Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures has bet on GeologicAI’s bots.
Calgary-based mining tech startup GeologicAI has secured $20 million in Series A funding from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) to help meet the rising demand for critical minerals.
Using proprietary core sample scanning hardware, advanced machine vision, and artificial intelligence (AI), GeologicAI aims to help mining and exploration firms search beneath the ground and gather data more efficiently than traditional core logging methods.
“We’re delighted to have BEV onboard as we globalize this revolutionary technology.”
GeologicAI plans to use this Series A funding to develop and scale its fleet of AI-powered robot geologists and establish a global footprint. “We’re delighted to have BEV onboard as we globalize this revolutionary technology,” GeologicAI CEO Grant Sanden said in a statement.
Founded in 2013, GeologicAI provides “rock analytics for modern mining.” The startup aims to streamline the often tedious, manual data entry-heavy core logging process with its hardware and software solutions, enabling geologists to focus more on analysis.
Leveraging AI, robotics, and advanced sensor tech, GeologicAI uses high-resolution imaging, XRF, and hyperspectral data to analyze rock samples and identify resources below the Earth’s surface. The startup claims its tech is already being used by “some of the world’s leading mining and exploration companies.”
GeologicAI’s Series A financing comes as the world faces a looming critical mineral supply shortage. The World Bank Group has estimated that the production of critical minerals must increase by nearly 500 percent—or three billion tons—by 2050 in order to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies.
“Without sufficient quantities of key minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium, the transition to a clean energy economy simply cannot happen,” Carmichael Roberts, co-lead of BEV’s investment committee, said in a statement. For his part, Roberts believes GeologicAI’s tech has the potential to “significantly accelerate key mineral discovery and recovery.”
Feature image courtesy GeologicAI.
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