Ivanhoe boosts Congo copper find 30% as Big Tech eyes supply

Ivanhoe Mines announced Tuesday that a drilling campaign has increased the mineral resource estimate at its Western Forelands Makoko copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo by 30% to approximately 12 million tons of contained copper, as the company's founder revealed that Silicon Valley tech giants are expressing interest in securing future metal supplies.miningweekly+1

Executive Co-Chair Robert Friedland said in an interview with Bloomberg that he is fielding "unconventional interest" from U.S. Big Tech companies anxious about where copper will come from to power the artificial intelligence data center buildout.bloomberg+1

"Silicon Valley hyperscalers are very worried about where metal is going to come from," Friedland said. "We're seeing unconventional interest in mining that I never saw in my 45 years in mining."miningweekly

A Growing Resource

The updated estimate for the Makoko District now includes 42 million metric tons of indicated resources grading 2.66% copper and 612 million tons of inferred resources grading 1.80% copper. Ivanhoe described the Western Forelands as the world's largest and highest-grade copper discovery of the past decade, with the company's geologists having found over 55 million tons of contained copper across the broader basin.markets.financialcontent

Roughly 60,000 meters of drilling from the 2026 campaign were not included in the latest estimate, and the company plans to upsize its program in the fourth quarter to target shallow mineralization suited for open-pit extraction. A scoping study is set to commence in the first quarter of 2027.finimize+1

Tech Giants Eye Metal Supply

Without naming specific companies, Friedland said discussions with hyperscalers such as Amazon.com ↘ 0.35%, Microsoft ↘ 0.99%, and Alphabet's ↗ 0.78% Google have touched on both securing metal offtake and financing mine construction. "There's a very real concern now that these multitrillion-dollar enterprises suddenly want to have their own sort of dedicated resource base in a balkanizing world economy," he said.miningweekly

Copper has hit all-time highs this week, reflecting tight near-term supplies and expectations of rising demand from data centers, renewable energy, and power grids. The rally coincides with a long-term mismatch between constrained mine supply and surging demand forecasts.miningweekly

Path to Production

Friedland said the project's geology, while similar to the adjacent Kamoa-Kakula complex co-owned with Zijin Mining Group, is better suited to open-pit rather than underground mining, which could lower upfront costs and accelerate development. "There's no reason why this isn't a three- or four-year project" to bring into production, he said.miningweekly

Another Friedland-chaired company is separately working on a $1.1 billion debt package from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to develop a copper project in Arizona. The Congo project, meanwhile, underscores the DRC's growing centrality to global copper supply as the world's second-largest producer of the metal.miningweekly