Mining Firm Backed by Bezos and Gates to Begin Greenland Drilling

Mineral exploration company KoBold Metals, backed by billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, said on Thursday it would begin drilling in Greenland for critical materials used in electric vehicles.

KoBold, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to hunt for raw materials, last year secured a 51 percent stake in the Disko-Nuussuaq project on Greenland’s west coast, which is operated by London-listed Bluejay Mining.

The joint venture plans to use drones to make a high-resolution magnetic survey of the area and plans to drill 3,000 metres this year.

“The objective is to target massive nickel, copper, cobalt and platinum group metals,” Bluejay Mining said in a statement.

KoBold is a privately-held company whose principal investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate and technology fund backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

“Fully electrifying the global economy is our generation’s greatest challenge,” said KoBold CEO Kurt House.

“To accomplish that lofty goal we must accelerate our efforts to find the key materials for the electric vehicle revolution,” he said.

Other KoBold investors include Silicon Valley venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, Norwegian state-controlled energy company Equinor, and Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters)