On September 23, 2026, Matt called into Digging for Dollars from Beaver Creek and described a room that did not know what it was. Sentiment, he said, was in the middle. Not bad. Not good. The majors were there. People were keen for deals. Every chief executive told a fund manager that his was the most undervalued asset in the building. The fund manager’s answer was that they all say that. Cejay, from the other end of the line, said this was last year’s mood too. Capital had still not arrived as a tide. What they were seeing were sniper shots, and a few mega financings, into a sea of thousands of explorers. He did not think this cycle would lift every boat.
Mat did not quite agree. He is more bullish on a tide. His reason is the one this piece is about. The venture market, he said, is back only to the level of the COVID peak, which is about half of where it stood in 2010. In 2010 the largest company in the world was Exxon, at about $300 billion, on his telling. Now there are several companies worth a trillion dollars. Copper is at a high. Private firms out of Silicon Valley are writing large checks, hundreds of millions in his account, for slurry recovery, autonomous drills, and other tools that make mining faster. And still, he said, people forget the last step. Technology does not put metal in the ground. You still need boots on it. You still need the venture market that pays those boots.
That is the theme. Huge pools of technology money are starting to notice mining because mining is a primary industry. A phone, a data center, and a car are downstream of a hole. The money is coming gradually, and so far it is coming in two narrow streams. One stream buys machines. The other stream, the one Cejay heard in the Silver Tiger book, is generalist cash from people who already got rich in Apple and Nvidia and now have to write a real check if they want in. Neither stream is a rising tide. A primary industry does not reprice because a valley fund bought a drill robot. It reprices when someone finds, or funds, the rock. The investor’s job at Beaver Creek was to tell those apart.
Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security the hosts named. Both men have positions. A pitch is not a study. A financing can fund a bad hole as easily as a good one.
The disconnect is the whole argument
Hold Mat’s comparison still for a moment, and treat it as his, not as a census. If the junior market is only halfway back to 2010 while the biggest firms on earth have more than tripled in scale, and copper is at a high, then the price of finding metal has not kept up with the price of using it. That gap is what “undervalued” meant in the room. It did not mean every booth was cheap. The fund manager had already heard that from all of them. It meant the sector, as a group, is small next to the economy that now depends on it. Critical metals are in the headlines every day, the hosts said. The checks are not yet in every account.
Cejay’s objection is the useful one. A disconnect can last. Sniper shots are what a market looks like before a tide, and they are also what a market looks like when the tide never comes. He would rather find the best deal in the sea than wait for the sea to rise. Matt would rather own the setup and admit the sniper is the better tactic for now. They are not as far apart as a bull and a bear. They agree the easy, everything-goes-up phase is not here. They disagree on whether the tech-scale money eventually has to come down the shaft. This article takes Mat’s direction and Cejay’s caution. The money is gradually coming because the industry is primary. It is not here yet in a way you can buy with your eyes closed.
Look at where the valley money actually went, on his account. It went to private companies that recover slurry and drill without a person on the handles. That is a real business. Mines are dangerous, slow, and short of skilled crews. A machine that pulls more rock per shift is worth a large check. It is not a deposit. An autonomous drill on a barren claim drills barren rock faster. The hosts’ point, and the point worth keeping, is that the tool boom can run for years while the discovery boom does not. Investors who hear “tech is entering mining” and then buy the nearest junior have mixed up the customer with the tool. The tool company can win if mines stay open. The junior wins only if the rock is there.
Primary means you cannot swap the source
The potash segment was their plainest picture of a primary industry. The hosts’ reading of the news was that the U.S. president was unhappy with the price of Canadian potash and had gone looking in Belarus for a cheaper one. Belarus, they noted, is landlocked and tied to Russia. Any cargo would need a rail line, a port on the Baltic, a ship across an ocean, and then a system to reach the same northern farms that now take a train south from Saskatchewan. They put Canada’s share of U.S. potash near 80 percent, with those rail lines already in place. Their call was a “make” for Canadian potash. Not because a tweet cannot move a price for a week. Because the delivered tonne is the product, and the delivered tonne has a map.
Mat tied it to a line he has used before, from the chief executive of Chevron. Oil from an unstable place will not be priced like oil from a stable place, because the guarantee of supply is the business. He asked whether that premium is 10 percent or 15 percent. He did not pretend to know. He did say you cannot lose the supply and stay in business. The Strait of Hormuz, in their telling, had just taught the same lesson about shipping lanes. You pay up for the tonne you will actually receive. That is the premium a primary industry can charge once the buyers notice they cannot code a substitute overnight. It is also why a Belarus price on a slide is not a Saskatchewan price at the farm gate.
This is the same disconnect as the valley checks, seen from the other end. A technology firm can fund a better drill. It cannot fund a second Saskatchewan. Copper, potash, and silver are not apps. Adding them is not a software update. The hosts think the sector is bad at telling that story, and that the failure is why so many companies feel cheap. Storytelling is not a resource. But a true constraint that nobody has explained is how a cheap stock stays cheap while the end user cannot switch. The gradual arrival of non-mining money is what happens when that explanation finally lands in a portfolio meeting. It lands first as a machine. It lands later, if it lands, as a check for the ground.
A big check is not a tide
Silver Tiger Metals is the episode’s clearest public check. On September 21 the company agreed to an $87 million Canadian bought deal, 87 million units at $1 Canadian, with a half warrant at $1.35, and an option that could take the gross proceeds toward $100 million. The hosts said the book was about four times covered. They read it as generalist money. People who made their wealth in Apple and Nvidia, and firms that write large checks rather than nibbling stock in the open market. In a private company you set the price and do the work. In a venture stock you live inside a momentum trap. A bought deal is how big money steps over that trap. Dilution, Cejay said, be damned. The project, in their view, is a good one at these silver prices, led by a chief executive they trust and a team that built GoGold.
Read the other half of the same release before you call it a tech tide. Silver Tiger also said the capital cost of the mine and plant at El Tigre’s stockwork zone is now about $124 million in U.S. dollars, up $37 million from the figure in its 2026 technical report. By September 10 it had committed about $81 million, roughly two-thirds of that bill, and spent about $17 million of it. After the offering, the company expected cash of about $173 million Canadian, enough to cover the remaining build and leave a surplus, on its own arithmetic. So the large check is real. It is also, in part, a bill that got bigger. Generalist money can arrive because a silver story is easy to tell, and because the mine now costs more than the last study said. Both can be true. A primary industry eats capital on the way to a pour. The investor who sees only the oversubscription misses the reason the check had to be that large.
That is the pattern of a gradual entry, not a flood. Institutions that are new to the sector do not spray money across two thousand explorers. They write one large check to a name a salesperson can explain, with a project, a team, and a use of proceeds. The rest of the booths at Beaver Creek stay “the most undervalued” to their own chiefs and invisible to the new money. Cejay’s sniper is what that looks like from the floor. Matt’s tide is what it might look like later, if the new money decides one check was not enough and comes back for the ground itself, not just the story and the tool.
People are still the due diligence
Barksdale Resources was the hour’s messiest picture of how money actually shows up. The hosts, one of them a shareholder, walked through a halt. First news: the office is moving to Calgary. Matt’s memory jumped to a 2011 halt-and-move that ended at zero. Then the remaining drill holes, and he said none of them were good. Then, minutes later, a $14 million placement and a new slate. George Ogilvie as chairman. David Lotan proposed as a director. Chris Stewart as chief executive. The company release, dated the day before the podcast, confirms the $14 million, at 18 cents a unit, led by Ogilvie, who said he is investing alongside the new team. It confirms Stewart. It says Lotan is a nominee, not yet a seated director. It also says the 2026 program confirmed porphyry copper and molybdenum across a large area at Sunnyside, next to South32’s Hermosa project, which is under construction. The hosts’ line that Arizona supplies about 70 percent of U.S. copper is their context for the district, not a figure in that release. Barksdale plans a 10-for-1 share consolidation and a new name, Arizona Standard Copper, if holders and regulators agree.
The hosts called it a make, or a reset after a break. Bad holes, then cash, then people they follow. Matt’s own math that day was about 240 million shares at 30 cents, roughly a $72 million market value, which he said is not a steal. He is not selling. He is not sure he would be buying. Cejay said he would let Ogilvie’s diligence stand in for his own, because that name can join almost any board and chose this one. That is a people bet. It is common in this market and it is not the same as a valley fund discovering a primary industry. It is the old venture market doing what it has always done: refinancing a district story after the holes disappointed, and hoping the new names are the diligence. Sometimes they are. The 2011 memory Matt flinched at is why “sometimes” is the whole risk. Cash to keep drilling is a make only if the next holes are about the rock, not about the office address.
Errington Metals, which the episode’s rough transcript muddled as Arrington or Harrington, put out a cleaner piece of primary-industry news the day before. A maiden resource on a former Glencore property in the Sudbury basin: 14.2 million tonnes measured and indicated at 1.2 percent copper and about 4 percent zinc, plus lead, gold, and silver, and 3.4 million tonnes inferred at similar grades. The ground had been largely quiet since a 2013 estimate. The company is in a 55,000-metre program, with holes still pending that are not in the resource. Matt’s response was that a resource means more when it sits on a plan that was already going to be a mine. He thinks the recoverable value is closer to a 3 percent copper equivalent than the headline 4, because not every credit pays the same. He put the market value near $250 million and the shareholder list as a reason for conviction. Those valuation and holder claims are his, not the resource statement. The resource statement is the part a new dollar of tech money could actually underwrite: tonnes, grades, a road, and a camp that already knows how to mine. Twenty million tonnes, if it grows, is still small beside the giant volcanogenic systems in Canada. It is large enough to be a business if the net smelter return is real. That is a primary asset. A financing narrative is not.
Three assets are not one story
Mogotes Metals is what it looks like when sophisticated mining money, not consumer-tech money, is already inside a junior. The hosts described a confusing three-asset company. One piece sits beside Filo, which they said BHP bought for $4.5 billion. Rio Tinto, they said, came in at 70 cents with the stock at 45 cents. They put cash near $70 million and the market value near $250 million. A second piece is in Kazakhstan, where the company has pointed the bulk of a very large drill plan, on the order of 50,000 metres, because a metre there does not cost what a metre costs at altitude in the Andes. They likened it to Arras Minerals and said the ground already had long historic hits around 0.7 percent copper equivalent. A third piece is in Montana, which Mat called a tough jurisdiction and which he understands as a former Rio asset. CD Capital, a London private-equity group, is in the stock alongside Rio. His point was that those holders think in years, and the drill plan is a joint one, not a promoter adding a Nevada project so the news never stops.
This is not Silicon Valley discovering rocks. It is a major and a private-equity book already doing the slow work. It belongs in the theme anyway, because it shows the order of arrival. The first outside money that understands a primary industry is usually other mining money. The tech money comes later, and it comes to the tools and to the stories that sound like tech. Kazakhstan is not a story that sounds like tech. It is a cost-per-metre story with a jurisdiction risk Mat told listeners to respect. If you need a high risk tolerance, you do not have a tide. You have a position you can lose. The Filo neighbor is the easy sentence. The Kazakhstan metres are the work. A generalist check that cannot tell them apart will own the sentence and fund the work by accident.
Kingfisher Metals got a shorter turn, and it fits the same filter. A high-grade gold hit in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle, on the order of several metres at 38.5 grams gold equivalent, in a porphyry-copper setting. The stock, Mat said, did not move the way bulls hoped. The market value was already above $100 million. He is not a lover of the Triangle. He does remember that Pretium worked because the gold grade was high enough to change the math. One interval does not do that. Repeat it, and the story changes. Do not, and a $100 million porphyry in hard country is just another booth at Beaver Creek telling the fund manager it is the cheap one. Tech money will not close that gap. A second hole might.
The pitch and the ditch
The back half of the show was a reminder that most names are not the tide. They are claims. Mat’s “dig this deal” was Nuvau Minerals, TSXV: NMC, run by Christina McCarthy. The pitch, in his numbers: about 87 million shares, $6 million in cash, a 70-cent stock, a $50 million market value, a $44 million enterprise value. Half the stock in institutions, a quarter with the board, a quarter with retail. A large land package in Quebec with a mill, a mine, and rail, and 10 million tonnes at 2.5 percent copper equivalent. A spot net asset value he put between $300 and $400 million, against a build he put near $150 million. A gold hit, 4 metres of 140 grams, on the Detour trend. Cejay dug it. McCarthy is also a Barksdale director, which is why Matt said some of his Barksdale color came from her. The company itself describes Matagami as a past-producing camp with a mill and permitted ground. That industrial skeleton is the primary-industry fact. The $300 million net asset value and the “billion over ten years” are the pitch. Do not promote a pitch into a study because the mill is real. A mill without ore is a building. Ore without a margin at the metal price you will actually get is a slideshow.
Cejay’s pitch was the mirror, and Mat ditched it. A brand-new Athabasca uranium explorer, Green Canada Uranium, ticker GCU, at a $6.4 million market value. Two million in cash. A plan to spend about $1.5 million on two holes, 1,600 metres, on a 30-kilometre trend from a company he said is worth $80 million and has drilled 14.5 metres of 12 percent uranium, including 5 metres of 34 percent. Cejay likes the people and the early listing. Mat’s math was cruel and clear. If you hit one of the great holes in the basin, the comparable he was offered is $80 million, not $1 billion. You have money for two holes, so you will probably miss. Even a hit is about ten times, not a hundred. He will wait. He likes NexGen and IsoEnergy in that basin, and he has watched Purepoint hit several metres of a few percent and see the market shrug. Uranium lenses are small. A two-hole bet is a lottery ticket beside a real mine somewhere else. Tech money does not need this lottery. If huge capital is gradually entering a primary industry, it will not start with a $6 million story that can drill twice.
Stellar Africa Gold was the frustration case. A small Morocco explorer, a market value the hosts put around $5 to $8 million, a trench and a hit they still respect, including 12 metres of 6.2 grams, and a phase-two plan for 5,000 metres. Mat does not believe the metres until he sees them. At one point, he said, they were drilling a metre a day. He hopes they hit. He will not buy the plan. The industry, both hosts agreed, is obsessed with announcing a meterage. His alternative was simpler. Say you are drilling, say how much money you have, and say the minimum the contract forces you to drill. If the holes are bad, you stop. If they are good, you continue. A 20,000-metre headline is not a deposit. It is a sentence that keeps a conference audience awake. Generalist money that cannot tell a minimum contract from a discovery will fund a lot of sentences.
A producing neighbor is still not a tide
They closed on Sirios Resources, and on Mat’s own money. He had just been to the project. The hosts stumbled over the ticker and corrected it to SOI. His report was physical, which is the right kind of report for a primary industry. The drive is long. The site is about 10 kilometres from the Éléonore mine, which he said produces about 250,000 ounces a year. There is a road. The rock is hard, not the wet ground he feared from northern Quebec. Power in that part of the province is as green as grid power gets, because of the reservoirs. He thinks the stock is cheap because of the water worry and because of how the story was told before. He said they are buying it, that the ounces and the value are large, and that he could be wrong. Those size claims are his conviction after a visit. They are not a resource printed in this episode. A visit can still be wrong. A road and a producing neighbor are facts that survive a mood. They do not replace a mine plan.
Put Sirios next to the valley checks and the shape of the theme gets sharp. A trillion-dollar firm needs the metals that a northern Quebec camp can produce. The firm does not need to own Sirios. The gradual part is the distance between those two facts. Today the money that understands the camp is still a mining fund manager who will fly in, correct his own ticker on air, and buy. The money that understands software is still buying the drill, the slurry circuit, and, once in a while, a large piece of a silver build whose cost just rose. The step that has not happened is the step Mat is waiting for. The same pools of capital that notice the tool begin to notice that the tool is useless without the camp. When that happens, the venture market will not need every booth to be right. It will need the camps that already have a road, a neighbor that pours, and a rock that is not a sentence.
Until then, the middle sentiment is the honest one. Everyone at Beaver Creek feels undervalued. They cannot all be the best asset. Copper can be at a high, potash can be a strategic tonne, and silver can draw an $87 million book, while a $6 million uranium lottery and a Morocco plan remain what they are. The primary industry is the reason the huge money has a reason to come. Gradual is the reason it has not repriced the room. An investor who buys the reason and ignores the pace will own the booth. An investor who buys the pace and ignores the reason will own the robot and still need the metal.
What to do with the gap
The practical cut is short. Ask which stream a dollar is in. If it is buying a machine, judge the machine. Does it cut cost on a mine that already exists. If it is a generalist check, read the use of proceeds and the new budget, the way El Tigre’s extra $37 million belongs in the same paragraph as the $87 million raise. If it is a people reset after bad holes, decide whether you are paying for the district or for the names, and size it like a people bet. If it is a maiden resource on a camp that was already studied, judge the tonnes and the payability, not the copper-equivalent slogan. If it is two holes and a $6 million market value, call it a ticket. If it is a pitch with a mill and a net asset value three times the company, read the study before you inherit the multiple.
Then ask the primary question, which is Matt’s, and which the valley money has not finished asking. Does this dollar still need someone to find metal, or does it assume the metal is a feature that ships in the next update. Autonomous drills, slurry plants, and model portfolios full of critical-metal words all fail that test if the tonne is not there. Saskatchewan potash passes it, because the rail already runs. A Sudbury resource passes it only as far as the tonnes and the mill assumptions pass it. A Golden Triangle interval passes it only if it repeats. The tide, if it comes, will be the moment when money that did not grow up in this sector accepts that test instead of skipping it. Beaver Creek in September 2026 was not that moment. It was the moment you could already see the money walking toward the door, and still hear every chief executive claim he was the one they would buy.
Important information
This article is for information and education only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Mining shares can become worthless. Hosts of the September 23, 2026 episode of Digging for Dollars discussed companies in which they said they have positions, including Barksdale and Sirios. Their market-value, grade-equivalent, and net-asset figures are their commentary unless a company release is cited. Company facts drawn from releases include Barksdale’s September 22, 2026 financing and board changes, Silver Tiger’s September 21, 2026 bought deal and El Tigre capital-cost update, Errington Metals’ maiden resource reported around September 22, 2026, and Nuvau Minerals’ description of the Matagami camp. Pitch numbers for Green Canada Uranium, Kingfisher, Mogotes, Stellar Africa Gold, and Sirios are the hosts’ and were not re-audited here. This article does not consider any reader’s finances.