Cleaner Tech
Gates-Backed Start-Up Seeks Zambia Copper for Green-Energy Shift
- KoBold Metals to use AI to accelerate exploration for copper
- Investment of $150 million comes as US fears China dominance
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A Bill Gates-backed mining start-up agreed to invest $150 million in a Zambian project that will use artificial intelligence to explore for copper, a metal key to the green-energy transition.
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.