algorithms applied to the collected information then determine the geological patterns that indicate a potential deposit.

The startup has a star-studded list of investors. In addition to Gates and Bezos, the AI-powered energy metals exploration company has attracted Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate and technology fund whose other backers include Virgin Group's Richard Branson and Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio.

Additional critical minerals partnerships include mining giants BHP Group and Rio Tinto. The three-year-old startup also has joint ventures with BlueJay Mining to explore a nickel-copper-platinum-cobalt project in Greenland and is seeking a similar suite of energy metals at its Skolai project in Alaska.

"Our plan is to develop the mines ourselves and ultimately in the next 10 to maybe 15 years from now, we want to be the largest supplier of critical metals," House said.