Zambia may be home to the world’s third-largest copper mine after a startup backed by billionaire Bill Gates discovered huge deposits of the metal, the country’s President said.

San Francisco Bay Area-based KoBold Metals, which uses artificial intelligence to explore for materials key to the green-energy transition, said this week that its discovery at the Mingomba project far surpasses existing operations in top producer Chile by copper grade.

“It won’t be just the largest mine in Zambia, but it will be one of the largest mines in the world,” President Hakainde Hichilema said Thursday in an interview outside Lusaka, the capital. “Maybe one of the top three largest mines in the world. We believe it will produce well over — when it’s fully operational — 500 000 to 600 000 metric tons.”

Escondida in Chile, the world’s biggest copper mine, produced more than a million metric tons of the metal last year and Grasberg, in Indonesia, the next largest about 770 000 metric tons in 2022.

KoBold president Josh Goldman compared the Zambian mines potential to that of the Kamoa-Kakula, developed by Ivanhoe Mines and China’s Zijin Mining Group just across the border in Democratic Republic of Congo. That mine produced almost 400 000 t of copper last year and at full capacity will be able to produce 620 000 t a year.

KoBold, whose shareholders include Breakthrough Energy Ventures – backed by Gates and Jeff Bezos – as well as T. Rowe Price Group, Bond Capital, Andreesen Horowitz and Equinor ASA, has been drilling at its Zambian permit for little over a year. Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg News’s parent Bloomberg, is an investor in Breakthrough, according to the company’s website.

The discovery has “huge” implications for Zambia, Hichilema said.

Total production of the metal in Africa’s second biggest copper producer fell to below 700 000 t last year. A new operation that could nearly double that will provide a boost toward Hichilema’s target of lifting the national output to three million tons by 2031. KoBold, which hasn’t commented on potential production levels, estimates it would cost about $2-billion to build a mine at the Mingomba project.

“When we bring new mines like that it means we are moving toward the three million tons,” Hichilema said.