Billionaires turn to Google Maps-type app to scour earth for cobalt
Bill Gates is leading a coalition of investors who are betting on there still being significant undiscovered sources of the metal on the earth’s crust and below
London — A coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates has thrown its financial weight behind a startup hoping to build a “Google Maps for the earth’s crust” to hunt for new sources of cobalt. The startup, Kobold Metals, is using data-crunching algorithms to scour the globe for cobalt, in a bet that there may still be significant undiscovered sources of the metal that has become one of the world’s hot commodities thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries. The company has raised money from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz 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. Kobold Metals is betting it will be able to find new sources of the metal using what it calls “machine prospecting.” The company is building a database of geological data that it then feeds into an algorithm, hunting for signals that indicate the likelihood of increased concentratio...
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