3 hours ago - Business

Deep-sea minerals miner agrees to $1 billion merger

Dan Primack

Illustration of a fishing hook sinking into an ocean of hundred dollar bills. — Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

American Ocean Minerals, a Houston-based deep-sea mining company, agreed to a reverse merger with Odyssey Marine Exploration.

Why it matters: The U.S. needs to find new sources of critical minerals for batteries and other industrial and national security applications, so that it can't be choked off by geopolitical conflict.

AOM, led by ex-Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese, is focused on finding polymetallic nodules in waters near the Cook Islands.
Zoom in: The combined company would be valued at around $1 billion, including a $150 million private placement, and plans to list on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol "AOMC."

Go deeper, via Bloomberg: "The Cook Islands spent years building a formal regulatory framework for seabed mining, putting the South Pacific nation ahead of many other jurisdictions in setting out how projects can move from exploration to potential harvesting."

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Deep-sea minerals miner agrees to $1 billion merger

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