A deadline looms for rules governing deep-sea mining, but a rushed decision may be risky
These three vessels, owned by The Metals Company’s strategic partner Allseas, are seen here performing a pilot nodule collection system trial and environmental monitoring program for The Metals Company. Photo courtesy The Metals Company.
Photo courtesy The Metals company
The debate over collecting minerals from the bottom of the deep sea in international waters has gained new urgency ahead of a pending rule-making deadline.
As all matter of stakeholders gather in Kingston, Jamaica, to try to reach a consensus over regulation, a fierce debate is growing between supporters who say we need the rules urgently as demand for the minerals at the bottom of the deep sea grows, while opponents argue that the rush to open the seafloor in international waters could be a damaging decision that’s impossible to reverse.
One area of particular focus is a part of the Central Pacific, about 1,000 miles from the coast of Mexico, called the Clarion Clipperton Zone. Proponents say that deep-sea mining there is a less damaging way to gather metals like nickel, copper, manganese and cobalt. That’s especially true when the mining happens in areas like rain forests, which are rich in biodiversity and also serve as major carbon sinks that slow climate change.
“We have to take a planetary perspective. We have to look at the planet as a whole,” said Gerard Barron, the CEO of The Metals Company, which has permits to explore mining in the area under consideration. The Metals Company was founded in 2011, has raised $400 million from investors, and has been working for the last dozen years to do the research and get the regulations completed to be able to collect metals from this region in the deep sea.
“We don’t suggest that there’s zero impact,” Barron said. “But what we do say is that there’s very minimal impact, and we can manage those impacts.”
Opponents of deep-sea mining say there is not enough information to make that kind of decision.
“If mining does move forward, the damage caused will be irreversible,” said Diva Amon, a deep-sea marine biologist who is representing the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative.
Deep-sea creatures have adapted over millions of years to living in a dark, quiet place with little sediment. Many of these creatures have unusually long life spans: There are individual corals that have been living for more than 4,000 years and sea sponges that live for 10,000 years, Amon said. It’s also an impressive source of biodiversity, as scientists had never seen 70% to 90% of the many thousands of lifeforms discovered there.
“This is a thriving ecosystem,” Amon said. “Sure, many of the animals are small in size, but that doesn’t make them any less important.”
This image is of a new species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100 meters in the Clarion Clipperton Zone. This creature depends on sponge stalks attached to nodules to live. Photo courtesy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Photo courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The deadline pulling everyone to the table
From March 21 to April 1, the International Seabed Authority is meeting at its headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica.
Formed in 1996, the ISA has 168 countries as members and issues rules that govern 54% of the world’s oceans — all the oceans outside of the Exclusive Economic Zones of the countries that border them. It’s charged with managing mineral resources in the floor of the ocean “for the benefit of humankind as a whole,” and “has the mandate to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects that may arise from deep-seabed-related activities,” the organization says on its website.
The ISA has granted approvals for 22 contractors to explore metals in the deep seabed, and 19 of these exploration applications are for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion Clipperton Zone.
The Boston Metal Company holds three of the licenses, which it was able to obtain by being sponsored by the tiny Pacific island nations of Nauru, Tonga and Kiribati. But actually taking the metals from the seabed requires an exploitation license.
This map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows where the nodules are most abundant in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Photo and map courtesy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
On June 25, 2021, the President of Nauru submitted a letter to the ISA requesting that the organization have the rules and regulations finalized so that this exploitation application could be approved to begin work in two years. That two-year deadline is coming due in a matter of months.
Critics of the idea of deep-sea mining have said the process is being rushed.
The letter from Nauru was submitted “right in the middle of the pandemic when no meetings were held face to face, triggered a rule in the Law of the Sea that puts pressure on the ISA and its member states to finalize regulations within two years – or consider giving Nauru and its company a provisional license to begin mining with no regulations in place,” Jessica Battle, the lead for World Wildlife Fund‘s global No Deep Seabed Mining Initiative, told CNBC.
The rule was meant to be a sort of “safety valve” in case negotiations got stuck, but the negotiations are happening and Battle says that rule has placed too much pressure to reach a decision before all the research is done.
“Should Nauru be given a license, then the race is on to mine the ocean, with unknown but certainly dire consequences for the ocean,” Battle said.
Pradeep Singh, an expert on ocean governance, environmental law and climate policy told CNBC that “allowing mining activities to commence at this point in time would be a decision that could be legally challenged.”
Singh said the future of deep-sea mining is still undecided because it is the ISA’s duty to represent all of the 168 member states’ viewpoints. The members can “agree to delay or postpone” the move to mining.
“Putting legality aside, such a decision would also lack legitimacy,” said Singh, who is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature‘s delegation to the ISA. “The ISA was established to act on behalf of humankind as a whole and for the best interest of humankind — and not to promote the interest of industry or rather one private actor in this case.”
Billions of dollars on the line
The looming deadline comes as demand for these metals increases.
Nickel, copper, manganese and cobalt are strategic minerals in the push toward clean energy, as many of them are essential in batteries and electrical infrastructure, according to Andrew Miller, chief operating officer of the metals intelligence company Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
“There is of course an opportunity for this to fill some of the void facing strategic battery raw material markets over the years to come,” he said.
A a polymetallic nodule collected during environmental baseline campaigns off the floor of the deep sea by The Metals Company.
Photo courtesy The Metals Company
“The drive towards decarbonization requires development of new technologies, which often depend on supply of more scarce or strategic materials,” Miller told CNBC. “If we are to meet these demands, the supply base of these materials will have to scale at an unprecedented rate. That’s what’s behind the drive for diversity of supply on land-based mining, as well as exploration of alternatives such as deep-sea mining.”
Barron estimates that The Metals Company’s single NORI-D Project, has a lifetime adjusted earnings value of $85 billion, after paying about $8.5 billion to the countries that are sponsoring it. And that single project is only about 22% of the total resources the company can claim.
The Metals Company isn’t alone in its interest in the region of the international waters.
On March 16, Norway’s Loke Marine Minerals announced it acquired two deep-sea mineral licenses located in the Clarion Clipperton Zone previously owned by Lockheed Martin’s UK Seabed Resources.
For Barron, seeing Lockheed sell its stake in the space is a positive sign for the industry.
“Lockheed has been a pure passenger in this industry,” Barron told CNBC. “They were there in the 1970s, but they’ve been no help to the industry whatsoever. They are a big name, but they don’t do anything. They are a defense contractor. Their business is making bombs and warplanes. So the fact that we’ve got an active company from Norway, owned by some of the state entities of Norway, I think it’s a massive positive for the industry and we’re delighted about it.”
Finding consensus for the Wild West of the sea
Opponents of deep-sea mining want to tap the brakes. Big companies, including BMW, Google, Patagonia, Samsung, Volkswagen and Volvo have made a public call for a moratorium on the practice.
The pilot nodule collector vehicle designed by Allseas for use by The Metals Company. Photo provided by The Metals Company.
Photo courtesy The Metals Company
The WWF and Greenpeace worked together to coordinate the call to get businesses to sign on to the moratorium.
“Our goal is to eliminate primary users from the market, so that even if the industry passes political hurdles, there will be less of a demand for metals extracted from the seafloor,” said Arlo Hemphill, the global corporate lead of Greenpeace’s Stop Deep Sea Mining Campaign. “Companies like Volkswagen and Google have substantial influence in the countries they work, so their support of the political moratorium on deep-sea mining is also of value here.”
The Metals Company, on the flipside, published on Tuesday a lifecycle assessment finding that determined the environmental impact of the metals coming out of the NORI-D project will be less damaging than land mining for nearly every category of battery components.
But Amon worries that the thesis being measured is wrong in the first place, and that deep-sea mining will simply add to, rather than replace, terrestrial mining.
“What is likely to happen is that if deep-sea mining begins, both will occur, one is not going to cancel out the other,” she said.
She also said that further innovation in battery technology could provide an alternative to the current technologies that are so heavily dependent on these minerals, So the decision shouldn’t be rushed.
A 40-centimeter long elasipod sea cucumber seen here about to be collected as part of an expidition of the Clarion Clipperton Zone by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This sea cucumber has92 feet, seven lips, and numerous spikey processes, and was found at 3,500 meters.
Photo courtesy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Ultimately, this is, this is about collective decision making,” Amon said. “We’re talking about areas beyond national jurisdiction, or international waters, which is where mineral resources belong to everyone on the planet.”
But Barron says mining will happen regardless, as the need for these metals is growing. So it’s better to decide than to wait.
“The problem is if we don’t get this agreed, it will just happen without regulations,” Barron said. “And that’s going to be really bad. Imagine that there’s no reporting. You could just not take the care and consideration that companies like us do. It could be the Wild West, and that would be a disaster for our oceans and for our planet.”
Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images
A YouTube tool that uses creators’ biometrics to help them remove AI-generated videos that exploit their likeness also allows Google to train its artificial intelligence models on that sensitive data, experts told CNBC.
In response to concern from intellectual property experts, YouTube told CNBC that Google has never used creators’ biometric data to train AI models and it is reviewing the language used in the tool’s sign-up form to avoid confusion. But YouTube told CNBC it will not be changing its underlying policy.
The discrepancy highlights a broader divide inside Alphabet, where Google is aggressively expanding its AI efforts while YouTube works to maintain trust with creators and rights holders who depend on the platform for their businesses.
YouTube is expanding its “likeness detection,” a tool the company introduced in October that flags when a creator’s face is used without their permission in deepfakes, the term used to describe fake videos created using AI. The feature is being expanded to millions of creators in the YouTube Partner Program as AI-manipulated content becomes more prevalent throughout social media.
The tool scans videos uploaded across YouTube to identify where a creator’s face may have been altered or generated by artificial intelligence. Creators can then decide whether to request the video’s removal, but to use the tool, YouTube requires that creators upload a government ID and a biometric video of their face. Biometrics are the measurement of physical characteristics to verify a person’s identity.
Experts say that by tying the tool to Google’s privacy policy, YouTube has left the door open for future misuse of creators’ biometrics. The policy states that public content, including biometric information, can be used “to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features.”
“Likeness detection is a completely optional feature, but does require a visual reference to work,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said in a statement to CNBC. “Our approach to that data is not changing. As our Help Center has stated since the launch, the data provided for the likeness detection tool is only used for identity verification purposes and to power this specific safety feature.”
YouTube told CNBC it is “considering ways to make the in-product language clearer.” The company has not said what specific changes to the wording will be made or when they will take effect.
Experts remain cautious, saying they raised concerns about the policy to YouTube months ago.
“As Google races to compete in AI and training data becomes strategic gold, creators need to think carefully about whether they want their face controlled by a platform rather than owned by themselves,” said Dan Neely, CEO of Vermillio, which helps individuals protect their likeness from being misused and also facilitates secure licensing of authorized content. “Your likeness will be one of the most valuable assets in the AI era, and once you give that control away, you may never get it back.”
Vermillio and Loti are third-party companies working with creators, celebrities and media companies to monitor and enforce likeness rights across the internet. With advancements in AI video generation, their usefulness has ramped up for IP rights holders.
Loti CEO Luke Arrigoni said the risks of YouTube’s current biometric policy “are enormous.”
“Because the release currently allows someone to be able to attach that name to the actual biometrics of the face, they could create something more synthetic that looks like that person,” Arrigoni said.
Neely and Arrigoni both said they would not currently recommend that any of their clients sign up for likeness detection on YouTube.
YouTube’s head of creator product, Amjad Hanif, said YouTube built its likeness detection tool to operate “at the scale of YouTube,” where hundreds of hours of new footage are posted every minute. The tool is set to be made available to the more than 3 million creators in the YouTube Partner Program by the end of January, Hanif said.
“We do well when creators do well,” Hanif told CNBC. “We’re here as stewards and supporters of the creator ecosystem, and so we are investing in tools to support them on that journey.”
The rollout comes as AI-generated video tools rapidly improve in quality and accessibility, raising new concerns for creators whose likeness and voice are central to their business.
YouTuber Doctor Mike, whose real name is Mikhail Varshavski, makes videos reacting to TV medical dramas, answering questions on health fads and debunking myths that have flooded the internet for nearly a decade.
Doctor Mike
YouTube creator Mikhail Varshavski, a physician who goes by Doctor Mike on the video platform, said he uses the service’s likeness detection tool to review dozens of AI-manipulated videos a week.
Varshavski has been on YouTube for nearly a decade and has amassed more than 14 million subscribers on the platform. He makes videos reacting to TV medical dramas, answering questions on health fads and debunking myths. He relies on his credibility as a board-certified physician to inform his viewers.
Rapid advances in AI have made it easier for bad actors to copy his face and voice in deepfake videos that could give his viewers misleading medical advice, Varshavski said.
He first encountered a deepfake of himself on TikTok, where an AI-generated doppelgänger promoted a “miracle” supplement.
“It obviously freaked me out, because I’ve spent over a decade investing in garnering the audience’s trust and telling them the truth and helping them make good health-care decisions,” he said. “To see someone use my likeness in order to trick someone into buying something they don’t need or that can potentially hurt them, scared everything about me in that situation.”
AI video generation tools like Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora have made it significantly easier to create deepfakes of celebrities and creators like Varshavski. That’s because their likeness is frequently featured in the datasets used by tech companies to train their AI models.
Veo 3 is trained on a subset of the more than 20 billion videos uploaded to YouTube, CNBC reported in July. That could include several hundred hours of video from Varshavski.
Deepfakes have “become more widespread and proliferative,” Varshavski said. “I’ve seen full-on channels created weaponizing these types of AI deep fakes, whether it was for tricking people to buy a product or strictly to bully someone.”
At the moment, creators have no way to monetize unauthorized use of their likeness, unlike the revenue-sharing options available through YouTube’s Content ID system for copyrighted material, which is typically used by companies that hold large copyright catalogs. YouTube’s Hanif said the company is exploring how a similar model could work for AI-generated likeness use in the future.
Earlier this year, YouTube gave creators the option to permit third-party AI companies to train on their videos. Hanif said that millions of creators have opted into that program, with no promise of compensation.
Hanif said his team is still working to improve the accuracy of the product but early testing has been successful, though he did not provide accuracy metrics.
As for takedown activity across the platform, Hanif said that remains low largely because many creators choose not to delete flagged videos.
“They’ll be happy to know that it’s there, but not really feel like it merits taking down,” Hanif said. “By and far the most common action is to say, ‘I’ve looked at it, but I’m OK with it.'”
Agents and rights advocates told CNBC that low takedown numbers are more likely due to confusion and lack of awareness rather than comfort with AI content.
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MongoDB shares ripped more than 25% higher on Tuesday after the company blew past Wall Street’s third-quarter expectations and lifted its forecast as its cloud database platform gained traction with customers.
The database software provider posted adjusted earnings of $1.32 per share on $628 million in revenue. That topped the 80 cents adjusted per share and $592 million in revenue expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Revenues grew 19% from last year.
MongoDB said its Atlas platform grew 30% from a year ago and accounted for 75% of total revenues for the quarter. The company said it ended the period with more than 60,800 Atlas customers, with revenues expected to grow 27% for the platform in the current period.
“Q3 was an exceptional quarter that was driven by our continued go-to-market execution and the broad-based demand we are seeing across business,” said CEO Chirantan “CJ” Desai in his first earnings call at the helm of the company.
Dev Ittycheria, who ran the company for 11 years and took it public, stepped down in November.
Desai believes the company is approaching a “once in a lifetime” opportunity as artificial intelligence, cloud and data trends reach a “true inflection point.” He told investors he plans to focus on building customer relationships and innovation in the coming months.
Citing those tailwinds, MongoDB boosted its guidance for the full year on Atlas growth and tailwinds from ongoing artificial intelligence demand. The company now anticipates revenues between $2.434 billion and $2.439 billion, up from prior guidance of $2.34 billion and $2.36 billion.
Analysts at Bernstein lifted their price target on shares to $452, expecting the stock to continue benefiting from accelerating growth as other software companies struggle.
“We expect strong consumption demand, potential upside from AI, and benefits from an easing interest rate environment to continue driving re-rating upside in the near term,” they wrote.
Shares have popped more than 40% this year.
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Ben Seri (CTO), Sanaz Yashar (CEO), Snir Havdala (CPO) of Zafran Security.
Courtesy: Eric Sultan | Zafran
Zafran Security, a cybersecurity startup created by an Iranian-born spy whose story helped inspire the hit Apple TV series “Tehran,” has raised $60 million, the company said Tuesday.
Sanaz Yashar, the former spy and CEO of Zafran, told CNBC that the funding round comes as a result of the accelerating speed and pace of cyberattacks due to the on-going AI boon. Zafran uses artificial intelligence and automation technology to manage threat exposure.
It’s “becoming much more severe that it was even a year ago,” she said in an exclusive interview.
The round brings Zafran’s total funding to $130 million since its founding in 2022. Zafran did not disclose the valuation at which it raised, but the startup said it has more than tripled annual recurring revenue since its last round for $70 million in September 2024. Annual recurring revenue is a term often used to measure income expected on a 12-month basis for a product.
The company plans to use the money to hire more people, Yashar said.
Menlo Ventures led the funding round, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Cyberstarts, which was an early investor in the startup Wiz that sold to Google for $32 billion in March.
Companies are looking for ways to reinvigorate their cybersecurity capabilities as AI reshapes the sophistication and capabilities of cyber criminals.
Besides Wiz, Palo Alto Networks in July announced that it acquired identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion.
Yashar and co-founders Ben Seri and Snir Havdala created Zafran following an investigation into a ransomware attack on a hospital in Israel.
“The data was there,” Yashar told CNBC, adding that cohesive security tools might have prevented the attack. “If the security tools were talking to each other, they could block it.”
Yashar, who moved to Israel from Tehran at 17, served for 15 years in an elite cybersecurity intelligence unit within the Israel Defense Forces known as Unit 8200. She also led major investigations at threat detection firm FireEye and Mandiant, which Google bought in 2022.
Many famous cybersecurity companies have originated from Unit 8200 alum, including Palo Alto Networks, Check Point Software and CyberArk.
Zafran customers include healthcare, financial services, insurance, technology and Fortune 500 companies, Yashar said.
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