Thanks to factors such as the electric vehicle (EV) boom and Tesla’s Nevada-based battery gigafactory, cobalt is a metal in short supply. Tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Samsung are under increasing pressure to source ethical supplies; hedge funds have begun to hoard physical supplies. Prices of the metal have increased more than 50 percent since November, and further increases are expected.

Canadian financier Wayne Tisdale is seeking to capitalize on the increased demand for cobalt through his latest venture, Scientific Metals. Tisdale was successful in capitalizing on trends related to lithium, a key component in the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs, through the launch of Pure Energy in 2015. That company benefitted from a 450 percent rise in the price of the metal, and is currently worth $65 million. He also found success with trends in gold through Rainy River (worth $1.2 billion at its peak), uranium through Xemplar (worth $1 billion at its peak) and oil and gas through Ryland Oil (which sold for $114 million).

The bulk of the world’s cobalt that is mined and brought to market is a by-product of nickel or copper mining, both of which are expensive to mine. Up until recently, cobalt was considered an “after-thought” metal and generally has been overlooked. Yet cobalt makes up 35 percent of the mix in those very same lithium-ion batteries.

Tisdale is looking to North America, which currently produces only about 4 percent of the world’s total supply, for new and ethical avenues to source cobalt. To that end, Scientific Metals is avoiding the by-product approach and targeting a pure source: the Iron Creek Cobalt Property located along the Idaho Cobalt Belt. Historic exploration there, including 30,000 feet of diamond drilling, indicates that the area may contain up to 10 million tons of cobalt.

With its all-American cobalt focus, Tisdale and Scientific Metals could be among the first to put the U.S. on the cobalt map.