A San Francisco start-up which describes itself as the “world’s only software-first minerals project developer and operator” says it is moving closer to significant expansion of a small-scale Utah copper mine and refinery using its automation and AI-based “MarianaOS” operating system.
Mariana Minerals, which has raised US$85 million from the likes of Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, wants to increase copper production twentyfold at what it is calling Mariana Copper One – the former Lisbon Valley operations – in San Juan County in southeastern Utah. Mariana acquired the assets late last year. The Utah Geological Survey says the site has 36.7 million tonnes grading 0.51% copper in “current reserves”.
Mariana says it has been working with former owner Lisbon Valley Mining Co site personnel to “develop and deploy advanced software and autonomous systems that will overcome past operational challenges and expand copper output”.
CEO Turner Caldwell, a mechanical engineer and former senior battery minerals and metals manager at Tesla, said the 15-year-old Lisbon Valley operation included an openpit mine, heap leach pads, a hydrometallurgical refining circuit with solvent extraction and electrowinning facilities. Mariana aims to expand the existing operation and add insitu recovery and scrap recycling facilities.
“The past decade has been filled with promises to rebuild US mining capacity – promises that rarely materialise into meaningful production,” Caldwell said.
“We need to break out of the pattern of never-ending feasibility studies and multi-billion-dollar first-of-a-kind projects that take decades to build.
“Copper One is an operating mine and refinery. We’re not starting from scratch. We’re deploying MarianaOS at a site that has been producing copper for over 15 years, demonstrating that autonomy can unlock step-change improvements in safety, efficiency and output. Our plan at Copper One [is to] deploy autonomous control of heap bioleaching, solvent extraction and electrowinning to maximise copper recovery, restart mining operations with autonomous orchestration, integrate copper scrap processing to capture domestic secondary sources and execute a major expansion to ramp output to 50,000 tonnes per year.”
As well as Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z fund, Mariana has received backing from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Andreessen Horowitz general partner Erin Price-Wright said the firm saw technology reinventing discovery, extraction and refining of resources that underpinned “everything from energy to defence”.
“The companies that move now — software-native, vertically integrated and built for speed — will define the future of mining,” she said.
“Yet no one has taken the aggressive, full-stack swing the moment demands. Until now.
“The bottleneck in expanding minerals production capacity isn’t geology — it’s coordination.
“Today, operations rely on Excel files passed between EPCs, regulators and owners, static mine plans and decisions made long after data is available. Critical actions like ore routing, reagent dosing or equipment procurement are delayed or misaligned because the systems are fragmented and slow.
“Mariana is … a systems company building the software layer that brings real-time intelligence to mining. Mariana turns what today is reactive and manual into something precise, adaptive and fast. To do this, Mariana is building an integrated software platform that spans the entire lifecycle of mine — from capital project delivery to mining operations and chemical refining. It replaces fragmented workflows with real-time coordination, telemetry-driven control and AI-optimised decision-making.”
Mariana’s Caldwell said mining was the last major industrial sector still dominated by 50 to 100-year-old companies.
“We combine world-class hard-tech engineering talent with in-house AI and machine learning tools – collectively MarianaOS – supercharging our ability to construct, commission and optimise minerals infrastructure at scale.
“Our near-term goal is to build 10 projects in 10 years, fundamentally breaking the pace at which the industry moves today, and to accelerate from there.
“MarianaOS will significantly improve mining productivity, efficiency, safety and environmental performance at Copper One.
“This is increasingly critical as over 200,000 people in the current US mining workforce will retire this decade, while fewer than 400 mining engineering students graduate annually in the US.”
Price-Wright said Mariana’s approach was critical to drawing high-grade talent.
“Before SpaceX, the smartest engineers didn’t touch aerospace. Before Palantir and Anduril, Stanford’s top grads wouldn’t go near defence,” she said.
“Mining has never had a magnet like that, but Mariana Minerals is creating one. Chemists, ML engineers and field ops sit side by side, all owning the outcome and sharing in the upside — a rare blend of Silicon Valley mindset and dirt-under-the-fingernails execution.”
