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        "full_name": "Arjun Mohan",
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        "founder_bio": "Arjun started his career as a strategy analyst at a technology company in Toronto, Canada. He later co-founded a software development company building ecommerce marketplaces.\nHe completed his undergrad at the University of Toronto and his Masters at the Richard Ivey School of Business.",
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        "title": "Saudi Aramco VC Fund Joins Thiel to Back AI-Powered Emissions Monitor",
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    "long_description": "EARTH AI is a predictive explorer and driller for critical metal deposits. We discovered 5% of the world’s deposits this year, thanks to our AI with 66% vs 0.5% success rate and Low Disturbance Drilling tech which enables 1/4 cheaper and 4X faster site testing. ",
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    "industry": "Industrials",
    "subindustry": "Industrials -> Climate",
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    "country": "US",
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        "full_name": "Roman Teslyuk",
        "title": "Founder",
        "founder_bio": "Founder and CEO, EARTH AI. ",
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        "title": "Earth AI raises $20M led by Tamarack, Cantos to find minerals",
        "url": "https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-deals/2025/01/27/earth-ai-roman-teslyuk-tamarack-cantos",
        "date": "Jan 27, 2025"
      },
      {
        "title": "Earth AI: Vertically-Integrated Exploration for an Abundant Future",
        "url": "https://www.notboring.co/p/earth-ai",
        "date": "Apr 23, 2024"
      },
      {
        "title": "IOM3 |  AI helps find platinum in Australia",
        "url": "https://www.iom3.org/resource/ai-finds-platinum-in-australia.html",
        "date": "Mar 22, 2024"
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      {
        "title": "Could AI help find valuable mineral deposits?",
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        "date": "Nov 01, 2023"
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        "title": "Machine learning helps Earth AI find high-grade molybdenum in unexpected place - MINING.COM",
        "url": "https://www.mining.com/machine-learning-helps-earth-ai-find-high-grade-molybdenum-in-unexpected-place/",
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    "all_locations": "Toronto, ON, Canada",
    "long_description": "The mining industry drills narrow holes in the ground called drillholes to identify how much gold is in a ground at any spot. These holes are expensive so the industry uses statistical interpolation to predict what's in between these holes. Stratum replaces these traditional methods by utilizing deep learning to better predict both where to best drill and how much gold is in between these holes. This technology is not limited to gold and has been demonstrated to work on other metals, including base metals like copper. Based on Stratum's current pilots, our technology is projected to create ~10M in annual value for the average mine.",
    "one_liner": "AI that tells mining companies where to mine to maximize profits",
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    "industry": "Industrials",
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        "full_name": "Daniel Mogilny",
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        "full_name": "Farzi Yusufali",
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    "all_locations": "Los Angeles, CA, USA",
    "long_description": "Impossible mining is building underwater robotics vehicles which collect battery metals from the seabed without harming the environment. We have $500M+ in off-take LoI’s and have signed a partnership with a global offshore logistics company which holds a seabed mining exploration permit. We have also built the 1st PoC underwater robotic arm.\r\n\r\nPolymetallic nodules are rocks which are rich in critical battery metals. Specially nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper. These metals are the the most expensive part of EVs.",
    "one_liner": "Underwater robotic vehicles that collect  battery metals responsibly",
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        "full_name": "Oliver Gunasekara",
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        "founder_bio": "Jason is an achievement driven entrepreneur, driven by seeing positive impact to society. \n\nHis passion is solving customer problems through unique business models, technology and go to market strategies. With a passion for subsea technology, his first company, 2G Robotics (Voyis), developed an underwater laser scanner and imaging product for monitoring in the offshore energy, military and civil infrastructure markets. He led the company to a successful acquisition in January 2020.",
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        "full_name": "Renee Grogan",
        "title": "Founder",
        "founder_bio": "Renee is a sustainability expert with 16 years' experience in due diligence, pre-feasibility and feasibility, permitting, strategy, risk and community and stakeholder engagement. Her experience includes working in Australasia, the Pacific, the United States, Africa and parts of Europe. Renee has worked predominantly in the extractive resources industry, including consulting to financial institutions, resources companies, government and intergovernmental agencies, NGOs and research institutions.",
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        "title": "This massive robot is designed to harvest EV metals from the ocean | FastCompany",
        "url": "https://www.fastcompany.com/90822101/massive-robot-ev-metals-ocean-sustainably",
        "date": "Dec 13, 2022"
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        "title": "Impossible Metals demonstrates its super-careful seabed mining robot",
        "url": "https://newatlas.com/marine/seabed-mining-robot-impossible-metals/",
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        "title": "Roundtable Discussion Plants Flag to Support Responsible Technology for DSM — Impossible Mining",
        "url": "https://impossiblemining.com/news/5u8j2o1gj2vwtzqpm3kvzzvpb4u08a",
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        "full_name": "Rahul Anand",
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        "full_name": "Rob McEwan",
        "title": "Founder",
        "founder_bio": "My passion for knowledge and tinkering with technology quickly lead me to transition from a professional hockey career to the geosciences, where I found an absolute fascination with image sensors, spectroscopy, and working with geospatial data.\n\nI am driven by the pursuit of commercially viable technologies and solutions for industries that are most critical to the transition to a sustainable economy. I believe in open data, collaboration, and strong digital privacy protections.",
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        "title": "Asset Owners' Perspective: Understanding Site Condition Risks in Data center Construction",
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        "title": "How MICA and KorrAI Are Accelerating AI‑Enabled Mine Operations",
        "url": "https://www.korrai.com/blog/how-mica-and-korrai-are-accelerating-ai-enabled-mine-operations",
        "date": "Aug 31, 2025"
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      {
        "title": "Understanding that sinking feeling: better managing subsidence risk | The Insurer",
        "url": "https://www.theinsurer.com/ti/viewpoint/understanding-that-sinking-feeling-better-managing-subsidence-risk-2025-01-30/",
        "date": "Jul 31, 2025"
      },
      {
        "title": "Raised $1.6M to build digital twins for the global natural resources sector",
        "url": "https://www.korrai.com/post/raised-1-6m-to-build-digital-twins-for-the-global-natural-resources-sector",
        "date": "Nov 23, 2022"
      }
    ],
    "launches": [
      {
        "id": 122378,
        "title": "TRAIL by KorrAI: AI Agents for Mining Risk",
        "tagline": "Deployed on 5 mine sites, for Engineers who sign high-consequence mine safety reports.",
        "body": "Hey YC, we’re Rahul, Rob, and Rajat from KorrAI (W22).\n\n**TL;DR:** We're building AI agents for engineers who sign off on mine safety reports. It connects site records, links evidence to failure modes, and supports critical decisions. Live on 5 sites with $1.7M booked in 2026, we’re raising a seed. Contact me at [rahul@korrai.com](mailto:rahul@korrai.com).\n\n<https://youtu.be/dcJfnTOH7Kc?si=Ibel5QTfFRf2NgfM>\n\n### The Problem\n\nEvery tailings dam has an Engineer of Record. Their name and licence go on the document that says the dam and slope will hold, or that a closed site is safe. If that document is wrong, the liability is theirs. For example, in 2019, a tailings dam at Brumadinho, Brazil, failed and 270 people lost their lives. Engineers from the firm that certified it as stable were among 16 people charged with homicide.\n\n### How We Got Here\n\nWe started in 2021 as a spin-off from a Canadian Space Agency research project and spent four years building AI algorithms for geological and satellite data processing. When we worked with the engineers who prepare review reports, we saw what signing actually takes. They pull together decades of reports, sensor readings, inspections, and surveys provided by paid consultants, contractors, and site teams. All information is in different formats. They synthesize conclusions by hand every cycle. But with the overwhelming amount of data mine sites collect today, making sense of it across 20 different systems is daunting.\n\nThere’s a risk of missed, misinterpreted, or mistaken risk signals.\n\nAI is already in mining. It drives haul trucks, tunes processing plants, and watches camera feeds.\n\nBut there’s no solution for safety reporting because general AI gives plausible and, at times, hallucinated answers. It lacks an interconnected understanding of a mine site and the nuance from diverse sources. Our proprietary data, Ontologies, and Agents are purpose-built for that.\n\n### What TRAIL Does\n\nTRAIL reads the entire site record, enables engineers to link evidence to each failure mode, and supports decisions that matter for the facility. There’s a simple human-AI collaboration to arrive at the final report the engineer can sign.\n\n1. **The site record is connected:** reports, monitoring data, inspection notes, satellite and drone surveys, including the scanned paper nobody has opened in years.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/d49d95a5-0884-44c6-a496-ebb1b89fe8db)\n\n2. **Failure modes:** evidence linked to the ways each facility can actually fail, so the engineer sees what supports each conclusion and what doesn't.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/35039718-6227-433e-90ce-f47069b586ba)\n\n3. **Cited answers:** when the engineer asks questions, TRAIL answers with citations for each piece of evidence. Where no evidence supports a claim, TRAIL says so instead of guessing.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/3d66ca01-0cdb-4d92-9822-4478408dade4)\n\n4. **The engineer's sign-off:** the engineer reviews the evidence file and signs. TRAIL does the insight hunting; the engineer keeps the judgment.\n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/e4c61a2e-5659-4c97-9d93-584c1ac4ee26)\n\n\n**Founders &amp; The Team**\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/d1a7e126-6cda-484f-aec3-e117496df6ce)\n\n**Rahul** - I'm the CEO. My first startup was acquired before I graduated. Before KorrAI, I built enterprise IoT systems for the tier-1 Indian heavy infra companies. I took KorrAI from a 2-person research project with the Canadian Space Agency to a team of 20, while also leading sales.\n\n**Rob (CRO)** - is a geologist who worked in the field for Atlantic Gold and then explored others before moving into remote sensing. He led the ground monitoring systems our mining customers run today.\n\n**Rajat (CTO)** - has 14 years of experience in software and worked on AR/VR and other cutting-edge tech. He works on geospatial AI and leads our architecture and data infrastructure for TRAIL.\n\nWe’re based in Toronto.\n\n### Progress &amp; Traction\n\nTRAIL is live at operating and closing mine sites, 5 in total, in Canada and the US. We have $1.7 million booked this year, mostly recurring, all of it won from consulting budgets rather than software budgets. Our active customers include major mining operators, a global engineering firm, and a tech giant.\n\n### **Our ask**\n\nWe are raising a seed round to hire forward-deployed and evaluation engineers, because we have more in the pipeline than we can provide. If you invest in industrial or vertical AI, or know someone who does, write to me at [rahul@korrai.com](mailto:rahul@korrai.com)\n\nIf you know someone in a mining company or work at one, we'd love to do a live tour of TRAIL on a real project site.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=122378&key=user_uploads/492046/4d9497c9-503b-4b80-a848-3042b31c27ad)\n\n",
        "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Vpq-trail-by-korrai-ai-agents-for-mining-risk",
        "votes": 22,
        "created_at": "2026-10-15T16:06:07.640Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "id": 29733,
    "name": "1849 bio",
    "slug": "1849-bio",
    "former_names": [],
    "small_logo_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/6a17250c337f8e98ac79079d08da2abffb3b3b6b.png",
    "website": "https://www.1849.bio",
    "all_locations": "San Francisco, CA, USA",
    "long_description": "1849 bio designs microbes enabling cheap metal extraction allowing miners to unlock value from low quality copper and gold ores. Surprisingly, the mining industry is one of the largest scale users of biotech in the world with biomining processes accounting for ~1% of global copper production. Biomining is ultra-low cost, running around ~$1/ton of ore vs ~$7/ton for conventional processes. \r\n\r\nUnfortunately, while biomining is cheap, it can’t be applied to over 80% of copper ores, leaving vast resources without profitable extraction methods. An estimated ~$800B of copper sit today in waste materials and stockpiles with negative unit economics.\r\n\r\nWhile a great deal of effort has been spent on optimizing microbial metal extraction processes, very little effort has been spent on optimizing the microbes themselves. \r\n\r\nTo change that, we’re creating new biotech tools and platforms applied directly to the types of biology most relevant to miners. This enables us to develop new microbes and tackle some of the most difficult problems in biomining, unlocking billions in value from unprofitable resources while being more environmentally friendly than conventional processes.\r\n\r\nWe’re world class microbial engineers. We met while doing our PhDs in synthetic biology, where we spent our time applying and developing the most advanced bioengineering technologies to engineer living cells. ",
    "one_liner": "Engineering microbes for miners to unlock billions in trapped metal",
    "team_size": 3,
    "industry": "Industrials",
    "subindustry": "Industrials",
    "launched_at": 1720558135,
    "tags": [
      "Hard Tech",
      "Synthetic Biology",
      "Biotech",
      "Climate",
      "Mining"
    ],
    "tags_highlighted": [],
    "top_company": false,
    "isHiring": false,
    "nonprofit": false,
    "batch": "Summer 2024",
    "status": "Active",
    "industries": [
      "Industrials"
    ],
    "regions": [
      "United States of America",
      "America / Canada"
    ],
    "stage": "Early",
    "app_video_public": false,
    "demo_day_video_public": false,
    "app_answers": null,
    "question_answers": null,
    "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/1849-bio",
    "api": "https://devasheeshg.github.io/yc-api/batches/summer-2024/1849-bio.json",
    "year_founded": 2024,
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "country": "US",
    "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/1849-bio/",
    "x_url": "https://x.com/1849bio",
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    "logo_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/6a17250c337f8e98ac79079d08da2abffb3b3b6b.png",
    "app_video_url": null,
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    "primary_partner": null,
    "founders": [
      {
        "user_id": 736094,
        "full_name": "Jai Padmakumar",
        "title": "Founder/CEO",
        "founder_bio": "Co-founder and CEO of 1849 bio. I get excited working on difficult problems with outsized impacts if you can solve them. I studied Microbiology and Applied Math at the University of Washington before doing my PhD at MIT in a synthetic biology lab. I've spent my time pushing the limits of what’s possible in bioengineering.\n\n1849 is my second startup, the first of which I co-founded during grad school and led the early science at. ",
        "is_active": true,
        "linkedin_url": "https://linkedin.com/in/jai-padmakumar",
        "x_url": "",
        "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/4e675d7e4a7d57b363b4c651b1e4e87341b92730.jpg"
      },
      {
        "user_id": 736376,
        "full_name": "Yongjin Park",
        "title": "Founder",
        "founder_bio": "I am the co-founder and CSO of 1849 bio. I studied chemical engineering at KAIST and did my PhD at MIT in the Department of Biological Engineering. During my PhD, I developed core technology used in the world's first engineered probiotic that went into clinical trial. After completing PhD, I worked in deep biotech companies, developing microbial products that were administered to over 6M acres of farmland in the US (about the area of Belgium!).",
        "is_active": true,
        "linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/yongjin-park-6604092a/",
        "x_url": "",
        "avatar_thumb_url": "https://bookface-images.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/avatars/7a8db85fbc0f4403667b06663061bc5c9c13dc42.jpg"
      }
    ],
    "jobs": [],
    "news": [],
    "launches": [
      {
        "id": 82014,
        "title": "1849 bio: Microbes for miners",
        "tagline": "Optimizing microbes for mining  🧬 ⛏️🪨",
        "body": "**TL;DR – We’re building microbes for metal extraction, enabling cleaner and cheaper mining of difficult-to-process ores. This will unlock 100M tonnes of copper stranded in ores that are not profitable to mine.** \n\n—\n\nHey all! We’re [Yongjin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yongjin-park-6604092a/) and [Jai](https://linkedin.com/in/jai-padmakumar), co-founders of [1849 bio](https://www.1849.bio/), a team of genetic engineers developing microbes for metal extraction. We met while doing our PhDs at MIT and have spent the better portion of our adult lives hacking living organisms to do cool/useful tasks.  \n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=82014&key=user_uploads/736094/55c73446-daaf-49c2-b6ec-cd654ab4a66e)\n\nNow, we’re on a mission to make the mining industry more sustainable and ensure a stable metal supply for the green energy transition.  \n\n### The Challenge:\n\nThe drive to electrify the world is driving an unprecedented demand for metals like copper, nickel, lithium, and other rare earths. Unfortunately, ramping up metal production is incredibly difficult. Copper is expected to face a \\~20% supply gap by 2031, threatening to slow the rollout of critical technologies like EVs and wind turbines.   \n\nNew mines are difficult to open, taking an average of 16.5 years in the US _after_ a new ore body has been identified. These bodies of metal themselves have become more difficult to identify. After decades of selective mining, **most copper today exists in low grade ores** (ore that contains very little copper), **making economical extraction with conventional methods impossible**.  \n\nApproximately 100M tonnes of copper is trapped in stockpiles and waste materials without any means to profitably extract the metal.  \n\n### The Solution:\n\nBiology! It turns out the mining industry is one of the largest-scale users of biotech in the world. \\~1.2% of copper production in 2019-2020 was done using microbes in a process called “bioleaching.” The basic idea here is to: \n\n1. Stack ore into a giant pile — think miles long and 100s of feet tall. This pile is called a “heap.” \n\n   ![uploaded image](/media/?type=post&id=82014&key=user_uploads/736094/146fb0a7-bff6-421f-81e9-41eea8e38d68)\n\n2. Grow a very unique group of organisms that love acid and use both iron in the rocks and CO2 from the air as food sources. This triggers a series of chemical reactions that ultimately separates the solid copper from the ore into a liquid form.\n3. Collect this liquid at the bottom and run a current through it.\n\nThen you have pure copper! \n\nMiners have been using this process for copper extraction for decades (and in some cases, for other metals like gold, nickel, and cobalt). The process is cleaner and \\~7x cheaper than conventional processes. It also produces fewer tailings (mine waste), a growing environmental problem and liability for miners \n\nWhy isn’t this used everywhere? \n\n1. **It doesn’t work for 80% of copper ores**. Owing to some complex chemistry, the dominant copper ore, chalcopyrite, can’t be processed using bioleaching.  \n2. **It’s really slow, narrowing its use cases**. While a conventional process can melt ore down and give you pure copper in an hour, bioleaching operates on a timescale of months to years.\n\nWe’re using our deep background in bioengineering to build platforms and tools specifically for the types of biology miners need. By engineering the microbes themselves, we are introducing a new set of capabilities to the mining industry: \n\n* **Bioleaching solutions that work on difficult-to-process ores**, like chalcopyrite, unlock billions of dollars of value currently trapped in uneconomical materials. \n* **Faster metal extraction timelines**, getting miners their cash faster. \n* **Low CapEx, sustainable metal extraction**. Our solutions fit into existing mine infrastructure and processes.\n\n# Our asks:\n\n1. If you know anyone in the mining industry, we’d love to meet them! \n2. If you know anyone working in the e-waste recycling industry, we’d love to chat with them, too. We can tune our process for e-waste recycling and are looking into applications for that as well.\n\nReach out to [intro@1849.bio](mailto:intro@1849.bio)!",
        "url": "https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/LKo-1849-bio-microbes-for-miners",
        "votes": 28,
        "created_at": "2024-07-17T04:20:31.752Z"
      }
    ]
  }
]