00:10:53 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:10:53] S0: for sure. So a 16 z series a Yes. Kochla series b [00:10:58] S1: Yes. Was the future Well, Kochla is also one of our seed investors. [00:11:01] S0: Oh, wow. So they they doubled down. [00:11:02] S1: They did double It's [00:11:03] S0: a great signal. High signal. There we go. Let's go. Okay. What does the future of the company look like in ten years? Right? Are you gonna have these Yeah. Minds autonomously running? Like, humans in the loop. Kalanick is looking at something similar with Adams. [00:11:18] S1: He is. Yeah. [00:11:19] S0: How are you guys? Competitors, what does that look like? What does that landscape look like? [00:11:23] S1: That's a good question. So in ten years... So our, like, our our kind of, like, credo is, like, 10 projects in ten years. So we wanna build 10, like, large scale [00:11:30] S0: Mhmm. [00:11:30] S1: Mining projects in the next Well, 10 the next eight years. We've got two, and we'll, know, have a couple more following very quickly here. Mhmm. And so, you know, we wanna build, you know, the next generational mining company Wow. Fundamentally. And so in ten years, we're gonna be well on our way to doing that. We'll have 10 projects. So, you know, they're increasing in size. The first project is like a $100,000,000 in CapEx. The next one is about $250,000,000 in CapEx. There's some other stuff going on as well. Then we've got like, you know, we're just gonna keep moving up orders of magnitude in terms of the size of the projects, the size of the impact.
00:11:30 · JC Lozano, Ryan Deng
[00:11:30] S1: Mining projects in the next Well, 10 the next eight years. We've got two, and we'll, know, have a couple more following very quickly here. Mhmm. And so, you know, we wanna build, you know, the next generational mining company Wow. Fundamentally. And so in ten years, we're gonna be well on our way to doing that. We'll have 10 projects. So, you know, they're increasing in size. The first project is like a $100,000,000 in CapEx. The next one is about $250,000,000 in CapEx. There's some other stuff going on as well. Then we've got like, you know, we're just gonna keep moving up orders of magnitude in terms of the size of the projects, the size of the impact. [00:12:06] S0: So are there mines available to be bought in The US? Funny. When you're taking over like an old mine, my question is like, how do you identify it? How are you implementing your autonomous services? Right? Cause to me it seems like, they're doing... It's built out for just humans to operate. Right? Yeah. To drive the trucks, to shovel out the dirt. Shovel it by hand. Well, I'm sorry. Maybe not anymore. I'm not familiar with much. [00:12:27] S1: So it's it's pretty interesting. It's actually like a really good use case Mhmm. For autonomy. So on the process... So like, if you think about what mining is, right, and then what you basically do is you figure out... Somebody figures out there's like some minerals underground [00:12:41] S0: Mhmm. [00:12:42] S1: That they think will be [00:12:42] S0: How do
00:12:42 · JC Lozano
[00:12:42] S1: they figure that out? That is a great question that gets us deep into the ecosystem that is kinda junior mining. Mhmm. But basically what happens is is that geologists typically that's where it starts. They'll have a theory or hypothesis about this part of the subterranean ground has either old oceans or rivers or geologic activity, which causes minerals to sort of coalesce and form and sort of concentrate there. Mhmm. Very simplistically. And so they have a hypothesis, like, oh, we think that there's gold and then there hills, roughly speaking. Then what you do is then there's, like, a whole ecosystem that is essentially, like, you need to drill what are called exploration drill holes, where you, like, basically drill deep down into the earth. You take core samples, you analyze them, and try to figure out, okay, there's, like, actually, like, some amount of metal under there that is economically viable. That's, like, a fairly long process. Generally, throughout that process, they're sort of, like, increasing their certainty about, like, the the resource underground. So they're trying to map out the ore body Right. Trying to understand, like, it's laid out three d in space underground, which is, like, crazy we're able to do that. And then eventually, they get to this point where it was, again, geologists that started this and exploration companies. Mhmm. So they get to this point where they have, like, characterized the resource well enough underground. And as they're doing this, they're raising funding from either the private markets or the public markets. Mhmm. And then at some point, like, the valuation of that resource will kinda peak.
00:14:05 · Ryan Deng
[00:14:05] S0: I
00:14:05 · JC Lozano
[00:14:05] S1: see. And it it hits its first peak. And that's basically because people are super excited about the resources underground. Uh-huh. The challenge that those folks have is basically that they're geologists, fundamentally, exploration folks, and so the market typically starts to question whether or not they'll actually be able to bring the resource to market. So they actually, like, characterized the resource on the ground, and now you have to, like, go and mine it. Right? And then you have to process it to turn it into something valuable, and you need to do that all economically, and it's, a huge capital project. It's a lot of complexity. Mhmm. And so you get to this first peak evaluation, and then it kinda crashes out Mhmm. Because the, like, market sort of loses faith that that operational team is able to execute on it. Okay. And so... But at that point, like, you've... Like, the resource on the ground is well understood. Uh-huh. There's a lot of these. Yeah. They've typically gotten pretty far in the permitting process, so that piece is removed. And so you're able to buy these assets in kind of this, like, trough that they go through where they're like... The people understand that there's something valuable underground. They have a decent understanding of, what it would take to actually extract it. Mhmm. And so now it goes through this trough because the market doesn't actually believe they'll be able to execute on it. And so we come in at that trough, that second trough Mhmm. And we, like, we have an incredible operational team. So, like, we built the company to fill the gap of, like, we know what's underground, here's the market, we fill that gap in between of, actually bringing the project to market, actually building the thing and executing and running it.
00:15:29 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:15:29] S0: So you're doing it, like, orders of magnitude faster and better than Yeah. Practices. [00:15:34] S1: Well, we're just doing the thing. Is that like, that is [00:15:37] S0: the part What processes are diff... What like, what parts are different, right? Because