While many of us increasingly live in digital worlds, and even as software eats the world,

we still rely on a myriad of devices that depend on resources from the physical world.

One of the most important resources on the planet is

COBOLT, which is used in batteries, among other things. In this episode from July

2019, Kurt House, CEO and co-founder of Cobald Metals, John Thompson, Professor of Earth and

Geo Sciences at Cornell, and Connie Chan, A16Z general partner for Consumer.

Talk with editorial partner Hannah Winozky about the way technology

is transforming how we find Cobalt and the mining industry as a whole, as well as the science

behind why Cobalt is so critical for batteries, the data and knowledge behind mining today versus the past, and more.

Hi and welcome to the A16Z Podcast. I'm Hannah and this episode is all about the exploration for and mining of minerals

specifically COBOLT. In this conversation I'm joined by Kurt House CEO and

co-founder of COBOLT metals Professor John Thompson of Earth and Geosciences at Cornell,

and A16Z general partner on the consumer team, Connie Chan.

We explain why it is that Cobalt is suddenly one of the most important and in-demand metals on the planet

and how technology is transforming how we find it and the mining industry as a whole.

Along the way we touch on a little bit of battery tech history and science and how entire

chapters of human civilization are driven by the search for and mining of

metals from ancient civilizations first finding copper to the major ground shift in the 1950s with geophysics

and knowledge of plate tectonics. And finally what kinds of new data sources

technologies and techniques we can use to find more COBOLT today, everything from geophysical

and geochemical data to agricultural information to old boxes collected over centuries in the

basements and att addicts of mining companies,

...