In September, Calgary’s GeologicAI added $10 million in funding from Export Development Canada to a $20 million Series A financing round announced in June 2023 led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
The global leader in digital rock analysis combines hardware, software, and machine learning into an integrated digital rock analytics platform.
A proprietary core-scanning robot uses a blend of high-resolution multi-sensor data to analyze rock samples, providing unparalleled accuracy in identifying resources hidden beneath the Earth’s surface, according to GeologicAI.
Machine vision and AI algorithms then convert data to rock properties, reducing the need for costly and time-consuming laboratory testing and reliance on subjective manual interpretation—a process that could take over a year traditionally can be reduced to a week or less.
“Without sufficient quantities of key minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium, the transition to a clean energy economy simply cannot happen,” Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures observed in June. “GeologicAI’s multi-sensor core scanning robots and AI-assisted analysis are a powerful combination, and we believe their technology will significantly accelerate key mineral discovery and recovery.”
In 2024, the well-funded GeologicAI has major scale-up plans as the company looks to grow from its basecamp in Alberta.
The geo-tech upstart is planning to expand workforce—currently just shy of 200 people—by an order of magnitude, bringing the team’s total to 2,000 over the next two years, according to a report from the Calgary Herald.
Not all talent will be located in Alberta, however, or even Canada. The Herald reports that Geologic’s expanded headcount “will be dispersed to locations in Chile, Brazil, Africa and Australia,” which the newspaper notes are all mining centres.
“Mining is a global industry and the critical materials needed are going to come from increasingly remote corners of the planet,” GeologicAI founder and CEO Grant Sanden stated in September.
“Our platform gives our clients’ best geologists access to all of their rocks from anywhere in the world,” he continued, “enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing and accelerating exploration and development.”
GeologicAI was founded in 2013.
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