Last summer, mining startup Kobold created a splash when he said he had discovered one of the world’s largest copper deposits in Zambia for over a decade.
Now another startup, Earth AI, talks only about its own discoveries to TechCrunch. That other mining outfits, which are promising for important mineral deposits in parts of Australia, have ignored for decades. Whether they are as big as Kobold is still unknown, but the news suggests that future supply of critical minerals is likely to emerge from the combination of field data that has xaded artificial intelligence.
“Actual, real frontier [in mining] Earth AI founder and CEO Roman Teslyuk told TechCrunch.
Earth AI has identified sediments of silver, molybdenum, tin copper, cobalt and gold at another site in New South Wales, 310 miles (500 km) northwest Sydney.
Earth AI emerged from Tesliuk’s graduate studies. Originally from Ukrainian, Tesluk was working on a doctorate from the University of Sydney and was well versed in Australian mining. So the government owns the rights to mineral deposits and leases them on six years’ terms. Since the 1970s, he said exploration companies must submit data to the National Archives.
“For some reason, no one is using them,” he said. “If we can build an algorithm that can absorb and learn all of that knowledge from the failures and successes of millions of geologists in the past, we can make better predictions about where we will find future minerals.”
Teslyuk launched Earth AI as a software company focused on predicting potential sediments, approaching customers who may be interested in exploring the site. However, customers were hesitant to invest because they didn’t want to bet millions of people on unproven technology forecasts.
“Mining is a very conservative industry,” Teslik said. “Everything other than the approved doctrine is considered heresy.”
So Earth AI has decided to develop its own drilling rig to prove that the sites it identified are as promising as the software suggests. The company was accepted into Y Combinator’s Spring 2019 cohort and has improved its hardware and software over the next few years. In January, Earth AI grew a $20 million Series B.
The company uses AI to search for minerals like Kobold, but Teslyuk says it needs another tack. He said Earth AI’s algorithm is trained to scan large areas quickly and efficiently to find deposits that may be overlooked.
“The way we were exploring metals in the past 20th century takes a very long time. It takes decades to find something,” Teslieu said. “At the pace of the modern world, you can’t wait that long.”
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