The way KoBold is presenting itself to the media, and thus to investors, is sorta strange.
In the case of this copper deposit they didn't so much discover it as buy into it. It's not a greenfield find. If interested see after the jump.
From Bloomberg, February 5:
- KoBold Metals is backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Equinor
- Company uses AI to search for metals key to energy transition
KoBold Metals, a mining startup that uses artificial intelligence to explore for materials key to the green-energy transition, said it’s discovered a huge copper deposit in Zambia.
San Francisco Bay Area-based KoBold, whose shareholders include Breakthrough Energy Ventures – backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos – as well as T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Bond Capital, Andreesen Horowitz and Equinor ASA, has been drilling at its Zambian permit for a little over a year. Mingomba is shaping up to be “extraordinary,” according to KoBold President Josh Goldman.
He compares its potential to that of the Kakula mine, developed by Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and China’s Zijin Mining Group Co. just across the border in Democratic Republic of Congo. That mine produced almost 400,000 tons of copper last year.
“The story with Mingomba is that it’s like Kakula in both the size and the grade” Goldman said in an interview before the mining Indaba conference in Cape Town. “It’s going to be one of the highest grade, large underground mines.”
While the company is targeting its first output early next decade, it still needs to publish an updated resource estimate and complete feasibility studies that will inform the decision on whether to build a facility that Goldman estimates could cost $2 billion. KoBold is using its AI technology to process drilling data and optimize exploration for copper and cobalt at Mingomba.
Focused on projected long-term shortages of materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium, KoBold isn’t worrying about the low prices currently wreaking havoc with some battery metal projects around the world....
....MUCH MORE
Here's the conference: "Mining Indaba | 5-8 February 2024 | CTICC, Cape Town, SA".
Some of the links in January 2's "Ha! Alaska Energy Metals sells exploration data to Bezos/Gates/Andreessen-Backed KoBold Metals":
....The need for both training data and data for analysis is one of the reasons we noted what seems to be a quiet Andreessen move: go into Create-a-corp mode. In Kobold's case it was to buy into an existing copper mine. June 2023:
Andreessen/Bezos/Gates-Backed Kobold Metals Raises Another $200 Million At Unicorn Valuation
....Additionally, CrunchBase News goes on to say this round will go toward the existing Zambian copper mine that KoBold is buying into. As discussed in our June 17 post the company had announced they were buying into the copper deposit using a portion of the earlier $192.5 million round. However, all money is fungible [except, note to Jon Corzine: Don't co-mingle the client funds] so who knows where it is directed and when.
....In what looks like an acknowledgement (without public acknowledgement) of the failure-to-date of the technique to find metals, the company took a bunch of their loot and invested in a previously discovered copper-cobalt resource. From Reuters, December 14, 2022:
Billionaire-backed KoBold Metals to invest in Zambia copper mine
California-based exploration firm KoBold Metals, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify battery metal deposits, is investing $150 million to develop a copper mine in Zambia, the company announced at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C....
This is a variation on a trick Mr. Andreessen used to save something, anything, from an an overfunded ($116 million) crypto sinkhole a16z portfolio company:
Andreessen Horowitz Investee Coinbase May Buy Andreessen Horowitz Investee Earn.com (né 21.co)When Coinbase came public, the limited partner investors (and Mr. Andreessen) in 21.co were able to salvage their investment, even though 21.co added nothing, zilch, nada to Coinbase. And 21.co was never heard from again.
Ha!
That's one way to exit.
Earn.com was not mentioned in April 4's "Crypto M&A: "Three Startups Coinbase May Have Its Eye On"" because it's such a Tesla/SolarCity-cousins-shouldn't-marry type of deal.
Yet here we are....
Here's an early post on Kobold:
May 2019
Bezos, Andreessen and Gates Looking For Cobalt In Canada
Not them personally, can you imagine? Tramping around northern Saskatchewan?
Jeff: Bill, does this rock look blue to you?No, it's a company they're invested in....
Bill: I can't see it, let me get my glasses.
Marc: Guys, have I told you all the things I've wanted to tweet since I quit Twitter?
Jeff and Bill: Oh Gawd
I'm sure KoBold is using AI to sort through information but I just can't shake the feeling you get from the quote ascribed* to Mark Twain says about mines:
"a hole in the ground owned by a liar."
*"This quote was attributed to Mark Twain in The Autobiography of John
Hays Hammond (Farrar & Rinehart, 1935), p. 97. Although Hammond knew
Twain personally, there is no other authentic record that Mark Twain
made this statement" source
Which also has this tidbit:
...and so he came on the stage with me and introduced me in this way. He said:
"I don't know anything about this man, anyway. I only know two things about him. One is, he has never been in jail; and the other is, I don't know why."
- Speech, 1908
If interested Quote Investigator also looked at the line: "A Gold Mine Is a Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top"