Asteroid mining pitch decks are real now (so is the biggest oil shock in history)

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Last week I wrote about how we might need to build a giant robot planet that eats other planets to instantly extract all their critical minerals...

(if Earth mining and recycling can’t meet the critical minerals needs in our AI plus billions of robots future)

(read it here)

I ALSO said that I hadn't yet seen a pitch deck for a robot planet that eats other planets to extract its critical minerals... yet.

That changed a few days ago.

This week I’ve been in the USA attending the All-In Summit to hear about all the latest and greatest in AI, robots and tech advancement in the USA.

...and I met a company that is about to launch their first mission to mine an asteroid.

Here is their first satellite that is about to be launched into space to run some geophysics on an asteroid near Earth - it was just hanging there from the roof above their conference booth:

They are raising US$200M:

Maybe planet-eating robot planets aren't as far away as I thought last week...?

At least asteroid mining sounds a lot less dystopian than “planet eating”... no crushing and eating of entire civilizations’ home planets and all that.

I also drove past the Vandenberg Space Force base and saw a SpaceX rocket getting launched.

This was 100% the best thing I have ever seen in my life (aside from my kid being born and my wedding day blah blah you know what I mean)

Point is:

After all the stuff I have seen and heard so far on my “what will the future look like” USA trip...

The infinite AI and infinite robot future could be a lot closer than I thought.

After two days of presentations at the All-In Summit, it re-enforced that the USA (well, the tech titans at least) is moving as fast as it can to build all the AI and all the robots.

And they “MUST do it faster than China”.

Which should lead us to the biggest commodities boom in the history of the world as the USA rush to start building everything again to beat China.

Here are some of the speakers that were excited and urgent about this future:

• Jensen Huang: NVIDIA, CEO. (with guest phone call in from Donald Trump that he put on speaker)
• Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell: SpaceX
• Satya Nadella: Microsoft, CEO.
• Jared Isaacman: NASA, (the USA space agency NASA - now doing some very cool stuff again)
• US Vice President JD Vance
• Brad Gerstner: Altimeter, Founder and CEO.
• Blake Scholl, Boom Supersonic CEO (built the world’s first independently developed supersonic jet, and now developing a commercial supersonic airliner)

Every one of them was very positive and very urgent about the AI and technology future.

Again, meaning the biggest commodity boom we have ever seen?

I also saw the newly launched Tesla Cybercabs (robotaxis with no drivers).

Cybercab is Tesla’s purpose-built electric robotaxi, designed to carry two passengers without a human driver, steering wheel or pedals.

Think Uber, but the car itself does the driving, using cameras and AI to navigate rather than a person behind the wheel.

Tesla’s goal is to make on-demand transport cheaper through lower operating and manufacturing costs, potentially reducing the need to own a car.

One of those guys that takes a photo in front of a rented lambo to sell trading courses?

The cool thing about these is you can own one (or more) and just “let it loose” to work as a taxi while you aren't using it, instead of it sitting in your garage wasting space.

Kinda like owning a taxi, make money, but not actually having to drive it yourself.

I also took a bunch of rides in driverless Waymos (also self driving taxis, by Google):

Waymos currently operates in eight US states and this week Singapore just announced Waymos are coming there soon.

Driverless cars are well and truly here, and I reckon our kids will be amazed that humans were ever allowed to drive their own vehicles...

And then the robots. I saw all sorts of robots. They are coming fast too...

I also saw this all over the internet this week - a house robot is now a thing.

Videos of humanoid robots doing chores at home aren’t new.

The problem has always been the house robot is trained on doing chores in a specific house, on specific stuff in that house.

Then it breaks when faced with a new house with different stuff in it that it doesn't recognise.

(ie it gets confused on items it has never seen before - like those weird shaped dinner plates my wife insists on having)

Makes for good videos, but not very useful - Not anymore this week.

This company reckons they have solved this problem and it’s humanoid house-bots are smart enough to go into a new house they have never been in AND figure out how to pack away stuff it has never seen before:

(source)

So house bots are now unlocked - I’ll take one of these ASAP please.

Billions of self-driving electric vehicles are coming.

Billions of robots are coming.

All of them needing battery power...

ANOTHER interesting thing I have been hearing noise about this week is what will power these tens of billions of self-driving electric cars and robots...

Solid state batteries.

Solid-state batteries swap the liquid electrolyte inside conventional lithium-ion batteries for a solid material.

Meaning more energy packed into less space that could mean travelling further or working longer between charges for self driving EV’s and robots (source).

Here is the latest on solid state batteries headlines:

(source) (source) (source) (source)

And guess what ?

- solid state batteries need my favourite metal - silver:

(source) (source) (source) (source) (source)

One estimate doing the rounds is ~5g of silver per cell, ~200 cells per pack - about 1kg of silver per car.

Today's lithium-ion pack uses about 20 grams so that's 50x the silver in solid state batteries.

Back of the napkin (usual disclaimers): 20% of the world's ~80M new cars a year going solid state = ~16,000 tonnes of new silver demand, against ~25,000 silver tonnes mined annually.

And that's before any robots... which will likely progress to solid state batteries faster given mass production hasn't started yet.

Exciting times as all this futuristic technology starts rolling out.

But this year the world has remembered how important good old “oil & gas” is too.

(after years on markets kinda hating on oil & gas stocks)

Oil and gas was (and still is) the OG critical mineral.

Even at the AI and tech heavy All-In Summit Brad Gerstner talked about how long could this AI boom run for and why he is watching oil prices.

Brad Gerstner is the founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, a US$20 billion technology investment firm backing companies including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX.

On how long this AI stocks boom will run for:

“If we see those revenues come in big (OpenAI and Anthropic) for these next few months and we see oil prices retreat, we're going to put more chips on the table.”

So oil prices...

Turns out oil and gas is still pretty important.

(markets and politicians just sort of forgot for a few years)

Enough for countries to war over still...

The US went into Venezuela earlier this year and has been pretty outright about how it was to take control of the country’s ~65BN barrel oil reserves:

(source)

And just like China has turned on and off critical minerals supply to the West, the US-Iran war’s second order impact is a slowing down of oil flows into China from the Middle East...

(Maybe part of some geopolitical 5D Chess match?)

(source)

For context in 2025 ~52% of China’s total oil imports came from the Middle East - second was South America at ~8%.

Those imports are taking a huge hit by the conflict in the Middle East:

(source)

And now with three key oil and gas routes in the Middle East all compromised (Hormuz, Bab Al-Mandab and Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline.

For the first time in decades, the world (including China) is almost completely shut off from Middle East hydrocarbons.

Just last night Saudi Arabia was telling European refineries it won't be making October deliveries...

(source)

All of a sudden the global economy is realising how important free flow of oil and gas is for their economies (and quality of lives).

Even Italy, which has traditionally been pretty liberal and anti oil and gas has done a complete 180 and now wants to speed up oil and gas projects in an “energy security” push:

(source)

We think oil and gas is having its “Critical minerals” moment.

(come and join the every commodity boom, oil & gas)

Where countries start treating it as critical and not as something “not needed” or “dirty”...

Just as battery metals returned (this time as critical/military/robot metals).

We think energy will make a similar comeback (maybe also as critical to AI/data centres and robotics).

We also think that in the short term, oil and gas prices could go on a run... (more on that in a second)

Here are two oil & gas stocks we are Invested in:

Invictus Energy (ASX:IVZ)

Location: Onshore Zimbabwe

Market Cap: ~$120M
Cash at Bank: $10.9M at 30 June 2026

IVZ has already made a gas and condensate discovery (Zimbabwe’s first) and the was actually labelled the second-largest discovery in Sub-Saharan Africa for 2023.

IVZ’s next well (Musuma-1) will be a shallower well targeting 1.2 Tcf of gas and 73 million barrels of condensate on a separate structure.

What's next: IVZ expects to be drilling in November...

IVZ’s one image story:

(source)

Condor Energy (ASX:CND)

Location: Offshore Peru
Market Cap: ~$17.3M
Cash at Bank: $3.4M at 30 June 2026

CND holds a 3BN barrel prospective oil resource and an existing 1 Tcf gas discovery in a proven offshore basin.

At the moment, CND holds the block under a “Technical Evaluation Agreement” (TEA) - which is the precursor for an exploration license.

The TEA allowed for desktop work on the project BUT for drilling, CND will need to convert that into a granted exploration license.

What's next:

The big catalyst for CND will be having that TEA converted into a full exploration license.

CND lodged its application for the license in May, so an outcome could happen at any time now.

CND’s one image story:

(source)

We are looking for opportunities in oil & gas - if you have any we should take a look at please send them through.

Why we think oil prices could run hard over the next few months

~30% of global oil supply (out of the Middle East) is as close to being halted as possible right now...

Saudi Aramco’s CEO is calling the Strait of Hormuz closure the “largest oil supply shock in the world”.

(source)

That was before LAST weekend, when one of the key pipelines helping soften that Hormuz blow went offline...

(the pipeline taking oil East-West through Saudi Arabia getting around the closed strait of Hormuz)

(source)

For the first time in decades, the world is almost completely cut off from Middle East oil.

Despite all of this, oil prices haven’t really behaved like the “largest oil supply shock in history”.

(yet)

Shades of what happened the last time the world experienced a sustained supply shock out of the Middle East was back in 1973 during a war between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.

Oil prices rallied hard, came off a bit and then rallied hard again - we have had the first leg up, now the pullback, IF things don’t calm down we could get a similar style second run up:

(source)

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

For now the world has been able to keep a lid on oil prices - mostly by drawing down reserves and above ground inventories.

And from countries like China pulling back on purchases (decreasing the demand for oil to match the disrupted supply). (source)

So far we have seen:

• 507 million barrels drawn out of global inventories since February (source)
• 400 million barrels released from government emergency stockpiles in the IEA's coordinated action back in March (source)
• And 95 million barrels drawn in August alone - importantly with China leading the drawdowns... (source)

China coming back and aggressively drawing down tells us the reserve draw downs will only be able to keep a lid on prices for as long as they exist (and are not running seriously low).

(source)(source)

If all of this Middle East supply stays offline for another few months, we think the oil price could really start to take off...

...like it did the last time the Middle East went offline - keep in mind we are nowhere near those inflation adjusted peaks yet - to go past those Oil would need to go through US$220 per barrel:

(source)

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Commodity prices are volatile and can fall as well as rise.

Right now, we are a long way off all time highs, despite what looks like the biggest shock we have ever seen in global oil markets.

Have a great weekend.

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