KoBold’s AI Is Reading Colonial-Era Drill Logs to Find Lithium in the DRC

Geologists from US mining company KoBold Metals are working deep in the Congolese bush with high-precision GPS units and tablets connected to an AI system running on servers thousands of kilometres away in California. The company, founded in 2018 with backing from investors including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a US strategy to secure strategic mineral supplies and reduce China’s dominance of the sector. What the AI does KoBold’s teams have b