EarthAI’s algorithm has found important minerals where everyone else ignored them

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 aiexclusively spoke to TechCrunch about his own discoveries. Promising deposits of some of Australia’s important minerals have been neglecting other mining outfits 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 a 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 Northern Territory, silver, molybdenum, tin copper, cobalt and gold deposits at another 310-mile (500-kilometer) New South Wales site in northwest Sydney.

Earth AI emerged from Tesliuk’s graduate studies. Originally from Ukrainian, Tesluk was working on a PhD 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. 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 algorithms are trained to scan large areas quickly and efficiently to find deposits that may be overlooked.

“How we have explored metals in the past, 20^th Century, it takes a very, very long time. It takes decades to find something,” Tesliuk said.