At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, in a region between Mexico and Hawaii, lie billions and billions of tons of polymetallic rocks.
These rocks, called nodules, are packed with manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper -- all metals whose expanding use in batteries and energy make their scarcity on land all the more promising for a metals company that can lift them up from the sea.
Perhaps the closest to doing it is The Metals Company (TMC 4.43%).
Why deep-sea metals give TMC a 10-year growth runway
TMC is a deep-sea mining start-up. It aims to harvest nodules from the abyssal plains of the Pacific Ocean, then process them into battery-grade metals for sale to industrial buyers.
Image source: The Metals Company.
Its long-term opportunity is mostly tied to clean energy and electrification efforts. The assumption is that future energy will demand far more nickel, copper, manganese, and cobalt than land-based mining can currently supply, making deep-sea mining indispensable for the economy.
TMC's bold gambit got a huge boost of confidence in April 2025, when U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order essentially fast-tracking deep-sea mining.
This order rubs up against the UN-backed International Seabed Authority (ISA), which has spent years drafting a mining code for nodule extraction. But since the U.S. never joined the treaty that created the ISA, it doesn't have to wait for that rulebook, which could give TMC a quicker path to commercialization.
NASDAQ: TMC
Key Data Points
Of course, that doesn't mean that TMC is guaranteed a commercial permit. There's no telling what would happen, for instance, if the ISA decided to fight Trump's order. But if we're looking back 10 years from now, these could be just hiccups in a larger plan toward TMC's full-on production of nodules.
Don't get the wrong impression. This is a highly speculative play on metals. The company is pre-revenue and posted a third quarter $184.5 million net loss.
As such, investors should expect TMC's stock to remain volatile. But if electrification progresses as expected, the market may need exactly this kind of unconventional resource to keep up with demands.
