There is a phrase that's common in the mining world, which goes something like,

if you can't grow it, you must mine it.

That's so central to understand that so much of our physical world around us, our homes, our cars, everything on our tabletops,

these things require materials that must be mined from the earth's surface and below.

That is Connie Chan, A16Z general partner.

Connie has led investments into all kinds of companies, from live shopping to religious

super apps to AI leasing agents.

But one of Connie's most important bets isn't your standard technology story.

It's in a mineral

exploration company, one that uses artificial intelligence, but also human intelligence, to

find critical materials across five continents. Now, for many of you, this is a topic that is just

starting to bubble up because if you want to build the future, so many of the new technologies

that we're talking about and dreaming about are going to require more metals. One very clear

example is for electric vehicles. EVs require massive batteries and those batteries need more copper,

more lithium, more nickel. And there's very clearly a big supply gap that's coming in a couple decades.

EV cars right now globally account for already 14% of car sales.

In China, it was the majority of car sales in 2024.

And these EVs require 4x amount of copper as a normal gas vehicle.

So if we want to power this green revolution,

we definitely need more mining.

And it's not just electric vehicles.

If you think about data centers,

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