KoBold Metals has raised the majority of the $527 million round following discovery of a major copper cache.

Copper mine in Zambia. Photo: Getty Images

Bill Gates-backed AI-powered mining company KoBold Metals is closing in on a major raise.

The Berkeley, California-based company has raised about $491 million of a $527 million round, TechCrunch first reported. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has about $35 million outstanding in the round.

Following a $195 million funding round in June 2023 that boosted KoBold’s valuation to $1 billion, this next round could reportedly double the company’s valuation to about $2 billion. KoBold counts among its investors global asset manager T. Rowe Price, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z.

KoBold did not respond to Inc.’s request for comment.

KoBold uses artificial intelligence to process data and guide decision-making in pursuit of deep earth deposits of minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper that are crucial to the clean energy transition. The company originally specialized in discovery before branching into mining, after it announced it located a large copper deposit in Zambia in February of this year.

At the time, KoBold president and co-founder Josh Goldman described the mine as “one of the world’s biggest high-grade large copper mines” and compared its size and quality to the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex in the Republic Democratic of Congo–the fourth largest copper resource globally. The New York Times reported that the mine could generate enough copper over the course of about two decades to build 100 million electric vehicle batteries.

Building out the Zambia mine is projected to cost more than $2 billion dollars and take about a decade, but KoBold reportedly plans to fast-track the project to meet rising need for copper, Reuters reported.

Copper is important for the development of new technologies including artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, and China is currently both the world’s largest copper producer and consumer of the metal. In March of this year, chip giant Nvidia announced a pivot to using more copper materials in its data centers, Investor’s Business Daily reported. The chief economist at Switzerland-based commodities trader Trafigura told Reuters in April that AI could push demand for copper up by up to an additional 1 million metric tons by 2030. As for EVs, copper is a crucial component in their wiring and batteries, and demand for those applications is also continuing to rise in spite of a slowing in EV sales growth, according to a separate Reuters report from October.