Key points
- American Ocean Minerals (AOMC) has signed a definitive merger agreement with Odyssey Marine Exploration, creating a roughly $1 billion U.S.-controlled deep-sea minerals platform.
- Chairman Tom Albanese, former CEO of Rio Tinto, and CEO Mark Justh, formerly of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, lead the combined company.
- The company focuses on exploring, harvesting and processing deep-sea polymetallic nodules containing nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese.
- Albanese frames the merger as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign critical minerals supply chains.
