00:12:42 · JC Lozano
[00:12:42] S1: they figure that out? That is a great question that gets us deep into the ecosystem that is kinda junior mining. Mhmm. But basically what happens is is that geologists typically that's where it starts. They'll have a theory or hypothesis about this part of the subterranean ground has either old oceans or rivers or geologic activity, which causes minerals to sort of coalesce and form and sort of concentrate there. Mhmm. Very simplistically. And so they have a hypothesis, like, oh, we think that there's gold and then there hills, roughly speaking. Then what you do is then there's, like, a whole ecosystem that is essentially, like, you need to drill what are called exploration drill holes, where you, like, basically drill deep down into the earth. You take core samples, you analyze them, and try to figure out, okay, there's, like, actually, like, some amount of metal under there that is economically viable. That's, like, a fairly long process. Generally, throughout that process, they're sort of, like, increasing their certainty about, like, the the resource underground. So they're trying to map out the ore body Right. Trying to understand, like, it's laid out three d in space underground, which is, like, crazy we're able to do that. And then eventually, they get to this point where it was, again, geologists that started this and exploration companies. Mhmm. So they get to this point where they have, like, characterized the resource well enough underground. And as they're doing this, they're raising funding from either the private markets or the public markets. Mhmm. And then at some point, like, the valuation of that resource will kinda peak.
00:14:05 · Ryan Deng
[00:14:05] S0: I
00:14:05 · JC Lozano
[00:14:05] S1: see. And it it hits its first peak. And that's basically because people are super excited about the resources underground. Uh-huh. The challenge that those folks have is basically that they're geologists, fundamentally, exploration folks, and so the market typically starts to question whether or not they'll actually be able to bring the resource to market. So they actually, like, characterized the resource on the ground, and now you have to, like, go and mine it. Right? And then you have to process it to turn it into something valuable, and you need to do that all economically, and it's, a huge capital project. It's a lot of complexity. Mhmm. And so you get to this first peak evaluation, and then it kinda crashes out Mhmm. Because the, like, market sort of loses faith that that operational team is able to execute on it. Okay. And so... But at that point, like, you've... Like, the resource on the ground is well understood. Uh-huh. There's a lot of these. Yeah. They've typically gotten pretty far in the permitting process, so that piece is removed. And so you're able to buy these assets in kind of this, like, trough that they go through where they're like... The people understand that there's something valuable underground. They have a decent understanding of, what it would take to actually extract it. Mhmm. And so now it goes through this trough because the market doesn't actually believe they'll be able to execute on it. And so we come in at that trough, that second trough Mhmm. And we, like, we have an incredible operational team. So, like, we built the company to fill the gap of, like, we know what's underground, here's the market, we fill that gap in between of, actually bringing the project to market, actually building the thing and executing and running it.
00:15:29 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:15:29] S0: So you're doing it, like, orders of magnitude faster and better than Yeah. Practices. [00:15:34] S1: Well, we're just doing the thing. Is that like, that is [00:15:37] S0: the part What processes are diff... What like, what parts are different, right? Because
00:15:40 · JC Lozano
[00:15:40] S1: Yeah. So to get to like the part that we're excited about why we call ourselves a software first Uh-huh. Kind of mining company is basically, our strong belief is that, like, basically, the only way you can do this with the labor force that we have in The United States and the Western world more generally is you need software and machine learning and agents to, like, automate a ton of the activities. Sure. Because we just don't have the labor force fundamentally required to, like, build the mines and refineries that we need to meet the impending demand. And so what we've basically done is we've built four software suites. One is called Capital Project OS. Uh-huh. And then there's Mine OS and Plant OS, and then one we call Biz OS, which is our business process automation. But fundamentally, all of those are addressed at different parts of the process that you need to do to, like, go and take something that is like a resource underground and actually mine it. So Capital Project OS is all about kind of using agents and software to automate a lot of the activities that go into the basic engineering, which is sort of how you build out your initial model of how you're gonna mine the thing Mhmm. All the way through detailed engineering, the way through to commission... Or construction and commissioning, and then PlantOS... Sorry, MineOS comes in next. This is our kind of like autonomous orchestration layer that basically orchestrates across all the activities in the mine. So this is both manned equipment and unmanned equipment. You have to tell where to go of every single day. Yeah. And then fundamentally, all that resource is brought to the surface, and then you put it into your processing plant. And then PlantOS is this, like, reinforcement learning layer that orchestrates and controls our facilities to refine the materials. Mhmm.
00:17:09 · Ryan Deng, JC Lozano
[00:17:09] S0: So what percentage of, like, the software that you're building automates, like, back office work? And then what percentage of the software that you're going to build will automate, like, the actual work being done, which is, like, the digging of it [00:17:19] S1: is on the the second part. So Oh, really? Digging and the operating chemical facilities. [00:17:25] S0: Yeah. [00:17:25] S1: So, like, one simple way to think about it is, if you think about, like, any of the heavy equipment that is used in a mine Uh-huh. So most modern equipment is digital Right. Fundamentally. It's simply... There's something called the can bus, which is basically... And your car is the same way. Uh-huh. There's, like, a computer that sits inside there and that translates from the analog, the analog signals into the digital signals, and then you can just tap into that, right? And then you've now given yourself like a little robot, or a big robot in [00:17:48] S0: our case. And you're automating that, basically? [00:17:50] S1: We are... Well, we're tapping into those signals and then we are, you know, autonomously controlling Okay. The equipment. [00:17:56] S0: It's a remote kind of drone that you're... [00:17:59] S1: Would think about it more as just like if you had to like take and make like, you know, mining self driving. This is how you... [00:18:06] S0: Pretty cool. [00:18:07] S1: Yeah. So... Gonna do with