KOBOLD Metals has raised $537m in its latest funding round as it seeks to become a key player in the race for the critical minerals needed for the energy transition, said the Financial Times on Wednesday.
The company, which has Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos as backers, is valued at $2.96bn following the funding. The capital raise was co-led by existing investor T Rowe Price, which has been joined by Durable Capital Partners, the newspaper said.
US venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the recent fund raising, along with new backers including private capital group StepStone. Gates is invested in KoBold through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Kurt House, co-founder and CEO of KoBold, said most of some 40% of the new capital raised would be directed towards Mingomba, said to be a huge copper deposit in Zambia scoped to produce 300,000 tons a year from the 2030s.
The company — which uses OpenAI’s generative AI technology as well as more traditional AI — planned to “add at least three jurisdictions” including Finland and Botswana, House said, adding that he was excited about the prospects for lithium mining in Canada.
House told the Financial Times his company planned to hire “aggressively” and add data scientists who have a more traditional technology background to its teams, as well geoscientists to survey possible deposits and collect data. The company was likely to go public within three to five years, he added.
“There’s a real demand from [mining] majors to partner with [KoBold] so clearly they’re doing something right,” said David George, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “I don’t think there’s an obvious modern competitor in the space.”
