The traditional tools of the miner, hammer and pickaxe, do not resemble a notebook computer in the slightest. But Kurt House and Josh Goldman, founders of KoBold Metals, a company focused on finding new sources of metals for use in electronic systems, consider the latter to be an indispensable tool in mining.
The Berkeley, California-based company plans to modernize the mining industry by using artificial intelligence (AI) to scour the earth for cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel. That could make it a major player in the current global “copper rush” to find new sources of the metal, which is a key component in everything from electric vehicle batteries to power lines. The Silicon Valley startup will also become a player in U.S. efforts to limit Chinese access to global supplies of copper and other minerals in demand in some growth industries.
KoBold is “building the world’s largest collection of geoscience information” and intends to use this data with the help of artificial intelligence systems “to model the subsurface in the most statistically valid way ever”.
Simply put, KoBold claims that AI can collect and analyze more data about mineral deposits and produce better results than traditional exploration methods can.
In Silicon Valley, KoBold is considered one of the newest unicorns, and some of the tech industry’s most prominent investors are now double-backing it. Bill Gates, an early investor in the company, “predicted KoBold Metals’ success in 2024 in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.”
Source: KoBold Metals
