Bill Gates-Backed KoBold Metals Becomes Unicorn with $195M Raise

KoBold Metals, a Berkeley, California-based company that uses artificial intelligence to improve metal mining operations, has received $195 million in funding from notable investors such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The funding round was led by T. Rowe Price and brought the company’s valuation to over $1 billion, making it Silicon Valley’s newest climate-tech unicorn.

Founded in 2018, KoBold employs machine learning to search for mineral deposits such as copper, nickel, lithium, and cobalt, which are utilized in the production of batteries for a variety of industries, including electric vehicles.

The round also included Standard Investments, Equinor Ventures (the VC arm of Norway’s state oil company), BHP Ventures, Mitsubishi Corporation, Earthshot Ventures and the July Fund.

“The success rates of finding new deposits have been declining,” co-founder and CEO Kurt House told the WSJ. “It’s hard to see how in the current setup we’ll get sufficient discoveries in time without breakthroughs in technology.”

In December, KoBold deployed $150 million to develop the Mingomba copper-cobalt mine in Zambia, said to be the world’s highest-grade undeveloped large metal deposit.

In February 2022, the company closed a $192.5 million Series B, which included investment from Apollo Projects, Bond Capital, BHP Group and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The startup has now raised more than $400 million.