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Founders Metals - Antino Project: Expanding Gold Mineralization & The Project To 100,000 Hectares

The KE Report Feb 6, 2026

Summary

High-grade 'kicks' within Lower Antino's broad 90-meter intercept at 1.02 g/t gold signal a bulk-tonnage target with significant room to grow.

Antino's expansion to 100,000 hectares consolidates an entire Suriname greenstone belt (ancient volcanic rock that hosts large gold systems), giving Founders Metals district-scale optionality.

A $55 million treasury and $35–$37 million 2026 exploration budget let Founders Metals drill aggressively across the expanded district.

Founders ranks Upper Antino first for resource work, then Lower Antino, then a 5 km northern auger anomaly (a soil-sampling target) — the property's largest.

Key points on Founders Metals Inc

  • The CEO lays out a two-track 2026 plan: advance Upper and Lower Antino via expansion drilling plus infill, metallurgical, and geotechnical studies, while aggressively drill-testing the highest-priority greenfield targets — funded by ~$55M cash and a targeted $35-37M exploration budget (~$2.5-3M monthly burn).
  • Lower Antino's headline drill result is 90m of 1.02 g/t Au with a 1m interval of 28+ g/t; drilling has defined ~1.9 km of strike across multiple intrusion-hosted shear zones with mineralization from surface, which the CEO frames as low-strip, bulk-tonnage potential alongside Upper Antino.
  • The Antino project has been expanded to ~100,000 hectares via a 36,000-hectare government application to the south plus additional ground west/northwest; ownership is split between a 70-75% option agreement with the Nanoresources family and a 100%-owned 10,000-hectare 10-year exploitation concession to the far south.
  • The CEO argues the combined land package hosts 'north of 10+ million ounce potential,' pointing to a 5 km auger anomaly in the northern property (the largest single gold-in-auger anomaly on the ground) and several northwest-trending shear zones with 70+ g/t grab samples as the next drill targets, with first rigs planned there for March 2026.
  • Upper Antino remains the #1 priority — drilling is up to hole 48 across ~2 km of strike in three 350-400m-wide zones, still open in all directions, with the 2026 program including a 1,000 sq km airborne geophysics survey and broad auger sampling to feed a multi-target pipeline beyond Antino itself.

Cory Fleck's takeaways

  • Top takeaway As host, Fleck frames Antino as a generational-scale asset and draws the audience's attention to a ~50 g/t gold sample on the western expansion ground, signaling that the area directly west of Upper Antino is a high-priority target on investors' minds.
  • He pushes the CEO on the 3.5 km gap between Upper and Lower Antino and on ownership terms for the newly acquired southern land package, prompting the disclosure that much of the new southern ground sits in a 70-75% option agreement versus a 100%-owned 10-year mining license.