The device is called the KoBold Hyperpod, and it\u2019s named after the company House, Josh Goldman and another partner founded in Alabama in 2018 and moved to Berkeley in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KoBold Metals\u2019 headquarters are now in a downtown office on Shattuck Avenue, above a tattoo parlor and a Korean fast food shop, but its low-profile location belies its reputation as one of the hottest mining and mineral exploration companies in the United States, in part because of that powerful camera.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBold-Metals-1.jpg\")
KoBold Metals is headquartered on the second story of downtown Berkeley\u2019s Roos Bros. building, above Simmer & Steamer, a Korean fast food shop, and Baron Art, a tattoo and piercing studio. Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
Ever since the company went looking for capital, billionaires have flooded it with cash. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Andreessen, Michael Bloomberg and Jack Ma are among KoBold\u2019s many mega-rich backers. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has tried to bolster KoBold\u2019s bottom line. The city of Berkeley cites KoBold as a highlight of its innovation sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rush of investment has driven KoBold\u2019s valuation to nearly $3 billion, making it the second-most valuable tech company in Berkeley, after Rigetti, a quantum computing firm.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s spurred by the company\u2019s use of artificial intelligence to search for critical minerals like copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt, essential elements in the building of electric vehicles, wind turbines, robots, fighter jets, batteries, and \u2014 of special interest to many of those billionaires \u2014 AI data centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In April, KoBold broke ground in Zambia on what may be one of the world\u2019s largest copper deposits, a mineral that is needed in enormous quantities for hyperscale AI data centers. It is one of the company\u2019s 60 projects in 14 countries across four continents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe invested in KoBold because their full-stack AI combines decades-old geologic information with new data sources \u2026 to find new deposits of critical battery materials,\u201d Altman, whose company OpenAI is part of a consortium investing $500 billion to build new U.S. data centers, said in a testimonial<\/a> on KoBold\u2019s website. \u201cNo one else in the world is doing anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n KoBold\u2019s billionaire backers are gung-ho about the company\u2019s prospects. But can the company deliver on its promises?\u00a0<\/p>\n Not everyone is convinced. Some longtime mining executives question whether KoBold\u2019s much-hyped AI-assisted technology was truly responsible for discovering the new copper vein in Zambia, which sits next to another copper lode. They point out that there are enormous technical challenges to retrieving ore that lies a mile underground in one of the country\u2019s wettest regions. And since KoBold, a private company, has not yet released an independent report assessing its claims, they cannot be verified.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have reason to question whether the copper is there,\u201d said Mothusi Pahl<\/a>, a consultant who spent decades in Africa building and operating power projects for mining operations in Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. \u201cBut the complex cost and energy requirements to get that copper out of the ground, and the political and economic risk associated with that work, are where the complexity is, and that\u2019s the part being glossed over.\u201d<\/p>\n KoBold\u2019s growth benefits from U.S. competition with China over critical minerals<\/p>\n While Altman\u2019s assertion that KoBold\u2019s approach is unparalleled is a bit hyperbolic \u2014 there are other companies<\/a> leveraging new technologies to find mineral deposits \u2014 it reflects the urgent sense that the U.S. needs to better control its critical mineral supply and KoBold may be one way to do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n The United States and China are locked in a global battle to dominate the extraction and production of critical materials that will fuel the next energy revolution. And so far, China is winning. The U.S. produces only about 14%<\/a> of the world\u2019s critical materials, and Australia, 6%. China, in contrast, controls 60% to 90% of global mining and refining of critical minerals. It has used its dominance for international leverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDeng Xiaoping [the leader of China from 1978 to 1989] is famous for having said OPEC has oil, but China has rare earths,\u201d said John Pomfret, who spent years in China as a Washington Post correspondent and now works for Garnault Global, a strategic risk advisory firm. \u201cWhat China did, starting in the 1980s but then accelerating in the 1990s and 2000s, was to move to dominate completely, not simply the mining of rare earths, but also the whole supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. and China battle reached a new intensity in April 2025 and has accelerated since then. In response to Trump\u2019s decision to increase tariffs, China restricted exports of seven rare-earth minerals as well as magnets made from them. That chokehold forced auto makers Ford and Suzuki to temporarily shut down some auto plants<\/a> because of a lack of materials. On Monday, China barred 10 American companies from purchasing other rare earths<\/a>. \u201cNot since the Arab oil embargo in late 1973 and early 1974 had the United States experienced such a drastic loss of access to critical minerals,\u201d a reporter for the New York Times wrote<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n The trade war has prompted the Trump administration to prioritize increasing U.S. control over the production of rare-earth minerals. It has tied foreign aid and military support to access to minerals, promised hundreds of millions of dollars to build infrastructure to bring those minerals to market, and encouraged Western companies to invest more in mining exploration. In December, the State Department launched Pax Silica<\/a>, an international effort to compete with China by establishing more reliable supply chains for AI-enabling technologies.<\/p>\n Trump administration\u2019s pursuit of minerals linked to KoBold in Greenland, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo <\/p>\n When Bezos, Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai were seated in the second row at Trump\u2019s inauguration in January 2025, right behind his family members and in front of his Cabinet picks, it signaled the importance of the tech industry to the incoming president. Trump later stood at a podium with Altman to announce the launch of the multibillion-dollar push to build more AI data centers, and appointed two of KoBold\u2019s investors, Zuckerberg and Andreessen<\/a>, to serve on the President\u2019s Council on Science and Technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n Days later, Trump renewed his call for the U.S. to take over Greenland, an action necessary, he said, to thwart Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic. But Trump also acknowledged the U.S. wanted access to Greenland\u2019s rich deposits of rare-earth materials, and later made that access part of the framework of a deal<\/a> he worked out with NATO over the future of the island. Observers noted that many of the men attending Trump\u2019s inauguration stood to benefit from increased U.S. control of Greenland.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur new president\u2019s obsession with buying Greenland \u2026 looks less like a joke and more like a big handout for the tech companies that backed him during the election,\u201d wrote a reporter for the tech news site Gizmodo<\/a>.<\/p>\n KoBold\u00a0had deployed its AI technology to look for minerals in Greenland, but\u00a0\u00a0sold its stake in the Disko-Nuussuaq nickel-copper-cobalt project in\u00a02022\u00a0and no longer had an investment there. However, the company\u00a0could still collect future royalties from the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n The White House also began pushing policies that would help KoBold\u2019s operations in Africa. During a January 2026 White House meeting, administration officials urged an Australian company to sell its interests in a major lithium mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to KoBold, Bloomberg News reported<\/a>. Lithium is critical for the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles, drones and military communications equipment.<\/p>\n In March, the State Department mulled denying drugs to people with H.I.V. in Zambia, where KoBold has a huge operation, to force the African country to agree to give the U.S. more access to its copper<\/a> and other critical minerals. It also announced that the U.S. would spend $250 million in foreign assistance to increase investments in critical mineral extractions.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of those strategic alliances was with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. said it would offer investment and military help to DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who is combating Rwanda-backed rebel groups<\/a> and seeking an unconstitutional third term<\/a>, in exchange for access to DRC minerals.\u00a0<\/p>\n In April, just as Ebola began another deadly march through the country, KoBold announced what it called the largest lithium exploration in history<\/a>. It will use its proprietary technology to explore 13 licensed sites spread over 3,000 square kilometers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis happened because of the courage and vision of the DRC government and the tireless work of the U.S. State Department to create the conditions for American companies to succeed here,\u201d House, the company\u2019s CEO, said in a press release<\/a> published in the trade publication Mining Engineering.\u00a0<\/p>\n KoBold declined to make anyone available to speak with Berkeleyside for this story. \u201cWe\u2019re heads down and focused on the work at hand, so we won\u2019t be able to join you for an interview,\u201d Justin Hamilton, KoBold\u2019s PR consultant, wrote in an email. He later answered some questions submitted in writing.<\/p>\n Kurt House and Josh Goldman met as Ph.D. students at Harvard. The men were both \u201cenergy nerds,\u201d Goldman said on the podcast Pioneers of AI<\/a>, and used to take field trips to power plants and coal mines for fun. Goldman went on to work as a consultant to oil and gas companies and write software that scoured large datasets to find untapped deposits. House ran a company focused on carbon sequestration and taught about entrepreneurship at Stanford University.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2014, they teamed up with Jeff Jurinak, a veteran of petroleum exploration and production, to form Phase Change Resources, a private equity company that invested in oil and gas. That lasted just a few years.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter doing that for a short while, we decided we wanted to \u2026 start working on the materials of the future,\u201d said Goldman, now KoBold\u2019s president.\u00a0<\/p>\n The men realized that the market for critical earth materials was enormous, yet current mining methods could not keep up with demand. House predicted on the Volts podcast<\/a> that there would be two billion electric vehicles on the planet by mid-century, meaning the need for lithium could increase by 4,000%. The world will need $10 trillion to $15 trillion in rare earth minerals to meet future needs, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAny way you slice it, those are just gigantic numbers, and they require gigantic amounts of lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel,\u201d said House. \u201c[If] that\u2019s how much we need \u2026 to be mostly off fossil fuels by 2050, how much exists in the reserves of current mines?\u201d<\/p>\n House, Goldman and Jurniak (who has since left the company) determined that the world will need to find about 1,000 new mines to meet future demand, and currently only a handful are developed a year. Most exploration projects fail to become mines and the industry is spending three times more<\/a> to make 60% fewer discoveries than 30 years ago, according to a paper by an Australian mining consulting group.<\/p>\n The trio decided to apply modern computing methods to mineral exploration, in part through the use of artificial intelligence. They named the company for a creature in Germanic folklore<\/a> that cursed silver miners and poisoned their ore<\/a>. The company\u2019s goal is \u201cturning exploration from a slow, manual process into a fast, data-driven repeatable science,\u201d according to its website.<\/p>\n For centuries, people discovered ore deposits by looking for outcroppings protruding from the earth\u2019s surface and then mining there. But most of the earth\u2019s ore deposits are below ground, making them difficult and expensive to find.<\/p>\n There is already a tremendous amount of information about the Earth\u2019s crust, but it is scattered around the globe, documented in old maps, handwritten surveys and century-old government reports, and difficult to analyze. One of KoBold\u2019s first initiatives was to quantify that material. The founders frontloaded the company not with mining experts but with data scientists and software engineers from places like Google, Apple and Meta. They worked with geoscientists to develop algorithms and technologies to assemble and analyze large datasets.<\/p>\n To further narrow down the location of mineral deposits, KoBold invented the Hyperpod, which provides three-dimensional information about the Earth\u2019s magnetic field using its high-resolution camera and other sensors. KoBold mounts it to the side of a helicopter or small airplane and flies over areas it believes might have ore deposits. The terabytes of new information are used to develop algorithms that detect geological patterns indicative of potential mineral deposits.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t drill for metals, we drill for information,\u201d House told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cIt puts the science into eureka.\u201d<\/p>\n KoBold\u2019s flagship mine in Zambia is a big bet that some experts say could be too expensive to operate, though copper prices are rising<\/p>\n Not everyone is bullish on using AI to revolutionize mining. Roland Gotthard, an exploration geologist in Perth, Australia, questioned KoBold\u2019s Series C funding round, which closed in 2025 with $537 million in funding. He expressed concern that AI might misinterpret geological data, leading to misguided predictions.<\/p>\n \u201cIn any event, AI won\u2019t help get mines drilled faster once the discovery is made, and it won\u2019t get you through ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] and permitting faster,\u201d Gotthard wrote on his LinkedIn page<\/a>. \u201cWe should expect the one or two discoveries will stagnate as usual. Or maybe AI chatbots will convince farmers, indigenous communities and NIMBYs to set aside their objections in some Silicon Valley technofantasy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Some critiques have focused on the company\u2019s flagship mine in Zambia.<\/p>\n In 2024, KoBold announced that it had uncovered what may be the largest copper deposit<\/a> discovered in the country in the last decade \u2014 a finding that seemingly confirmed the effectiveness of its AI mining technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Mingomba Mine in the Chililabombwe region is expected to produce 300,000 tons of very high-grade copper a year, according to House, who called it one of \u201cthe world\u2019s greatest undeveloped copper deposits\u201d during a late April ceremony to mark the sinking of a shaft. Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, the U.S. ambassador to Zambia and other notables attended the groundbreaking.<\/p>\n The discovery has raised international expectations about the mine\u2019s impact. KoBold will invest $600 million in Zambia by the end of 2026, \u201cthe largest expenditure of private American capital into Zambia since independence,\u201d House said at the dedication ceremony. It has already built a team of about 300 people, most of them Zambian, including its in-country CEO, Mfikeyi Makayi. That investment is expected to grow to more than $2 billion when the mine is built out. Zambia will also profit, as the government-controlled ZCCM-IH, which stands for Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings, holds a 20% interest in the project. KoBold has hired local suppliers and is funding international studies for some young Zambians.<\/p>\n But the Mingomba Mine faces many challenges. Some mining experts even doubt that KoBold made a new copper discovery since the area has been known as the Copperbelt since the 1920s. KoBold was exploring in a \u201cbrownfield,\u201d an established area, not a \u201cgreenfield\u201d where ore has never been found. The find is an extension of an existing series of ore bodies that had been previously mapped, said Mike Anglin, an executive with over 30 years of experience in international mine operations, including the discovery of copper deposits in Chile, Peru and Argentina.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey took the data and then made a big deal about using AI to find this deposit,\u201d said Anglin. \u201cMajor mining companies, if they believe they could develop an economically viable deposit, would have dedicated enough exploration geologist time and resources to tell you there was something there to continue exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamilton, KoBold\u2019s spokesperson, responded that other copper mines in the region are concentrated in a small area and were developed after geologists noticed ore protruding from the ground. It took KoBold\u2019s proprietary mining to find the ore hidden deep below the surface, he wrote in an email. \u201cWe drilled the two deepest holes in Zambia\u2019s mining history to help define the size and grade of the resource.\u201d<\/p>\n Another issue is that KoBold, a private company, does not have to release an independent report assessing its claims, leaving its investors to rely on what the company tells them. That\u2019s in contrast to publicly traded mining companies, which are required in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere to release third-party reports to validate claims, said Anglin. <\/p>\n KoBold has said it expects to release its engineering study on the copper mine in 2027.\u00a0\u201cKoBold has drilled more than 150,000 meters at Mingomba,\u201d Hamilton wrote in an email. \u201cEvery meter produces core. Every core gets assayed. We have a clear understanding of the mineral resource.\u201d<\/p>\n Mothusi Pahl, the veteran consultant on African mining operations, who previously worked for a start-up backed by one of Bill Gates\u2019 funds, told Berkeleyside he wrote a letter of concern to the billionaire in April. Pahl, who knows Gates and says he has no commercial interest in KoBold or in any competing projects, pointed out the challenges the copper mine faces<\/a> \u2014 challenges KoBold has not publicly acknowledged, he said. Since the mine, which will be at least 1,700 meters deep, is situated in one of the wettest regions in Africa, KoBold will have to spend millions on energy costs to pump out water, ventilate the mine and remove the ore.\u00a0<\/p>\n An adjacent, well-documented mine, Konkola, sank a shaft to 1,505 meters (the deepest on the African continent). The British company operating the mine, Anglo American, had to contend with the Kafue River, which ran through the Konkola mine. The dewatering operation alone consumed an estimated 660 to 900 megawatt-hours of electricity per day, said Pahl. The British company encountered so many obstacles at a time when copper prices were low that it abandoned its stake in 2002<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n KoBold\u2019s deeper workings will sit below the existing mine\u2019s water table and will be expensive to mitigate, said Pahl. He believes KoBold has lowballed the true cost of the mine, he told Gates.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cMining operations get harder the deeper you go, and power is expensive,\u201d Pahl wrote in an email to Berkeleyside.\u00a0Pahl estimated that creating a power supply could cost $500 million, raising questions about KoBold\u2019s current $2 billion budget for the mine.<\/p>\n Copper prices, however, have surged almost 50%<\/a> in the last two years, which could help justify the company\u2019s investment. <\/p>\n Hamilton dismissed Pahl\u2019s concerns. \u201cUnderground mining with water management requirements is among the most well-established disciplines in the industry,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe engineering toolkit for this has been refined over decades in some of the most challenging geological environments on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n If KoBold is overselling its technology and can\u2019t deliver large amounts of copper economically, Zambians will suffer the most, both Pahl and Anglin said. While copper generates 80% of Zambia\u2019s earnings from export, large swaths of the Copperbelt are marred by abandoned open pit mines. (In 2025, a Chinese-operated copper mine released 13 million gallons of toxic waste<\/a> into the Kafue River, just one incident of tailings polluting water supplies. Farmers in Zambia have filed an $80 billion lawsuit<\/a> against the Chinese companies involved.)<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Hichilema has personally positioned Mingomba as a centerpiece of Zambia\u2019s economic recovery and KoBold\u2019s stated production targets have been incorporated into Zambia\u2019s national 2031 copper output goals,\u201d wrote Pahl. \u201cA high-profile failure here, backed by globally recognized technology investors, risks damaging the mining community AND the political economy of southern Africa at a global scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Anglin, who worked with Pahl on the letter to Gates, agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that drives me nuts is promoters and the damage they do to the industry,\u201d he said. When promoters \u201cmake a lot of noise and then can\u2019t deliver [that] damages the industry because investors then back off.\u201d<\/p>\n Companies like KoBold, he said, take risks that scare off traditional mining investors. So they have \u201cto go to non-traditional mining investors, you know, the Bezoses, the Gates[es], the whoevers. And they have to use the \u2018We\u2019re smarter,\u2019 the \u2018Silicon Valley\u2019 label.\u201d<\/p>\n Correction: A previous version of this story misstated when KoBold Metals sold its stake in Greenland\u2019s Disko-Nuussuaq nickel-copper-cobalt project.\u00a0It sold the stake in 2022, but can still collect future royalties.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tPacific Steel site sold in step toward major new life sciences campus<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tAugust 2, 2023Aug. 3, 2023, 8:57 a.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tBerkeley Wire: Cal opens $110M engineering center, plans to auction off West Berkeley admin building<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tApril 24, 2025April 25, 2025, 9:58 a.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/AP25021838287785.jpg\")
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at the White House on Jan. 21, 2025, during the announcement of Stargate, a $500 billion initiative to build new data centers across the U.S. to power the explosion of artificial intelligence. Credit: AP\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBoldMetals_MikeKaiChen_Selects-1-2560x1707.jpg\")
Tom Hunt, KoBold\u2019s chief technology officer, shows copper-ore and drill samples at his home office in Oakland on April 18, 2024. Credit: Mike Kai Chen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/AP26017059747621.jpg\")
Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk had prominent seats at President Trump\u2019s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. Credit: AP\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/AP26043848324328.jpg\")
People protest against President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to take over Greenland in front of the U.S consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, on Jan. 17, 2026. Credit: AP\/Evgeniy Maloletka<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/AP26117466061224.jpg\")
Miners work at a coltan quarry in Rubaya, Democratic Republic of Congo, on May 9, 2025. Credit: AP\/Moses Sawasawa<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBoldMetals_MikeKaiChen_Selects-5-2560x1707.jpg\")
KoBold CEO Kurt House, sitting, and current and former employees (left to right) Jen Fendrick, director of public policy; Fanuel Banda, chief mining engineer, who left the company in March; Elizabeth Main, head of scientific computing; and Tenzing Joshi, staff scientist, pose for a photo at Stanford University on April 18, 2024. Credit: Mike Kai Chen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBoldMetals_MikeKaiChen_Selects-4-2560x1707.jpg\")
Fendrick gestures at an illustration of the Democratic Republic of Congo in April 2024, explaining how KoBold locates areas with deposits of critical minerals. Credit: Mike Kai Chen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Josh-Goldman-1.jpg\")
Josh Goldman, KoBold\u2019s president. Courtesy: KoBold Metals<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBoldMetals_MikeKaiChen_Selects-3-2560x1707.jpg\")
House and Connie Chan, a KoBold board member and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a KoBold investor, meet at Stanford in April 2024. The white board illustration behind them shows the helicopter the company flies over areas to search for ore deposits. Credit: Mike Kai Chen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Screenshot-2026-06-03-at-2.44.00-PM.png\")
In order to survey large areas quickly, KoBold uses a helicopter carrying a transmitter coil loop that can detect conductive bodies, such as ore deposits, below the surface. Courtesy: KoBold Metals<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Screenshot-2026-06-02-at-2.16.22-PM.png\")
Executives and officials, including\u00a0Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and KoBold President Josh Goldman, gathered on April 29 to break ground on a mile-deep shaft into the\u00a0Mingomba copper mine in Chililabombwe, Zambia. Courtesy: KoBold Metals\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/KoBold-Metals-6.jpg\")
KoBold\u2019s downtown Berkeley headquarters are on the second floor of the 2021 Shattuck Ave. building. Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
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