Eric Sprott is a mining legend. And his latest venture is focused on one of the most important metals for the global energy transition: copper.

‍What’s happening:‍

• The Sprott Copper Trust (TSX: COP-U) has announced they will raise up to $500 million in new capital to purchase more physical copper
  

Why it matters:‍

• Copper prices have been on the rise amidst a boom in demand globally for renewable energy infrastructure and decarbonization technologies
  
• Copper is also a critical input for the construction of new data centres, which have been seeing a major uptick due to the need for artificial intelligence cloud computing capacity
  

Going deeper:‍

• Eric Sprott is one of the most legendary financiers in Canadian mining and natural resources and has also been a first mover in launching publicly listed funds focused on commodities, with the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (TSX: U-U) notably becoming one of the largest owners of uranium globally
  
• The race to find significant copper deposits has led to some of the largest mining companies in the world including BHP (NYSE: BHP) and Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE: IE) to form a new joint venture focused on new copper discoveries in the United States and Bill Gates backed startup KoBold Metals to strike a partnership with a publicly traded company in Canada to leverage machine learning to find copper in Zambia

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