The miner’s traditional tools, a hammer and pick, don’t resemble a notebook computer in the slightest, but Kurt House and Josh Goldman, the founders of KoBold Metals, a company focused on finding new sources of metals for use in electronic systems, consider the latter an indispensable mining tool.

The Berkeley, California-based company plans to modernize the mining industry by deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to comb the earth for cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel, which could make it a major player in the current global “copper rush” to locate new sources of the metal, a key component in everything from EV batteries to power transmission lines. It also makes the Silicon Valley startup a player in US efforts to minimize Chinese access to global supplies of copper and other minerals in demand in some growing industries.

KoBold is “building the world’s largest collection of geoscience information” and intends to use artificial intelligence systems to use that data “to model the sub-surface in the most statistically valid manner ever.”

Simply put: KoBold claims that AI can collect and analyze more data about mineral deposits with better results than conventional exploration methods would reveal.

In Silicon Valley, KoBold is considered one of the latest unicorns, and some of the tech industry’s most prominent investors are doubling down on it. Bill Gates, an early investor in the company, “predicted success for KoBold Metals” in a June 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Source: KoBold Metals