BHP Billiton said on Wednesday it would form an alliance with KoBold Metals, an artificial intelligence exploration company, to search Australia and other parts of the world for mineral feedstocks such as copper and nickel for batteries.
KoBold Metals uses machines and artificial intelligence to find raw materials. Its main investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
Keenan Jennings, VICE-PRESIDENT of metals exploration at BHP, said: "Globally, the majority of shallow deposits have already been discovered and the remaining resources are likely to be deep underground and harder to see from the surface. We need new ways to find minerals, and the alliance will combine historical data, ARTIFICIAL intelligence and earth science expertise to explore for resources."
KoBold chief Executive Kurt Said the alliance would cover more than half a million square kilometres of Western Australia. In the next 20 years, the discovery will be at a depth of 200-1500 meters, an area that is very unexplored and likely to have large ore bodies. KoBold has more than a dozen partners in about 20 locations, including sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Australia, looking for copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium.
