GeologicAI will back itself and Canadian copper exploration minnow Edge Copper Corporation to improve early-stage exploration results at the latter’s recently acquired Zonia project in Arizona, USA, after the two companies entered into a “strategic partnership”.
Edge, which was called Plata Latina when it acquired Zonia earlier this year from World Copper in a circa-C$22 million deal, says it wants to advance the project to shovel-ready status “within three to four years”.
Calgary-based GeologicAI raised US$44 million of private equity funding in July this year “to support AI-driven discovery and development of critical minerals”. Backers included Blue Earth Capital, BHP Ventures and Rio Tinto. Its Resource Exploration Strategies (RXS) is said to integrate proprietary analytics and real-time data collection with advanced geological, resource and geometallurgical modelling.
RSX would “underpin the full feasibility study” at Zonia after early input into a drill-hole spacing study to “identify the most efficient spacing for inferred, indicated and measured resource categories, and drill-hole optimisation analysis to reduce drilling costs and maximise certainty within a short time frame”.
GeologicAI said it would also carry out remote core logging and real-time scanning and guide geometallurgical sampling and exploration targeting.
It will take an undisclosed equity stake in Edge Copper, which has a current market value of about C$45 million.
Zonia is a past-producing copper-oxide SX-EW heap leach operation in Arizona’s Walnut Grove mining district.
Patrick Redmond, president of RXS at GeologicAI, said the Edge Copper partnership was “a natural extension of our mission to bring high-confidence, highly informed decision-making into the earliest stages of critical mineral discovery”.
