The man behind NexGen, IsoEnergy, and Vizsla Silver sits down with Marathon Money to lay out the full picture — two drills running, assays incoming, Palmer drilling in May, and active White House conversations.
OTCQB: VCUFF | TSXV: VCU | Frankfurt: 97E0 | MarathonMoneyPlus.com
Introduction
When Craig Parry walked back onto Marathon Money Inside the Ticker, the first thing he said was revealing. VCUFF was trading around $0.70 the last time he sat down with the show. At the time of recording, it was pushing $1.10 — and the company he was describing bore almost no resemblance to the one he had introduced before.
In the months between appearances, Vizsla Copper had made a porphyry copper discovery in British Columbia where every drill hole has hit, acquired a high-grade critical minerals project in Alaska for $44 million, raised the largest financing in the company’s history, and brought on the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald as a strategic advisor. Two rigs were in the ground at the time of this interview, and Craig arrived with a specific message for long-term investors: be positioned before May.
What followed was one of the most detailed, candid, and wide-ranging conversations Marathon Money has produced — covering active drill results, the macro case for copper, defense-critical minerals, White House engagement, and a track record that is genuinely difficult to match anywhere in junior resource investing.
The Man Behind the Story
To understand why Vizsla Copper deserves attention, you have to understand who Craig Parry is. He spent eight years at Rio Tinto before going out on his own — and in the years since, he has been involved in an almost implausible run of successful resource company builds.
He laid it out plainly on the show:
- NexGen Energy — co-founded, helped take the stock from $0.05 to $20.
- IsoEnergy — founder and CEO, took it from $0.20 to $10 today.
- Vizsla Silver — co-founded with Mike Konnert, took it from $0.02 to nearly $5 today, growing to a CAD $2 billion market cap.
- Skeena Resources — chairman and lead director for 11 years, helped take it from approximately $0.05 to $36 today.
“We’ve built up something of a fairly unprecedented track record here,” Craig said — and he wasn’t wrong. Across uranium, silver, coal, and gold, the pattern is the same: find the right terrain, apply a disciplined exploration framework, and build toward discovery.
That framework, which he credits to his time at Rio Tinto, rests on three questions: What is the size of the prize? What is the cost of the test? And what is the chance of success? It sounds simple. The execution across company after company suggests it is anything but.
The Thira Discovery: Every Hole Has Hit
The Poplar project in central British Columbia was acquired roughly two years ago for USD $2.7 million. At the time, the attraction was an existing resource base — 2 billion pounds of copper in the ground, 750,000 ounces of gold, and significant molybdenum. But it was the unexplored southern half of the property that turned out to hold the real story.
“We were walking over the property just after we bought it and found evidence of outcropping copper deposits on the ground,” Craig explained. “The first of those that we drilled — our Thira target — resulted in the discovery of a very large porphyry system.”
The numbers from Phase 1 drilling tell the story clearly. The first hole ever drilled at Thira hit 345.3 meters of 0.43% copper equivalent. A 400-meter step-out hole returned 264 meters at 0.43% CuEq. The best intercept to date: 237 meters at 0.51% CuEq, with a higher-grade core of 77 meters at 0.55% CuEq. All 10 holes from the Phase 1 program intersected significant porphyry-related mineralization.
As of this recording, 7 of the planned 16 holes in the Phase 2 winter drill program have been completed. Two rigs are on site. Assay results from the first holes are expected within weeks. Craig was careful not to overpromise, but he was direct about what the core looks like: “They look great. They look like everything that we’ve drilled there in the past year.”
The broader system may be far larger than what has been drilled to date. The alteration corridor spans 8 kilometers by 2 kilometers — a footprint large enough, in Craig’s assessment, to host multiple porphyry centers. Induced polarization geophysics have identified several untested chargeability anomalies, each comparable in scale to the Thira discovery itself. Craig was candid about where this could be heading: “I think we’re a very good chance of making another discovery there. Everything’s looking right. It looks like there will be multiple porphyries in this Thira system that we’ve discovered.”
The infrastructure around Poplar is a genuine differentiator. The project sits 60 kilometers from the main Canadian highway, on a major road that connects to the Huckleberry mine. Grid power runs within a few kilometers of the discovery. The terrain allows year-round drilling — rare in British Columbia — and Craig noted this was the first time in the company’s life that they were generating year-round news flow from active programs. “Majors have been talking to us,” he said, “and the feedback we’re getting is that this could be one of the more important porphyry discoveries in British Columbia in recent years.”
The Palmer Acquisition: Alaska’s High-Grade Critical Minerals Asset
On December 4, 2025, Vizsla Copper closed the acquisition of Constantine Metal Resources, becoming the sole owner of the Palmer VMS project in Southeast Alaska. The deal was funded by a USD $44.24 million private placement — the largest in the company’s history. Craig and his partners personally contributed approximately $7 million of their own capital.
“I’ve invested very heavily in the company so far,” Craig said. “About $7 million of my own money, and we’ll continue to do so.”
Palmer’s existing resource stands at nearly 18 million tonnes at over 3% copper equivalent across two primary deposits — 4.77 million tonnes at 3.5% CuEq indicated and 12 million tonnes at 3.1% CuEq inferred. Located just 40 kilometers from tidewater in Southeast Alaska, the project offers logistical advantages that are uncommon for assets of this grade.
The deposit type is a VMS — Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide — which Craig described in detail on the show: sea floor hydrothermal events that deposit metal over millions of years, then uplift to the surface. These systems are characteristically high grade and polymetallic. Palmer is no exception. In addition to copper, gold, and silver, the project hosts cobalt, and elevated concentrations of gallium and germanium have been detected across multiple areas.
“Gallium and germanium are mission-critical for a lot of technology,” Craig noted. “Photovoltaics. Radar technology. Optical sensing. If you look at the F-35 fighter jet — that’s a flying periodic table of elements. We have a lot of those at the Palmer project, and we think that’s something that should be of great interest to the US government and its defense and technology planning.”
Drilling at Palmer is planned to begin in late May 2026. The primary target is the zone discovered in 2023 — a high-grade area that returned 44 meters at 8.2% copper equivalent and 24 meters at 11% copper equivalent. That zone has never been closed off. Two rigs will be mobilized to test it and step out from those intercepts.
Craig offered a direct peer comparison that investors should sit with: Firefly Metals, an ASX-listed company with a comparable VMS project called Ming in Newfoundland, trades at USD $1.2 billion. Vizsla Copper’s current market capitalization at the time of recording was approximately USD $150 million. “With some good work over the next 12 months, we can bridge that gap to something like a Firefly as a comp and get closer to that sort of billion-dollar valuation from these projects that we’ve got at the moment,” he said.
Washington Is Paying Attention
One of the most significant threads in the conversation was the level of engagement Vizsla Copper is having with the US federal government. This is not a peripheral story. It may be the single biggest rerating catalyst for the company.
Craig referenced Trump administration Executive Order 1421, issued in April 2025, which directed a review of Alaska’s resource potential specifically as it applies to defense metals and critical elements. He then cited two companies that have already benefited from this environment. Trilogy Metals won direct investment from the US federal government and saw its market cap go from $250-300 million to approximately $1.2-1.3 billion. Nova Minerals received similar support.
“Winning that sort of Washington and White House support for your project is a real boon and a real opportunity. And we’re working away on that and talking to the right people in Washington,” he said.
In January 2026, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy issued a formal letter of support recognizing Palmer as a strategically important advanced exploration asset aligned with state and national critical mineral objectives. Craig revealed that the Governor has personally presented Vizsla Copper’s case to the White House.
“I’ve never seen such strong engagement,” Craig said when asked about the current state of those conversations. “It’s quite clear that the White House has changed its tune dramatically.”
Adding further institutional weight to this angle: in March 2026, Vizsla Copper appointed Shawn Matthews as a Strategic Advisor. Matthews is the founder and CIO of Hondius Capital Management and served as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald from 2009 to 2018. His role is specifically tied to advancing government relations and capital markets engagement around the Palmer project.
The Copper Macro: Why This Matters Now
Craig was blunt about what copper means in the current moment. AI data centers, defense infrastructure buildouts, and electric vehicle adoption all run on copper. He suggested the market may not fully appreciate how structurally short global copper supply is against the demand that is already locked in.
“We’ll starve in the dark if we don’t have copper,” he said. “It’s the most important metal to our way of life.”
He noted that government recognition of this problem is no longer limited to North America. The French government is encouraging exploration. Mexico has resumed issuing mining permits. The recognition is global, and the political will to advance domestic critical mineral supply chains — particularly in the US — has never been stronger.
On the molybdenum angle, which is often overlooked in the Vizsla Copper story: Craig pointed out that molybdenum is a key hardening material in the steel used to manufacture drill pipe. With Middle East instability driving oil and gas prices higher, molybdenum demand — and thus the value of Thira’s moly content — is set to perform well over the next year or two.
The Milestone Roadmap: What to Watch
Craig laid out a clear sequence of catalysts for the balance of 2026:
- Thira assay results — expected within weeks of this recording. Results from 7 holes drilled. Core is described as looking excellent.
- Rigs move to Woodjam — follow-up on the Megaton discovery and previously drilled high-grade hits that have never been followed up.
- Copperview drilling — a new permit has been received. The target sits next to Kodiak’s Gate discovery and Craig described it as a lookalike target with genuine discovery potential.
- Palmer drilling — late May / early June 2026. Two rigs targeting the 2023 high-grade zone (44m at 8.2% CuEq, 24m at 11% CuEq). Craig’s view: if results at that grade come out in today’s market, the share price moves spectacularly.
- Potential resource upgrade — targeting Beaver Creek conference timing (late summer 2026).
- White House formal support — any announcement of direct federal investment or formal backing would be a major rerating catalyst, consistent with the Trilogy Metals and Nova Minerals precedent.
His direct message to investors considering the stock: “By May, if you want to have exposure to a company testing around some of the highest-grade hits in the last couple of years, this is it. You want to be invested by May.”
Bottom Line
Few people in the junior mining space have Craig Parry’s record of building companies from exploration-stage spinouts to billion-dollar-plus outcomes. The companies he lists — NexGen, IsoEnergy, Vizsla Silver, Skeena — are not lucky outcomes. They reflect a consistent, disciplined approach to picking the right terrain, targeting the right deposit types, and executing with an experienced team.
Vizsla Copper is now running two separate programs simultaneously — a porphyry discovery in BC with every hole hitting, and a high-grade polymetallic VMS project in Alaska with White House-level attention and a valuation gap to peers that is hard to ignore at $150 million against a comparable at $1.2 billion.
The full interview is available now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms through Marathon Money Inside the Ticker.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Mineral exploration is speculative and involves significant risk. Always conduct your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. $VCUFF $VCU
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