Otavio (Tavi) Costa, founder and CEO of Azuria Capital, said mining can be the least expensive way to invest in artificial intelligence as the sector draws increasing attention from sovereign institutions, governments and investors.

“Institutions turn from ‘we don’t care about mining’ to ‘oh wow this is a critical industry that we need to make sure we take care of,’” Costa told MINING.COM anchor Devan Murugan on Top of Mine.

Costa said mining has fallen from a significant share of global equity markets to little more than a rounding error, leaving substantial room for the sector to regain importance as investors look beyond the technology firms usually associated with AI.

“This is a better way to implement the idea of investing in AI than actually technology companies,” said the fund manager, who this year left Denver-based Crescat Capital, which has $536 million in assets under management, to launch his own firm.

Juniors

Costa said junior companies are also attractive at this stage, particularly because the sector’s financing and development pipeline can shape which assets become future mines.

“As investors, we want to be paying attention to two things: the mid-tiers that are going to be making those strategic reserves and become the next majors and the high quality assets that are going to be in high demand by these guys that will likely become mines in the near future,” he said.

“The same way it happened with the technology space, it’s happening in the mining industry in terms of the passive investments coming into those areas.”

He said the world now carries debt levels similar to those seen during World War II, with one key difference: at that time, 50% of the treasury market was backed by gold. Today, he said, the figure is only 3%.

“We’re seeing global money supply continuing to rise and gold has been recently diverging from that line. I believe that gap is just in the process of closing,” he said.

“The real driver of what’s been happening is the dilution of money and also on top of it is the demand and the supply aspect when it comes to the production of the mining industry the depletion of reserves, the lack of discoveries, all that is is sort of exacerbating this trend on top of it all.”

Debt driver

Asked about China buying more gold and its relationship to debt, Costa said both the U.S. and China face problems that can be addressed by buying gold, underscoring why official sector demand remains part of the broader market backdrop.

“This is why I think it’s really a global monetary race towards gold that we’re seeing and that is likely to end with gold prices much higher.”

Spot gold was at $4,665.47 an oz. on Tuesday afternoon, its highest level since mid-May.