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KoBold Metals closed a $537 million Series C round on Wednesday to help build a multi-billion dollar mine to exploit a copper deposit it found using AI.
The new funding round, which was led by Durable Capital Partners and T Rowe Price, will be used to expand the company’s exploration efforts on five continents and develop a massive copper deposit in Zambia. The funding round pushed KoBold’s valuation to $2.96 billion, according to the Financial Times.
The final close of the round netted the company $10 million more than it initially expected to raise. TechCrunch exclusively reported on the fundraise in October.
Few industries are as ripe for technological disruption as mining. The business is famously risky: only about three in every 1,000 potential deposits are commercially viable.
KoBold, which was founded in 2018, uses AI to comb through massive geological data sets in an attempt to improve the success rate. The company’s decision to develop the Zambia resource, which it estimates is among the largest found, suggests that approach could pay off handsomely.
Critical minerals have grown in importance in recent years as the U.S. and China have clashed over supplies. China has already banned shipments of antimony, gallium, and germanium to the U.S., and today it proposed restricting technologies for processing lithium and gallium.
Andreessen Horowitz, Bond, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Earthshot VC, Equinor, July Fund, Mitsubishi, Standard Investments, StepStone, and WCM Investment Management also participated in the round. Previous investors include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Jack Ma.
Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor. De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.
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