The obsession of our new president with purchasing Greenland has prompted jeers, laughter, and jeers. The jokes about the price of eggsare funny, but the attempt to procure them looks more like a large handout to the tech companies who backed him in the election. Donald Trump’s biggest financial backers have been looking for financial opportunities in the Arctic nation for years, according to multiple new reports. The Lever reported that KoBold Metals is actively mining Greenland to find raw materials for AI products. KoBold Metals, based in Berkeley, California and using AI to hunt down metals such as cobalt and lithium, copper and nickel, is the property of some of the most powerful executives in the tech industry. KoBold is owned by recent White House visitors Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also invested. Marc Andreessen is a billionaire venture capitalist who has invested in Kobold. He has also been involved with Elon Musk’s DOGE, and has supported Trump throughout the election. Microsoft magnate Bill Gates also has a large interest in Kobold, despite his less generous views of Trump.
KoBold belongs to a project known as the Disko-Nuussuaq, a mining initiative that aims to drill for minerals on Greenland’s west coast. It has also obtained a Mineral Exploration License (MEL) for Disko Island, located off Greenland’s west coast, for the years 2024-30. The New York Times reported that a company called Critical Metals has plans to mine Greenland in 2026. Cantor Fitzgerald is a powerful financial company owned by Trump’s nominee for U.S. commerce secretary, Wall Street billionaire Howard Lutnick. It has a stake of Critical Metals. The Times reported that Lutnick, who plans to leave Cantor Fitzgerald if confirmed as Commerce Secretary, could influence Greenland’s tariff and trade policies in his new role.
The acquisition of the Arctic territory may be based on mining lithium for car batteries and extracting valuable metals to build America’s data centers.
It’s clear that the AI industry has big plans to expand its operations over the next few years. To do this, it will need easy access to raw materials and energy. Last week, the Trump Administration announced Project “Stargate,” which is a $500 billion effort by the AI industry to build data centres across the U.S., with money from OpenAI. NVIDIA. Microsoft. Oracle. The project aims to create an “AI infrastructure” that is unmatched to make America competitive in the race with China to build increasingly advanced AI. Gizmodo contacted KoBold and Critical Metals to get their comments.
Another thing to consider is the growing influence the “Network State”a bizarre side project of Silicon Valley’s billionaire classes, which aims to create a global diaspora private-funded crypto-powered cities. Companies affiliated with the Network State, like the crypto startup Praxis, have announced their desire to use Greenland for neocolonial testing grounds for their urban development experiment. Despite what Donald Trump Jr. saidGreenland has shown little interest in becoming part of the United States. In a recent poll only 6 percent of Greenland’s residents expressed a desire to join the U.S. Denmark has been even more vocally hostile to the idea. The Scandinavian country is willing to engage in a “trade war” if it’s necessary.
According to the general consensus, the rush to invest Greenland could be linked to the larger geopolitical battle between the U.S. AI is widely viewed as being the most important technology of our time, which is why both nations are fighting to be technologically dominant.
The Lever cites a recent statement by Michael Waltz, Trump’s incoming national-security adviser: “This is all about critical minerals and natural resources,” Waltz told Fox Newsabout the Greenland purchase. It could not be more clear.
