New York investment bank JP Morgan and Vancouver venture capital firm Evok Innovations are two of the key backers of a US$42 million equity fundraising by MineSense, taking the 14-year-old mining technology company’s private funding to date past $120 million.
The asset management arm of JP Morgan led the latest financing.
Existing MineSense investors including Prelude Ventures, BDC Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, Cycle Capital and Chrysalix Venture Capital are also said to have participated in the Series E round.
Vancouver-based MineSense claims to have tripled its revenue in the past 12 months. It was recently recognised as one of the “fastest growing” companies in North America by accounting firm, Deloitte.
MineSense CEO Jeff More said the company would use the funding to accelerate commercial deployment of its “ore-grade data mining solutions”, including ShovelSense, said to aid live characterisation of ore and waste. The product had been “proven to more efficiently mine valuable ore, reduce waste, and improve downstream processing in copper mines across Canada, Chile, and Peru”.
MineSense says it is aiming to extend the use of the patented technology to other metals such as nickel, cobalt, zinc and iron.
“This funding and strategic support will allow us to continue executing our strategy of delivering profit-enhancement, operational efficiency, and carbon intensity reduction to critical mining operations,” More said.
JP Morgan Sustainable Growth Equity partner Osei Van Horne, who has joined MineSense’s board, said the company and its technology was a “distinctive example” of an innovator “meeting the challenge of transforming industry to support the low carbon transition”.
“We are excited to invest in a technology platform that offers a data-driven decarbonisation pathway for mining, which builds on the strategy of our Sustainable Growth Equity team began earlier this year,” said another Sustainable Growth Equity senior partner, Tanya Barnes.
