Who's Making Money pt 6 - Tech services and their influence on mining

💡What’s New: How digital services are transforming mining and making bank.

🤔 Opinion: Why opensource is the greatest advancement in mining today.

🛠️ Tools & Data: Open tools and datasets to accelerate your work.

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💡What’s new

Last newsletter we looked at the startups creating value by finding better ways to transport minerals. This week, the last post in a series on the mining value chain, I focus on services.

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Services

A catch-all category for businesses that enable mining to function efficiently. This is the area where most tech companies operate and covers a lot of ground–everything from software, ferrying supplies, legal and administrative, security, etc.

Example Startups and Business Models

A sampling of startups that represent niches, as well as how they’re making money.

• PotLogic, TheiaX - resource exploration and mapping using the latest AI techniques. Business models range from service contracts to mineral rights purchase/hold to actual mining and sale of the ore.

• Atomionics, Ideon - companies with novel sensor systems and accompanying software to map minerals. They sell devices and service contracts to major mining companies.

• MetalsHub, EquipmentRentals - digital marketplaces for transacting mines, minerals, and related equipment. They typically make money with commissions or added margin.

• Ception - combining multiple technologies to create niche solutions–e.g., IoT sensors, AI, and usually autonomous health monitoring with automated control. They sell devices as well as service and support contracts.

• Unearthed Solutions - incubators and non-profits that bring resources together to solve specific challenges. They will typically get their monies from private donors and governments.

I have intentionally left out robotics as I believe they represent a special category to be covered in a special edition.

Why They Matter

Mining innovation today is most apparent in digital services, which allow mines to operate at lower costs, higher throughput, with fewer people, and much more safely. I expect this trend to continue. The work of mining will not change, but how it’s accomplished can vastly improve.

Services will be largely responsible for transforming the mining industry in the coming decades. And what’s truly fantastic is that most of them weren’t developed for mining. For example, while the AI and cloud computing industries enable many mine innovations, these will never focus a majority of their marketing and development efforts there. Why? Mining is one of the smallest economic components of the overall economy and potential earnings.

But that doesn’t seem to have slowed the rate of progress (read why in the opinion below).

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Related News

• Nigeria is investing in (i.e., buying) AI services.

• Next level mine asset monitoring – armbands to track health ;).

• IoT sensors and 5G networking are transforming mining ops.

• CGG’s AI services help seal an exploration contract between Mongolia and France.

🤔 Opinion

Mining is not a great industry in which to grow your tech company. There are relatively few customers that can purchase your services. And the margins are smaller compared to larger industries like finance and consumer tech.

But if you do decide to work in mining, then the best opportunities, IMO, are found in addressing the lack of talent. Specifically, a lack of technically capable experts who understand both mining and new technology.

Most mining professionals are slated to retire in the next 10-15 years. So while there are tremendous incentives for companies to adopt new tech, the challenge is found in integrating them. Few AI experts possess mining subject matter expertise (to say nothing of the high salaries these people command).

What is to be done?

I believe the greatest thing in mining today is not any single new AI service, satellite monitoring, or even high-speed geospatial computing. It’s opensource AI. Open initiatives like AI agents, vectorized knowledge and semantic recall, and the ability to train large generic AI models for industry-specific needs will help to ease the burden of staff shortages by handling administrative and regulatory requirements, by automating asset characterization, and by streamlining mine planning / operational optimization, etc.

I will be making more tutorials on these topics and posting to my YouTube channel in the coming weeks.

🛠️ Tools and Data

Tools and datasets that can help your company grow for free.

Thanks for reading! Want me to look into a particular topic? Email your suggestions and and I will dig.

David