News
07.21.2025
Series A Announcement
Introducing Mariana Minerals
The world's only software-first mining company - built by project developers and operators.
Introducing Mariana Minerals
The world's only software-first mining company - built by project developers and operators.
Introducing Mariana Minerals
The world's only software-first mining company - built by project developers and operators.
We’re excited to announce Mariana’s Series A funding, led by a16z, with continued support from seed investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures, plus participation from strategic investors across the minerals industry. This round brings our total capital raised to $85M.
The world is at a critical inflection point. AI infrastructure, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and modern defense systems all run on critical minerals – and demand is skyrocketing. The combustion economy is transitioning to a minerals economy. We need to rebuild the minerals industry at a breakneck pace to match the vast industrial base the oil and gas industry has spent more than a century creating. To do this, we need to leverage everything at our disposal to build quickly, efficiently, and relentlessly.
But there is a problem: the construction and minerals sectors are old and slow – software and technology penetration lag every other industrial sector, let alone SaaS and financial services. As a result, over the past generation Western companies have ceded control of the minerals supply chain to aggressive, innovative Chinese companies that now dominate the industry. The West faces a shrinking labor pool, a difficult regulatory environment, and a challenging-to-extract resource base, leaving no clear path to delivering the metals that underpin the modern economy.
We started Mariana to address this challenge head on. We put in the hard yards to bring new resources and promising technologies into commercial operation. 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 optimize minerals infrastructure at scale. We are currently developing lithium, copper, and nickel projects in the U.S., and will rapidly expand our project portfolio domestically and abroad to produce the minerals critical to our shared future. 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.
With our Series A funding, we are scaling our operations, expanding the team, and accelerating the deployment of the MarianaOS platform across our project portfolio. We are at the beginning of a long and exciting journey, and Mariana’s success hinges on assembling an extremely talented team with a wide diversity of skillsets. Our work stretches from optimizing micron-scale chemical processes to building and operating kilometer-scale infrastructure. MarianaOS makes bridging across scales and disciplines possible, giving our teams the tools to work smarter, move faster, and unlock the full potential of modern mineral operations. We are actively hiring across software, machine learning, mining, process design, plant engineering, construction, operations and commercial roles. If you are excited about the challenge of securing critical minerals responsibly, rapidly, and efficiently, Mariana is the place for you.
The backbone of the global economy is changing.
In the next 10 years, the world needs to build more than 500 new mines and refineries to meet the rising demand for copper, lithium, nickel, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, rare earths, synthetic and natural graphite, phosphoric acid, and uranium. The scale of the challenge is daunting - over the next 25 years, we’ll need to produce more copper than in all human history combined.
We’re excited to announce Mariana’s Series A funding, led by a16z, with continued support from seed investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures, plus participation from strategic investors across the minerals industry. This round brings our total capital raised to $85M.
The world is at a critical inflection point. AI infrastructure, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and modern defense systems all run on critical minerals – and demand is skyrocketing. The combustion economy is transitioning to a minerals economy. We need to rebuild the minerals industry at a breakneck pace to match the vast industrial base the oil and gas industry has spent more than a century creating. To do this, we need to leverage everything at our disposal to build quickly, efficiently, and relentlessly.
But there is a problem: the construction and minerals sectors are old and slow – software and technology penetration lag every other industrial sector, let alone SaaS and financial services. As a result, over the past generation Western companies have ceded control of the minerals supply chain to aggressive, innovative Chinese companies that now dominate the industry. The West faces a shrinking labor pool, a difficult regulatory environment, and a challenging-to-extract resource base, leaving no clear path to delivering the metals that underpin the modern economy.
We started Mariana to address this challenge head on. We put in the hard yards to bring new resources and promising technologies into commercial operation. 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 optimize minerals infrastructure at scale. We are currently developing lithium, copper, and nickel projects in the U.S., and will rapidly expand our project portfolio domestically and abroad to produce the minerals critical to our shared future. 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.
With our Series A funding, we are scaling our operations, expanding the team, and accelerating the deployment of the MarianaOS platform across our project portfolio. We are at the beginning of a long and exciting journey, and Mariana’s success hinges on assembling an extremely talented team with a wide diversity of skillsets. Our work stretches from optimizing micron-scale chemical processes to building and operating kilometer-scale infrastructure. MarianaOS makes bridging across scales and disciplines possible, giving our teams the tools to work smarter, move faster, and unlock the full potential of modern mineral operations. We are actively hiring across software, machine learning, mining, process design, plant engineering, construction, operations and commercial roles. If you are excited about the challenge of securing critical minerals responsibly, rapidly, and efficiently, Mariana is the place for you.
The backbone of the global economy is changing.
In the next 10 years, the world needs to build more than 500 new mines and refineries to meet the rising demand for copper, lithium, nickel, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, rare earths, synthetic and natural graphite, phosphoric acid, and uranium. The scale of the challenge is daunting - over the next 25 years, we’ll need to produce more copper than in all human history combined.
We’re excited to announce Mariana’s Series A funding, led by a16z, with continued support from seed investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures, plus participation from strategic investors across the minerals industry. This round brings our total capital raised to $85M.
The world is at a critical inflection point. AI infrastructure, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and modern defense systems all run on critical minerals – and demand is skyrocketing. The combustion economy is transitioning to a minerals economy. We need to rebuild the minerals industry at a breakneck pace to match the vast industrial base the oil and gas industry has spent more than a century creating. To do this, we need to leverage everything at our disposal to build quickly, efficiently, and relentlessly.
But there is a problem: the construction and minerals sectors are old and slow – software and technology penetration lag every other industrial sector, let alone SaaS and financial services. As a result, over the past generation Western companies have ceded control of the minerals supply chain to aggressive, innovative Chinese companies that now dominate the industry. The West faces a shrinking labor pool, a difficult regulatory environment, and a challenging-to-extract resource base, leaving no clear path to delivering the metals that underpin the modern economy.
We started Mariana to address this challenge head on. We put in the hard yards to bring new resources and promising technologies into commercial operation. 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 optimize minerals infrastructure at scale. We are currently developing lithium, copper, and nickel projects in the U.S., and will rapidly expand our project portfolio domestically and abroad to produce the minerals critical to our shared future. 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.
With our Series A funding, we are scaling our operations, expanding the team, and accelerating the deployment of the MarianaOS platform across our project portfolio. We are at the beginning of a long and exciting journey, and Mariana’s success hinges on assembling an extremely talented team with a wide diversity of skillsets. Our work stretches from optimizing micron-scale chemical processes to building and operating kilometer-scale infrastructure. MarianaOS makes bridging across scales and disciplines possible, giving our teams the tools to work smarter, move faster, and unlock the full potential of modern mineral operations. We are actively hiring across software, machine learning, mining, process design, plant engineering, construction, operations and commercial roles. If you are excited about the challenge of securing critical minerals responsibly, rapidly, and efficiently, Mariana is the place for you.
The backbone of the global economy is changing.
In the next 10 years, the world needs to build more than 500 new mines and refineries to meet the rising demand for copper, lithium, nickel, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, rare earths, synthetic and natural graphite, phosphoric acid, and uranium. The scale of the challenge is daunting - over the next 25 years, we’ll need to produce more copper than in all human history combined.
If we want any chance of pulling this off, we need to excel at building and operating mineral infrastructure. THIS IS HARD. Modern metals production systems are extremely complex and require a collection of specialized skillsets:
Exploration geologists and geophysicists must identify and delineate viable deposits by decoding millions of years of subsurface phenomena.
Mining and geotechnical engineers must develop safe, cost-effective extraction methods.
Metallurgists, chemists, and chemical engineers must test, iterate, and optimize bespoke methods to refine ore into usable products and manage waste streams responsibly.
A (literal) army of engineering disciplines, construction crews, and project management teams must design and deploy kilometer-scale infrastructure.
Skilled operations teams must manage diverse sets of heavy mining machinery, integrated chemical plants, and associated hazards.
Add to this stringent environmental standards, cross-border operating jurisdictions, and a turbulent macro-economic environment – it isn’t easy. Today, bringing a new mine online costs hundreds of millions, often billions, of dollars and can take decades. The status quo makes building 500 mines in 10 years a losing game.
If we want any chance of pulling this off, we need to excel at building and operating mineral infrastructure. THIS IS HARD. Modern metals production systems are extremely complex and require a collection of specialized skillsets:
Exploration geologists and geophysicists must identify and delineate viable deposits by decoding millions of years of subsurface phenomena.
Mining and geotechnical engineers must develop safe, cost-effective extraction methods.
Metallurgists, chemists, and chemical engineers must test, iterate, and optimize bespoke methods to refine ore into usable products and manage waste streams responsibly.
A (literal) army of engineering disciplines, construction crews, and project management teams must design and deploy kilometer-scale infrastructure.
Skilled operations teams must manage diverse sets of heavy mining machinery, integrated chemical plants, and associated hazards.
Add to this stringent environmental standards, cross-border operating jurisdictions, and a turbulent macro-economic environment – it isn’t easy. Today, bringing a new mine online costs hundreds of millions, often billions, of dollars and can take decades. The status quo makes building 500 mines in 10 years a losing game.
A number of companies are now working hard to shorten mineral exploration timelines. But over the past 20 years a new problem has arisen – Western companies have lost the ability to efficiently navigate the complex path to transform mineral discoveries into operating mines. Execution challenges, cost overruns, and slow facility commissioning and ramp up have driven major Western mining companies into a prolonged period of stagnation and decline. The natural reaction – more conservatism, more process, more analysis paralysis – feeds further malaise across the industry.
A number of companies are now working hard to shorten mineral exploration timelines. But over the past 20 years a new problem has arisen – Western companies have lost the ability to efficiently navigate the complex path to transform mineral discoveries into operating mines. Execution challenges, cost overruns, and slow facility commissioning and ramp up have driven major Western mining companies into a prolonged period of stagnation and decline. The natural reaction – more conservatism, more process, more analysis paralysis – feeds further malaise across the industry.
Meanwhile, Chinese minerals companies are growing voraciously: building faster, commissioning faster, and leveraging each project’s learnings into a larger skilled labor pool, steadily cutting execution time and cost from one project to the next. The result of this concerted effort and differentiated execution capability is dominance across the critical minerals value chain.
Meanwhile, Chinese minerals companies are growing voraciously: building faster, commissioning faster, and leveraging each project’s learnings into a larger skilled labor pool, steadily cutting execution time and cost from one project to the next. The result of this concerted effort and differentiated execution capability is dominance across the critical minerals value chain.
This gap isn’t just about technology, resources, a favorable permitting environment, or availability of cheap capital; it’s a commitment problem, which has bred a labor pool problem. About 40% of the US mining workforce will retire this decade - approximately 220,000 workers. There are two major drivers:
First, the mining industry has lost its luster – minerals companies struggle to attract talent, who prefer dynamic work environments pushing the limits of what is possible. The US now graduates fewer than 400 mining engineering students a year – 40% fewer than a decade ago – and only ~10,000 people enter the mining workforce annually. This contraction is choking the industry’s ability to grow.
This gap isn’t just about technology, resources, a favorable permitting environment, or availability of cheap capital; it’s a commitment problem, which has bred a labor pool problem. About 40% of the US mining workforce will retire this decade - approximately 220,000 workers. There are two major drivers:
First, the mining industry has lost its luster – minerals companies struggle to attract talent, who prefer dynamic work environments pushing the limits of what is possible. The US now graduates fewer than 400 mining engineering students a year – 40% fewer than a decade ago – and only ~10,000 people enter the mining workforce annually. This contraction is choking the industry’s ability to grow.
Second, Western mining and construction companies are getting less productive, not more. The legacy operating systems that underpin minerals and construction activities are decades behind those in advanced manufacturing or oil and gas, which have spent the last 20 years boosting productivity with automation, software, and other innovations. The result? Persistent churn, miscommunication, and high latency decision-making that cripples schedules, inflates costs, and stalls progress.
Second, Western mining and construction companies are getting less productive, not more. The legacy operating systems that underpin minerals and construction activities are decades behind those in advanced manufacturing or oil and gas, which have spent the last 20 years boosting productivity with automation, software, and other innovations. The result? Persistent churn, miscommunication, and high latency decision-making that cripples schedules, inflates costs, and stalls progress.
In short, the companies that design, build, and operate complex minerals infrastructure are running out of skilled people; those they retain are increasingly inefficient. And the minerals industry is not responding fast enough.
Mariana is purpose-built to solve the systems engineering challenge of building world-scale minerals infrastructure – accelerating capital project execution, shortening plant ramp-up, and optimizing ongoing mineral operations.
In short, the companies that design, build, and operate complex minerals infrastructure are running out of skilled people; those they retain are increasingly inefficient. And the minerals industry is not responding fast enough.
Mariana is purpose-built to solve the systems engineering challenge of building world-scale minerals infrastructure – accelerating capital project execution, shortening plant ramp-up, and optimizing ongoing mineral operations.
A New Kind of Mining Company
The mining industry is the last major industrial sector still dominated by 50 to 100-year-old companies - no company started in the last 20 years, or any American mining companies, crack the top 10 by revenue.
A New Kind of Mining Company
The mining industry is the last major industrial sector still dominated by 50 to 100-year-old companies - no company started in the last 20 years, or any American mining companies, crack the top 10 by revenue.
Just as Tesla reimagined the automotive industry, SpaceX revolutionized space exploration, and Anduril is reshaping defense, Mariana is bringing minerals production - mining and refining - into the 21st century.
Mariana is a vertically integrated minerals project developer and operator, designed to be software-first from day one, integrating modern machine learning and artificial intelligence at every level of our operations. We are developing the full spectrum of expertise, from software development, mine design, and chemical process development to plant engineering, procurement, execution, start-up, and operations with a singular goal – bring mineral assets online faster and operate them more efficiently than ever before.
Just as Tesla reimagined the automotive industry, SpaceX revolutionized space exploration, and Anduril is reshaping defense, Mariana is bringing minerals production - mining and refining - into the 21st century.
Mariana is a vertically integrated minerals project developer and operator, designed to be software-first from day one, integrating modern machine learning and artificial intelligence at every level of our operations. We are developing the full spectrum of expertise, from software development, mine design, and chemical process development to plant engineering, procurement, execution, start-up, and operations with a singular goal – bring mineral assets online faster and operate them more efficiently than ever before.
MarianaOS – building better, mining better, refining better
MarianaOS, built in-house, is the digital nervous system for mineral projects. It compresses project timelines from discovery to steady-state operations, streamlines capital project delivery and increases autonomy across the entire production stack. Over the last 9 months, our growing software engineering team has built out the core MarianaOS architecture:
CapitalProjectOS is our integrated capital project execution tool that:
Democratizes access to information across project teams, breaking down silos across engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning
Provides the scaffolding, domain expertise, and context engineering to unleash LLMs on engineering, procurement, and construction workflows
Boosts real-time data flow from project management and field crews to deliver the right data, to the right person, at the right time
Ultimately enables smaller, more agile teams to successfully build large-scale capital projects, without the schedule and cost overruns that investors dread
MineOS and PlantOS are our autonomy platforms for mining and refining operations that:
Leverage our internal reinforcement learning platform to dynamically adjust operating conditions in minerals processing facilities and refineries, adapting to input variability in ways that human-controlled facilities cannot
Accelerate autonomous fleet deployment across mining operations, minimizing human interaction with heavy-haul machinery
Achieve global optimal operations by integrating geologic block models, short and long-range mine plans, fleet management systems, and industrial control systems for mill/processing facility
Ultimately enable no-human-in-the-loop operations, increasing recovery and throughput, while reducing energy and reagent consumption, driving higher productivity and a smaller environmental footprint
MarianaOS – building better, mining better, refining better
MarianaOS, built in-house, is the digital nervous system for mineral projects. It compresses project timelines from discovery to steady-state operations, streamlines capital project delivery and increases autonomy across the entire production stack. Over the last 9 months, our growing software engineering team has built out the core MarianaOS architecture:
CapitalProjectOS is our integrated capital project execution tool that:
Democratizes access to information across project teams, breaking down silos across engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning
Boosts real-time data flow from project management and field crews to deliver the right data, to the right person, at the right time
Provides the scaffolding, domain expertise, and context engineering to unleash LLMs on engineering, procurement, and construction workflows
Ultimately enables smaller, more agile teams to successfully build large-scale capital projects, without the schedule and cost overruns that investors dread
MineOS and PlantOS are our autonomy platforms for mining and refining operations that:
Leverage our internal reinforcement learning platform to dynamically adjust operating conditions in minerals processing facilities and refineries, adapting to input variability in ways that human-controlled facilities cannot
Accelerate autonomous fleet deployment across mining operations, minimizing human interaction with heavy-haul machinery
Achieve global optimal operations by integrating geologic block models, short and long-range mine plans, fleet management systems, and industrial control systems for mill/processing facility
Ultimately enable no-human-in-the-loop operations, increasing recovery and throughput, while reducing energy and reagent consumption, driving higher productivity and a smaller environmental footprint
MarianaOS – building better, mining better, refining better
MarianaOS, built in-house, is the digital nervous system for mineral projects. It compresses project timelines from discovery to steady-state operations, streamlines capital project delivery and increases autonomy across the entire production stack. Over the last 9 months, our growing software engineering team has built out the core MarianaOS architecture:
CapitalProjectOS is our integrated capital project execution tool that:
Democratizes access to information across project teams, breaking down silos across engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning
Provides the scaffolding, domain expertise, and context engineering to unleash LLMs on engineering, procurement, and construction workflows
Boosts real-time data flow from project management and field crews to deliver the right data, to the right person, at the right time
Ultimately enables smaller, more agile teams to successfully build large-scale capital projects, without the schedule and cost overruns that investors dread
MineOS and PlantOS are our autonomy platforms for mining and refining operations that:
Leverage our internal reinforcement learning platform to dynamically adjust operating conditions in minerals processing facilities and refineries, adapting to input variability in ways that human-controlled facilities cannot
Accelerate autonomous fleet deployment across mining operations, minimizing human interaction with heavy-haul machinery
Achieve global optimal operations by integrating geologic block models, short and long-range mine plans, fleet management systems, and industrial control systems for mill/processing facility
Ultimately enable no-human-in-the-loop operations, increasing recovery and throughput, while reducing energy and reagent consumption, driving higher productivity and a smaller environmental footprint
Mariana is not a B2B SaaS company – we are a software-enabled project developer and operator. We engineer. We build. We commission. We operate. We put in the hard yards to accelerate minerals projects from concept development to operation. We are both a minerals company and a technology company. We acquire resources and partner with resource owners to design, build, operate and optimize minerals projects in the US and abroad, layering in the Mariana tech stack across our growing portfolio of projects to build a generational mining business.
Making this a reality requires more than riding the wave of advances in AI and ML – it requires a manufacturing mindset. The Western minerals industry is struggling – from how we effectively deploy capital to how we price products, and everything in between. We need to manufacture minerals, not just mine them. This is a fundamental mindset shift, which will drive meaningful efficiencies across the value chain and enable Mariana to be a smarter, leaner, better minerals company, while aligning incentives with our end customers. The best part is no part. The best process is no process.
Mariana will not solve every problem critical to unlocking more minerals production capacity at home and abroad. We need rapid advances in mineral exploration, meaningful permitting reform, continued innovation in autonomous operations and more efficient processing technologies. Novel technologies often fail because humans haven't learned how to operate them before — PlantOS is aimed at accelerating this deployment. At Mariana, we will aggressively introduce new technologies from the exciting pool of companies looking to help the minerals industry get better. At scale. Faster.
We are not blind to the magnitude of the challenge – minerals mining and refining is hard, it's very hard, and it’s why it is imperative that we build Mariana.
Mariana is not a B2B SaaS company – we are a software-enabled project developer and operator. We engineer. We build. We commission. We operate. We put in the hard yards to accelerate minerals projects from concept development to operation. We are both a minerals company and a technology company. We acquire resources and partner with resource owners to design, build, operate and optimize minerals projects in the US and abroad, layering in the Mariana tech stack across our growing portfolio of projects to build a generational mining business.
Making this a reality requires more than riding the wave of advances in AI and ML – it requires a manufacturing mindset. The Western minerals industry is struggling – from how we effectively deploy capital to how we price products, and everything in between. We need to manufacture minerals, not just mine them. This is a fundamental mindset shift, which will drive meaningful efficiencies across the value chain and enable Mariana to be a smarter, leaner, better minerals company, while aligning incentives with our end customers. The best part is no part. The best process is no process.
Mariana will not solve every problem critical to unlocking more minerals production capacity at home and abroad. We need rapid advances in mineral exploration, meaningful permitting reform, continued innovation in autonomous operations and more efficient processing technologies. Novel technologies often fail because humans haven't learned how to operate them before — PlantOS is aimed at accelerating this deployment. At Mariana, we will aggressively introduce new technologies from the exciting pool of companies looking to help the minerals industry get better. At scale. Faster.
We are not blind to the magnitude of the challenge – minerals mining and refining is hard, it's very hard, and it’s why it is imperative that we build Mariana.
