Robert Friedland is a co-founder of I-Pulse. An international financier and entrepreneur, he has been associated with natural resources and technology ventures for more than 25 years. Mr. Friedland also is the founder of Turquoise Hill Resources (previously Ivanhoe Mines), a Canadian public company recognized for its world-scale Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold discovery in Mongolia, where he served variously as the company's Executive Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer over a period of 18 years, to April 2012.
Mr. Friedland also is Executive Chairman of Ivanhoe Mines (previously Ivanplats), a mineral resource company advancing its three principal projects in Southern Africa: Mine development at the Platreef platinum-palladium-gold-nickel-copper discovery on the Northern Limb of South Africa’s Bushveld Complex; mine development and exploration at the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Project on the Central African Copperbelt in the DRC; and upgrading at the historic, high-grade Kipushi zinc-copper-lead-germanium mine, also on the DRC’s Copperbelt.
Mr. Friedland is Co-Chair of the Clean TeQ board, an Australia-listed company providing innovative and sustainable solutions for metals recovery and water treatment. Clean TeQ is developing the Sunrise Project in the State of New South Wales, a nickel laterite resource comprising one of the world’s largest and highest-grade sources of scandium and cobalt. Sunrise will supply nickel and cobalt sulphate to the lithium-ion battery market; scandium oxide will be used to produce lighter and stronger aluminum alloys for aerospace and automotive markets.
Mr. Friedland founded and chairs Ivanhoe Pictures, based in Hollywood, California, with offices in Beijing and New York. Launched in 2013, Ivanhoe Pictures is financing and producing film and television projects that hold broad appeal for international audiences. The company presently is co-producing with partners in India, South Korea and China.
During the 1990s, Mr. Friedland was an initial, key investor in Sina.com, now the largest Chinese-language online infotainment web portal. Ivanhoe Capital, his family's private company specializing in the provision of venture capital and project financing for international business enterprises, provided the founding venture capital for U.S.-based Sirius Satellite Radio, which went on to build SiriusXM into the world's largest radio company that now has more than 31 million satellite and online subscribers.
Mr. Friedland graduated from Reed College, in Oregon, USA, in 1974 with an undergraduate degree in political science.