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20 June 2023
By
Jason
Harward
Bill Gates’ venture firm, with backing from Jeff Bezos
and Jack Ma, just minted a $1 billion A.I. unicorn that uses machine
learning for mining rare earth metals crucial for EVs
Jordan Vonderhaar—Bloomberg/Getty Images
KoBold Metals, a Berkeley-based mining company that uses artificial
intelligence to mine for rare earth elements, has closed out a funding
round that crowns it an A.I. “unicorn” worth $1 billion and ropes in
some of the biggest investors in the world.
The $200 million round, reported in the Wall Street Journal,
included money from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a Bill Gates–backed
venture capital firm that invests in clean energy companies on behalf
of people including Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma.
Other investors included the massively influential VC firm
Andreessen Horowitz and Bond Capital, cofounded by Mary Meeker, a
longtime VC known for spotting big-picture trends early and whose
annual Internet Trends Report is one of the most highly anticipated
among tech investors.
The raise brings KoBold’s valuation to more than $1 billion.
The company’s last funding round raised $192.5 million in February
2022. Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Bond were both part of that
earlier round.
KoBold, founded in 2018, uses machine learning to look for
deposits of metals that are crucial to the construction of batteries
for electric vehicles—specifically lithium, nickel, cobalt, and
copper.
The company has more than 60 projects across three continents,
in which it is currently investing $100 million annually. It also has
an extensive research and development budget devoted to A.I.’s use in
modeling the earth’s subsurface and exploring depths beyond the reach
of conventional techniques.
“Our proprietary A.I. tools build on a concept we call efficacy
of information (EOI), enabl[ing] KoBold to determine which data to
collect at each exploration step, to maximize uncertainty reduction,”
the company said on its website.
It might take longer to reach the metals, but the drilling will
be precision-focused, the company says. The recent purchase of a
copper deposit in Zambia, for example, is expected to take eight years
to yield results.
Demand for lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper is on the rise.
By 2050, KoBold predicts, there will be a $12 trillion gap between
supply and demand.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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