Cobalt Mining Companies: Who Supplies the Critical Metal

Cobalt mining companies sit at a strange intersection: the metal is essential to batteries, jet engines, and defense systems, yet the United States produces almost none of it and imports nearly everything, much of it processed in China. That combination, critical use plus foreign dependence, is exactly the profile that has made cobalt a recurring name in critical-minerals investment pitches, including Whitney Tilson’s “$6 Miner / Rushmore Gold” presentation for Stansberry Research, which opens with the claim that “China has us in a ‘chokehold’ for more than half of our antimony” and generalizes from there to the whole critical-minerals complex. Here is the honest map of the cobalt market.

Who actually produces cobalt

Cobalt is mined overwhelmingly as a byproduct, of copper in the Democratic Republic of Congo and of nickel elsewhere, which shapes the entire industry:

  • Glencore is the single largest western producer, with major Congolese copper-cobalt operations and a marketing arm that trades much of the world’s supply.
  • The DRC dominates geographically, producing roughly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, with Chinese companies operating many of the largest mines.
  • Outside the DRC, the significant producers include nickel miners in Indonesia, New Caledonia, and the Philippines, plus smaller operators in Australia and Canada.
  • In the United States, domestic production is minimal, which is precisely why the federal critical-minerals push, the subject of Tilson’s pitch, treats cobalt as a strategic vulnerability.

A slide from Whitney Tilson’s presentation on America’s critical mineral import dependence

Why the strategic angle is suddenly investable

Tilson’s presentation is one of several in the current wave making the same structural case, and the verifiable parts are worth separating from the promotional ones. The real policy backdrop: the federal government has designated critical minerals a priority, with price supports and stockpile programs; the Pentagon’s MinMod AI system, which Tilson cites, “mapped out 670,000 mineral sites across America”; and the “Project Vault” stockpile he describes as “a $12 billion mineral stockpile.” The vulnerability is real too: the presentation states “We are 100% reliant on imports for 16 of our most important commodities.”

The promotional extrapolation is the size of the response: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s “$200 TRILLION payload” estimate, which Tilson attributes carefully, is an in-ground resource estimate for all US minerals, not investable market value. But the direction of policy, more domestic mining, more stockpiling, more exploration funding, is checkable and real.

The connection to the Rushmore Gold pitch

The thread running through Tilson’s presentation is that AI-driven exploration is unlocking American mineral wealth of every kind: gold near Mount Rushmore, where Dakota Gold (DC) “uncovered 114 tons of gold” by feeding “145 years of historic records” into “AI-powered mining software,” and rare earths under an old Wyoming coal mine, where Ramaco Resources (METC) saw its stock rise 773% in a little over six months after the Department of Energy’s AI-assisted survey found “1.7 million tonnes of rare earths, worth about $37 billion.” Cobalt is part of the same critical-minerals thesis; the difference is that cobalt’s US production gap is even wider, which cuts both ways for investors: more strategic urgency, fewer pure-play domestic names to buy. Our AI Mining Stocks: The Software Behind the Resource Boom explainer covers this in detail. The details are in our AI Mineral Exploration News: Recent Discoveries Explained article.

How investors actually get exposure

Because there is no large pure-play US cobalt miner, exposure comes in four practical forms. First, diversified majors: Glencore and the big copper producers, whose cobalt revenue rides on copper operations. Second, critical-minerals funds and processors, which spread across cobalt, rare earths, and lithium. Third, byproduct plays: nickel and copper juniors whose cobalt credits can matter at the margin. Fourth, and closest to Tilson’s own style, the royalty and streaming structures, which his “Resource Royalties” report favors for income investors, since they avoid operating cost exposure.

Considerations

Cobalt is a byproduct market, so supply does not respond cleanly to cobalt prices: when copper and nickel mining slows, cobalt output falls regardless of demand, and vice versa. The DRC’s dominance means pricing power sits partly with a jurisdiction few investors can underwrite comfortably. Battery chemistry is a live risk: lithium-iron-phosphate cells use no cobalt, and every year of LFP share growth trims the demand curve. As with any critical-minerals thesis, the honest stance is that policy support is real but slow, and exploration stories are geared to both metal prices and permitting timetables.

Where to learn more

Tilson’s four picks, including AI-driven resource plays, are in “AI Miners: Four Stocks Unlocking America’s $200 Trillion Natural Resource Bounty,” included with a trial of Commodity Supercycles backed by a 30-day refund guarantee. For related reading, see our Dakota Gold and Tilson’s greatest retirement stock coverage, our critical minerals explainer, and how to invest in gold mining companies.

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