BHP has struck a deal to use artificial intelligence tools developed by a Bill Gates-backed start-up to find new deposits of metals needed for batteries and clean energy.
The world’s biggest miner and Silicon Valley-based KoBold Metals will jointly fund exploration using data processing technology to help predict the location of mineral deposits, starting in Western Australia.
The partnership comes as demand for battery metals such as lithium and nickel is expected to surge as sales of electric cars boom. Large lithium-ion batteries are also increasingly being used to store renewable energy from intermittent sources such as wind and solar.