KoBold Metals employs big data, scientists in pursuit of battery metals

KoBold Metals is investing in battery metal projects using big data and scientific computing with capital from billionaires including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. The privately held California-based company has also lured David Broughton, the world-renowned expert in sediment-hosted copper deposits, to lead its hydrothermal systems team. “We have the overwhelming majority of his time,” Josh Goldman, KoBold Metals’ chief financial and technical officer, says of Broughton in a telephone interview. “David is very substantially involved.” Broughton worked for Ivanplats, now Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; NYSE: IVN), from January 2008 through October 2016, and was co-awarded the PDAC’s Thayer Lindsley and AME’s Colin Spence awards for world-class discoveries at Kamoa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Platreef in South Africa.