“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 one more mile straight down into the Earth. A rich lode of copper, deep in the bedrock, appeared before them, its contours revealed by a complex A.I.-driven technology they’d 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.”

From New York Times.