After successfully discovering copper via machine learning technology, the company has attracted eager investment and notable names.

At the end of 2023, KoBold Metals, a software-driven mining startup out of Berkeley, California, made headlines by utilizing machine learning technology to expand its search for lithium across several continents, including projects in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Zambia.

KoBold's innovative approach utilizes artificial intelligence to locate deposits of cobalt, copper, and nickel, recently adding lithium to its portfolio. The company's AI technology aggregates data from sources like satellite imagery and historical drilling reports to map the Earth's crust in detail, pinpointing untapped resources that traditional methods might miss.

The company, backed by big Silicon Valley names like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has closed a $537 million Series C round this month to help build out a mine to develop a massive Zambian copper deposit. This cash infusion brings KoBold's fundraising total to $1 billion.

The funds will be used to accelerate exploration, enhance research and development capabilities, develop high-potential projects amongst its 60 active locations across five continents, and develop its Zambian mine.

"About 40% of the new capital will go toward advancing existing projects into production, with Zambia receiving the lion's share," KoBold CEO Kurt House told the Financial Times.

With contributions from both existing and new shareholders, the funding round led by Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price netted the company $10 million more than it initially expected to raise and increased KoBold's valuation to $2.96 billion.

House expressed confidence in continued political support for critical mineral initiatives.

"There is very broad bipartisan support for diversifying [the] supply of critical minerals because this is a national security priority," he said. "We've had plenty of conversations with people who will be associated with the next administration who are very enthusiastic about KoBold's mission."

The company, which was founded in 2018, uses its proprietary AI tools to comb through massive and readily available geological datasets in an attempt to disrupt the high-risk and famously low success rate of mineral exploration, where only about three out of every 1,000 deposits discovered are found to be commercially viable.

The startup's decision to develop the Zambia resource, which it estimates to be among the largest found to date, suggests that this cutting-edge approach is paying off handsomely.

KoBold's AI discovered a substantial copper deposit at its Solwezi project in Zambia's copper belt. The Mingomba target site exhibited promising results, with drilling highlights of 16 meters at 1.24% copper. KoBold is set to fast-track its Mingomba asset into a $2 billion underground mine that is expected to produce at least 300,000 tons of copper annually by 2030, making it Zambia's largest copper operation in a century.

KoBold President Josh Goldman said that the potential of the discovery compares in size and grade to that of the Kamoa-Kakula mine, owned by Ivanhoe Mines and China's Zijin Mining. That operation, located just across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), produced almost 400,000 metric tons of copper in 2023.

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema said that, according to government figures, Mingomba will produce "well over" 500,000 to 600,000 tons once at full tilt.

Critical minerals have grown in cost and demand in recent years as the U.S. has clashed with China over trade regulations and monopolistic supply chains. The People's Republic has already banned shipments of antimony, gallium, and germanium to the U.S., and this month, it proposed restricting technologies for processing lithium and gallium.

Exploration partnerships with mining giants like BHP and Rio Tinto are backing the firm's goal to streamline and revitalize the field of prospecting, cashing in along the way.

KoBold aims to continue its upward trajectory of aggressive growth and innovation, growing its team of data scientists while expanding to new jurisdictions in Finland and Botswana and going public in the next three to five years.