Climate tech dealmaking started the new year with a bang as KoBold Metals hauled in more than half a billion dollars for its AI-powered technology to pinpoint critical mineral deposits.
The deal spotlights two of the year’s hottest trends — AI and the race for critical minerals — and sets the stage for a potential future IPO for Berkeley, Calif.-based KoBold. The funding will help KoBold develop a massive copper deposit in Zambia it helped identify last year, as well as dozens of other projects in its pipeline.
The Series C round was led by Durable Capital Partners and repeat investor T. Rowe Price. Other investors included early KoBold backer Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as well as Earthshot VC, Equinor, Mitsubishi, Andreesen Horowitz.
Critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt are essential for applications spanning construction, EV batteries, transmission lines and defense. US president Joe Biden has backed the Lobito railway and other infrastructure to transport the continent’s vast supply of critical minerals. The incoming Trump administration has signaled that it sees securing a supply of critical minerals as key to national security and the country’s intensifying competition with China.
There is “very broad bipartisan support for diversifying [the] supply of critical minerals,” KoBold’s Kurt House told The FT.
He also said KoBold expected to go public within five years. Previous investors in the mining company include Apollo Projects, Bond Capital, BHP Group and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Green steel
Separately, another Breakthrough Energy Ventures-backed company, low-carbon iron maker Electra Steel, has secured an initial $180 million out of a targeted $257 million raise. The Boulder, Colo. company uses an innovative electrochemical process to extract pure iron out of lower-grade ores, which can then be turned into steel in electric arc furnaces. That can eliminate the most carbon-intensive emissions from the steelmaking process, which is responsible for 7% of global emissions.
Steel manufacturing is also considered a matter of national economic security; the Biden administration last week denied Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel’s bid to acquire US Steel.
Electra, which emerged from stealth mode in 2022 with $85 million in funding, did not disclose investors in its latest round. In addition to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, previous investors include Amazon, BHP Ventures, and Nucor.
