AI finds world-class copper mine!
According to the latest news on Monday, Silicon Valley unicorn KoBold Metals, which uses AI to explore copper, lithium and other metals needed for the green transition, announced that the company has discovered giant copper reserves at the Mingomba project in Zambia.
From this project, we can also see the efficiency of AI - KoBoldMetals announced that it would invest nearly US$150 million to buy a majority stake in the Mingomba deposit during the "Biden Africa Tour" in mid-December 2022, and then spent just one year Get results in more time.
For many Chinese investors, they may be more familiar with the names of the investors behind this company than KoBold Metals - led by Bill Gates, Bezos, Jack Ma, Masayoshi Son, Dalio, Bloomberg The Breakthrough Energy Venture Capital Fund, which participated in the investment by Ge and others, as well as well-known institutions such as Pulse, a16z and Statoil.
What are the latest breakthroughs?
Regarding the scale of newly discovered copper reserves, KoBold President Josh Goldman cited the future development potential of the Mingomba deposit as an example, similar to the Kakula copper mine of Ivanhoe Mines and Zijin Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo border area. This world-class copper mine last year The output is close to 400,000 tons of copper.
Goldman said: "The story of Mingomba is similar to Kakula in terms of scale and taste. This will be one of the highest-grade large-scale underground mines in the world."
It is reported that KoBold uses its artificial intelligence technology to process drilling data to optimize exploration work at the Mingomba copper-cobalt mine. While the company aims to achieve first production after 2030, it will now prepare a new resource assessment report and complete a feasibility study to advance the decision to build the mine. Goldman estimates that the investment required to develop such a mine may exceed $2 billion.
Don't care about recent price fluctuations
Regarding the fact that the prices of battery materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium have continued to fall in recent days and have affected multiple projects around the world, KoBold believes that this will not be a concern for the company in the short term.
Goldman said that the company launched financing precisely to make long-term investments. For KoBold, the price of these commodities in 2035 will be very important, but the company does not care about the price in 2024.
The company's business logic is that demand for the metal is increasing for wind and solar farms, high-voltage cables and electric vehicles. Many mining giants have also warned that these projects related to green transformation may cause the supply of copper and other metals to exceed demand.
For example, after COP28 was held last year, Citibank analysts expected that the increase in global renewable energy goals will provide 4.2 million tons of additional copper demand by 2030. This will have the potential to boost copper prices to US$15,000/ton in 2025. For reference, LME copper prices have been around $8,500 in recent weeks, while the all-time high was $10,730 in March last year.
It is worth mentioning that the Mingomba mine is the fastest-growing project in KoBold's hands, but the company is also exploring in more than 60 areas in Australia, Canada and the United States. In December last year, the company announced the discovery of several potential lithium deposits in Namibia, Quebec and Nevada.
KoBold said the company will spend nearly $100 million on exploration in 2023 and expects to exceed this figure this year. He also emphasized that KoBold's current expenditure on exploration is comparable to the scale of giants such as BHP and Rio Tinto.
