Erik Prince, founder of the controversial private military company Blackwater, has launched a fund to invest in metals used in EV batteries, he told the Financial Times.

The fund aims to raise up to $500 million, and will invest in deposits of metals such as cobalt, copper and lithium, largely in Africa and Asia. Prince envisions bringing unexplored deposits into production and then selling them to larger China-based mining companies.

“Chinese companies are not necessarily interested in the very upstream exploration,” Prince said. “They want to buy something in production, which leaves that gap for us.”

Source: Reuters
Image: Miller Center (CC BY 2.0)