Peering into their computer screens in California last year, the data crunchers watched a subterranean fortune come into focus.
What they saw transported them 10,000 miles across the world, to Zambia, and then 1 more mile straight down into Earth. A rich lode of copper, deep in the bedrock, appeared before them, its contours revealed by a complex artificial intelligence-driven technology they had been painstakingly building for years.
On Thursday, their company, KoBold Metals, informed its business partners that their find is likely the largest copper discovery in more than a decade. According to their estimates, reviewed by The New York Times, the mine would produce at least 300,000 tons of copper a year once fully operational. That corresponds to a value of billions of dollars a year, for decades.