Bill Gates-Backed Company to Hunt for Cobalt Near Glencore Mine
A startup backed by a group of tycoons including Bill Gates
plans to use data-crunching algorithms to search for cobalt near a Canadian
nickel mine owned by Glencore Plc.
Kobold Metals has acquired rights to an area of about 1,000
square kilometers (386 square miles) -- roughly the size of New York City -- in
northern Quebec, according to Chief Executive Officer Kurt House. It’s the
first such foray by the company to become public.
San Francisco Bay Area-based Kobold Metals is hoping to use
data analytics to build a “Google Maps for the earth’s crust.” The company is
betting it can find metals crucial to the electric-vehicle revolution, such as
cobalt, that so far have eluded more traditionally-minded geologists.
Read: Algorithms Join Cobalt Hunt Backed by Gates, Bezos and
Dalio
House said the company’s exploration activities at the site
in Quebec could help prove the value of its approach.
“The subtleties in the geophysical signals are really only
evident when you have all of the data and can evaluate it in a systematic,
statistically rigorous way,” he said. “It’s just too much for the human brain
to handle.”
He said that the company was likely to start collecting
geophysical data in the next three to six months, and could start drilling in a
couple of years. The area, just south of Glencore’s Raglan nickel mine, is
“highly prospective” for cobalt, nickel and platinum-group metals, House said.
Shareholders of Kobold Metals include Silicon Valley venture
capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Norwegian oil major Equinor ASA and
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund backed by Gates and a dozen other tycoons
including Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio and Michael Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg LP,
the parent company of Bloomberg News.
House said exploration in Quebec was one of a number of
activities that Kobold Metals was pursuing, including forging partnerships with
mining companies to help identify ways to expand their existing resources.
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