KoBold Metals, a Berkeley, California-based startup that specializes in using artificial intelligence to discover new deposits of metals critical for batteries and renewable energy, said today it raised $527 million in equity funding.

The Series C funding round was co-led by existing investor T Rowe Price and joined by Durable Capital Partners. Other existing backers including billionaire Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and venture capital group Andreesen Horowitz also participated in the round, along with new investors including StepStone.

The company uses generative AI technology as well as more traditional machine learning algorithms to assist with exploring historical geophysical data sources in order to reveal mineral deposits that would otherwise be overlooked. In the modern day, most easy-to-find deposits have already been discovered and exploited, the deposits in the future will be more difficult to uncover, expensive to reach and the potential of projects failing could mean the losses of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

Rare earth metals and minerals critical to electric car batteries, renewable energy systems, semiconductors and other technologies such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt are particularly lucrative to discover. They depend on analyzing enormous amounts of prospecting data. The company said that it invests more than $100 million annually across over 70 projects on five continents to assist with this search.

In spite of advances in technology, and because of the push towards greener vehicles and AI, the industry’s hunger for metals has continued to grow. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030 global copper mines will only meet 80% of the world’s demands for the metal. As for lithium and cobalt, existing mines and construction projects will only meet those needs by half.

In February, KoBold said it discovered an untapped copper deposit in Zambia. This has opened up a $2 billion underground mining site that is expected to produce at least 300,000 tonnes per year starting in the 2030s, the company said.

KoBold co-founder and Chief Executive Kurt House told the Financial Times about 40% of the new funding would go to developing existing projects into mining sites. The Zambian project would take “the lion’s share of that.”

House said that the company intends to begin hiring data scientists and geoscientists to its team to help survey and collect data to broaden the team. He added that the KoBold is likely to public in the next three to five years.

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