Finding a new copper deposit is less about luck and more about managing a very expensive, very high-stakes game of Battleship. You have a grid the size of a county, a budget for a handful of exploratory holes, and a geological map that looks like a Rorschach test. For junior mining companies, the wrong guess can burn millions and sink the project. ExploreTech, a San Diego startup founded by Stanford PhD geoscientists, is betting that the right guess can be turned into a repeatable software service.
Their pitch is straightforward: feed historical data, geophysical surveys, and field observations into their proprietary AI models to generate a probability map. The highest-scoring squares become the drill targets. It’s a process meant to replace intuition with calculation, and for at least one public mining junior, it’s working well enough to book a return engagement.
The Nevada proof point
ExploreTech’s most public validation comes from its work with Giant Mining Corp at the Majuba Hill copper-silver-gold project in Nevada. In January 2025, Giant Mining announced it was partnering with ExploreTech to apply AI-driven drill targeting in preparation for that year’s drill campaign [TheNewswire.com, 2025]. By November, the company reported that drilling had "intersected ExploreTech-predicted mineralization," a direct claim of success from the client [Giant Mining Corp, 2025]. The partnership was renewed for the 2026 season, a tangible signal of customer satisfaction [TheNewswire.com, 2026].
This is the core of ExploreTech’s business model: acting as a high-tech consultancy for early-stage mineral exploration. They don’t own the mining claims or operate the drills. Instead, they sell the targeting analysis as a service, aiming to de-risk the single most capital-intensive phase of a mining project. Other early clients include Prismo Metals and Reyna Silver, which engaged ExploreTech for similar imaging and targeting work on properties in Arizona and Nevada [ExploreTech, March 2024] [ExploreTech, January 2024].
The academic wedge
The company’s differentiation is rooted in the founders’ academic research. Co-founders Alex and Michael Miltenberger developed the underlying AI technology during their PhD work in geophysics at Stanford [Giant Mining Corp, 2025]. Alex Miltenberger, the CEO, has argued for a revised scientific method in exploration that integrates disparate data fields to reduce false positives and cognitive bias [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026]. This isn’t a generic AI wrapper on public data; it’s a domain-specific model built by geoscientists for geoscientists.
ExploreTech packages this expertise into a suite of software tools, including targeting solutions called Inverter and Driller, and a central documentation hub called the ET Engine [ExploreTech, June 2024] [ExploreTech, retrieved 2026]. The company claims its software has been refined over five years of real-world use, suggesting a long development runway that predates the 2023 incorporation [ExploreTech, retrieved 2026]. The team, while lean at an estimated 10-24 people, is composed of mining professionals, scientists, and engineers [Prospeo, 2024] [RocketReach, retrieved 2026].
| Company | Key Differentiator | Notable Backing | Public Traction Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExploreTech | AI drill targeting from Stanford geophysics PhDs; integrated software/service model. | Y Combinator | Multi-year engagement with Giant Mining Corp at Majuba Hill. |
| KoBold Metals | Full-stack exploration company using AI to discover and own deposits (e.g., Zambia copper). | Bill Gates, Breakthrough Energy Ventures | Major discovery at Mingomba deposit; operates as a mineral explorer. |
| Earth AI | AI for greenfield mineral exploration; also operates exploration projects. | - | Focus on discovery of new deposits for critical minerals. |
The market of anxious juniors
The tailwind for ExploreTech is the global scramble for critical minerals,copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt,required for the energy transition. Major mining companies are desperate to replenish depleting reserves, but greenfield exploration is slow, risky, and exorbitantly expensive. This creates a ripe market among junior mining companies, who do the early, high-risk exploration work. These juniors are capital-constrained and live or die on the efficiency of their drill programs. A service that can improve their odds, even marginally, has a clear value proposition.
ExploreTech’s challenge is scaling its consultative, project-based model. Each engagement is deeply custom, relying on a client’s unique dataset and geological context. The path from a few successful pilots to a standardized, scalable product with predictable recurring revenue is not yet mapped. Furthermore, the sales cycle is tied to the capital-raising and permitting timelines of junior miners, which are famously volatile and long.
Where the geology gets tricky
For all its promise, ExploreTech’s bet faces real-world friction. The mineral exploration industry is conservative, and convincing seasoned geologists to trust a black-box algorithm over decades of field intuition is a cultural sales job as much as a technical one. The competitive landscape is also awakening.
- The platform risk. ExploreTech’s success hinges on its proprietary models. If a larger competitor with deeper pockets replicates the approach or if an open-source alternative gains traction, the technical moat could erode.
- The client concentration risk. While they have several named partners, the multi-year deal with Giant Mining Corp represents a significant portion of their publicly visible traction. Diversifying the client base is a crucial next step.
- The funding question. The company is seed-stage and backed by Y Combinator, but the size of its war chest is not public. Exploration projects require patience; the sales and R&D runway needed to prove the model at scale is likely substantial.
The company’s answer to these challenges appears to be a focus on demonstrated results and deep domain integration. By embedding with clients like Giant Mining and delivering hits, they build a case study portfolio. Their open roles for senior software engineers also suggest a push to productize and harden their software platform [ExploreTech, retrieved 2026].
For a junior miner budgeting a drill campaign, the math ExploreTech must prove is simple. A single diamond drill hole can cost between $150,000 and $500,000. If their software can increase the probability of a hit from, say, one in ten to one in five, it effectively saves the cost of several dry holes per campaign. That’s a savings measured in millions of dollars against a service fee that is likely a fraction of that. The unit economics of avoiding failure, in this business, are spectacular.
ExploreTech isn’t trying to beat the lone prospector with a pickaxe. The incumbent it must displace is the traditional consulting geologist,the expert who studies the maps, walks the land, and points with a finger based on a lifetime of pattern recognition. To win, ExploreTech needs to prove that its algorithm’s finger points more accurately, more consistently, and for less money. The renewed contract in Nevada is a start, but the real discovery will be a repeatable business model that works as reliably as their code.
Sources
- [ExploreTech, retrieved 2026] ExploreTech Website | https://exploretech.ai/
- [ExploreTech, June 2024] ExploreTech News | https://exploretech.ai/news
- [Giant Mining Corp, 2025] Giant Mining Partners with ExploreTech for Majuba Hill | https://giantminingcorp.com/news/giant-mining-exploretech-2025-majuba-hill-copper/
- [TheNewswire.com, 2025] Giant Mining and ExploreTech AI Modeling Underway | https://www.thenewswire.com/press-releases/1LYzF2oGq-giant-mining-corp-and-exploretech-ai-modeling-underway-for-the-majuba-hill-copper-deposit-in-preparation-of-2025-drill-campaign.html
- [TheNewswire.com, 2026] Giant Mining Re-engages ExploreTech for 2026 | https://www.thenewswire.com/press-releases/1LYzF2oGq-giant-mining-corp-and-exploretech-ai-modeling-underway-for-the-majuba-hill-copper-deposit-in-preparation-of-2025-drill-campaign.html
- [ExploreTech, March 2024] Partnered with Prismo Metals | https://exploretech.ai/news
- [ExploreTech, January 2024] Engaged by Reyna Silver | https://exploretech.ai/news
- [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] Alex Miltenberger on AI in Exploration | https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-miltenberger/
- [Prospeo, 2024] ExploreTech Overview | https://prospeo.io/c/exploretech
- [RocketReach, retrieved 2026] ExploreTech Information | https://rocketreach.co/exploretech-profile_b6d4faeec747a2ac
- [Climatebase, retrieved 2026] ExploreTech on Climatebase | https://jobs.climatebase.org/company/1140166/exploretech