How AI is speeding the mining of valuable metals needed to power the clean economy

As the clean energy economy expands, finding the minerals and metals that power it becomes increasingly critical. The answer might lie with artificial intelligence.

Electric cars, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells all have one thing in common: the need for precious metals.

Historically, that's required going through the arduous process of finding the metals and then getting them out of the ground. But new technologies from a slew of companies might be changing the game.

Kobold Metals, VerAI and a startup called Earth AI are in a race to get the metals to market as soon as possible. Earth AI combines AI-powered mineral discovery software with proprietary drilling technology. Its data goes back 50 years.

"We train our AI to learn from failures and successes of decades of hundreds of geologists that explored in the past to make much better predictions for where to look for metals in the future," said Roman Teslyuk, CEO of Earth AI.

When the system finds what it thinks are metal deposits, Earth AI can drill down to verify it in just a tennis ball-sized hole. Teslyuk said that using this mining process takes half the cost and a fraction of the amount of time that was previously required. Individual annual mine revenues can range from $50 million to $3 billion, according to Mining Data Online.

"We drill down to 2,000 feet and grab a sample of rock that has never seen light, and the metals in that rock, they can build hundreds of millions of electric cars," Teslyuk said. "They can turn our grid renewable. This rock can get us off hydrocarbons."

Earth AI doesn't explore around existing mines, but finds new areas and then sells that information to mining companies.

"The market for these minerals is massive," said Jamie Lee, managing partner at Tamarack Global, an investor in Earth AI. "The way that they have approached this really caught our attention because there's a there is a significant moat in their business model and the way that they've trained their large language model."

Other investors include Y Combinator, Cantos Ventures, Scrum Ventures, Alpaca, Sparkwave Capital and Overmatch. The company has raised a total of $38 million.

Earth AI explores on its own, as well as with partners to find deposits faster. The company recently discovered one of the largest verified deposits of palladium in Australia using AI as part of a joint venture with Legacy Minerals.

CNBC Producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.