Swiss “impact investor” Blue Earth Capital has led a US$44 million private capital raising by Canada’s GeologicAI, which is commercialising technology a Rio Tinto manager thinks has potential “to transform how we think about project development timelines and risk”.
The mining major and peer BHP, through its venture capital arm, joined Blue Earth and Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy in GeologicAI’s latest raise.
The series B raise would help Calgary-headquartered GeologicAI “expand to more mining jurisdictions across five continents” and continue development of its proprietary AI tools and hardware, the company said. Founder and CEO Grant Sanden said GeologicAI was impacting exploration and production environments as it scaled globally. “Our solution combines cutting-edge sensors, advanced AI and deep geoscience expertise to intensively scan drill core onsite and to analyse, interpret and visualise this enhanced data in real time,” the company says.
“Their high-resolution approach and real-time data capabilities have the potential to transform how we think about project development timelines and risk,” said Rio Tinto head of growth and ventures, Pekka Santasalo.
GeologicAI is the first mining-related tech investment for Blue Earth Capital, which says its raison d’etre is “helping to address the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges”.
“A significant increase in the supply of critical minerals is essential for the energy transition and specifically electrification and we believe GeologicAI is at the forefront of providing solutions to improve the recovery process while reducing the environmental footprint,” said the firm’s head of private equity, Kayode Akinola.
BHP Ventures vice president Laurel Buckner said GeologicAI was “disrupting traditional, time and cost intensive workflows with AI-powered analytics and modelling solutions”.
GeologicAI, founded in 2013, last year raised $30 million of series A private funding and acquired Canadian geostatistical modelling software firm, Resource Modeling Solutions.
InvestMETS.com data shows mining tech firms have raised more than $360 million of equity funding so far in 2025.
