AI-Powered Miner Says It Found Huge Copper Deposit In Zambia

(Bloomberg) -- 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.

“We capitalize the company to be able to make long-term investments,” Goldman said. “We care enormously what the price of these commodities is in 2035 and we don’t care what it is in 2024.”

Mining companies have been warning of looming copper deficits, driven by rising demand for the metal in wind and solar farms, high voltage cables, and electric vehicles. That green revolution is spurring competition for scarce resources, with the US playing catch-up after Chinese firms long dominated mining investment in Africa.

Mingomba is the most advanced project in KoBold’s portfolio, but the company is also exploring more than 60 other areas, with much of that activity centered on Australia, Canada and the US. The firm announced in December it had discovered several prospective lithium deposits in locations including Namibia, Quebec and Nevada.

KoBold spent close to $100 million on exploration last year and expects to exceed that figure in 2024 – allocations on the “same scale as the majors” like BHP Group and Rio Tinto, according to Goldman.

Mingomba could help the government of Zambia, Africa’s second-biggest copper producer, reverse years of decline and further its goal of tripling output within a decade. 

The mine could add more than half a million tons of production capacity, according to Jito Kayumba, senior adviser to the country’s President Hakainde Hichilema on economic, financial, investment and development.

“This is a critical inflection point for Zambia,” said Kayumba. “That means our journey to get to 3 million metric tons is much more realizable.”

Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is an investor in Breakthrough, according to the company’s website.

--With assistance from Matthew Hill.

(Updates with comment from government adviser in 12th paragraph)

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