Last year, mining startup KoBold Metals grabbed global attention after uncovering one of the largest copper deposits in more than a decade, buried deep in Zambia. Now, another tech-driven mining company is making headlines with a significant discovery of its own. Australian startup Earth AI has identified promising deposits of critical minerals in remote parts of the country — regions most exploration companies have ignored for decades.
While it’s still too early to measure these finds against KoBold’s, Earth AI’s breakthrough signals a dramatic shift in mineral exploration. Artificial intelligence is no longer just speeding up discovery — it’s also revealing hidden resources in places long considered barren.
According to Earth AI’s founder and CEO Roman Teslyuk, the real frontier in mining today is technology — not geography.
The company’s powerful algorithms have uncovered potential deposits of copper, cobalt, and gold across Australia’s Northern Territory. Additionally, another site in New South Wales, located 500 kilometers northwest of Sydney, revealed traces of silver, molybdenum, and tin — essential minerals for clean energy technologies.
For decades, traditional explorers overlooked these regions. But Earth AI’s fresh approach, driven by AI-powered analysis, uncovered what others missed.
From Ph.D. Research to Mining Innovation
Earth AI’s story began while Teslyuk, a native of Ukraine, pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Sydney. There, he became deeply familiar with Australia’s mining sector, where the government owns mineral rights and leases them out for six-year periods. Since the 1970s, companies exploring these areas have been required to submit their findings to a national archive — creating a vast, largely untapped database of valuable geological data.
“Surprisingly, no one was really using this data,” Teslyuk explained. “I realized that by building an algorithm capable of learning from both the successes and failures of millions of geologists, I could make much smarter predictions about where to search for minerals.”
That realization sparked the birth of Earth AI. Initially launched as a software company, the startup focused on generating AI-powered predictions about potential mineral deposits, aiming to sell these insights to major mining companies.
However, the mining industry’s conservative mindset proved to be a major hurdle. Many potential customers were skeptical of relying solely on algorithms to guide multi-million-dollar exploration projects.
Proving the Technology with Hands-On Drilling
To overcome industry resistance, Earth AI made a bold decision — they developed their own drilling rigs to prove the accuracy of their AI models on the ground.
“In mining, anything outside the established methods is viewed as risky,” Teslyuk shared. “We realized we had to demonstrate the value of our predictions with actual drilling results.”
That strategic pivot paid off. Earth AI gained momentum after being accepted into Y Combinator’s Spring 2019 startup accelerator, which helped refine both its software and hardware. By January, the company had secured $20 million in Series B funding to scale its AI-powered mineral exploration efforts.
AI Redefines the Speed of Mineral Discovery
Although Earth AI shares similarities with KoBold in using artificial intelligence, Teslyuk points out a key difference. Earth AI’s proprietary algorithms are designed to scan massive areas quickly, detecting mineral-rich zones others overlooked.
“The traditional way of searching for metals was painfully slow — it could take decades to find a single deposit,” Teslyuk said. “But today’s world moves fast. We can’t afford to wait that long anymore.”
By blending historical geological data with AI-driven predictions, Earth AI is transforming mineral exploration. As the global demand for critical minerals soars — driven by clean energy, electric vehicles, and high-tech manufacturing — Earth AI’s approach could reshape the future of mining.
