Vancouver-based mining software firm GroundedAI says C$2 million (US$1.4 million) of new equity funding will help speed its advance into a growing tunnelling market.
It says it is targeting opportunities created by $125 billion of Canadian public and private investment in transit, energy, water and mining infrastructure – much of which will require tunnelling or other underground work.
“Canada has committed to building at a scale we haven’t attempted in generations and almost all of it touches the underground,” GroundedAI CEO and co-founder Shelby Yee said.
“The ground is never exactly what the contract and model say it will be. Many tunnelling projects across the world are still managing that gap with paper logs and spreadsheets.”
Yee said GroundedAI was developing technology to help construction teams understand changing subsurface conditions before they caused costly delays and budget overruns. Its platform connected workers collecting information underground with engineers, owners and other decision-makers above ground.
Founded in 2016 as RockMass Technologies by geological engineer Yee and fellow Queens University student Matthew Gubasta, GroundedAI’s latest financing was led by Toronto-based Stand Up Ventures. US deep tech investor SOSV, Accelia, BoxOne, The51 and LOI VC joined the round.
“We’re entering an infrastructure investment cycle that is generational in scale and the tools being used underground have not kept pace with the complexity or the stakes,” Stand Up Ventures principal Lucas Perlman said.
“GroundedAI is built for the actual conditions of this work. The traction they have with tier-one engineering firms at this stage of the company is a strong signal.”
Yee said the company was hiring across sales, operations and software engineering.
