The U.S. Can’t Build AI Without These Materials

Strategic Overview & Market Context

• Critical minerals (aluminum, copper, iron, zinc, rare earths, lithium, nickel) underpin daily consumer electronics, aerospace, defense, and AI infrastructure.
• The sector faces a "geopolitical urgency" driven by supply chain reliance on China and a need to rebuild US domestic mining and refining capabilities.
• Mariana has raised $85 million to exit stealth and operates as a vertically integrated, software-first minerals project developer and operator.
• The company targets a shift from the current "punk solution" SaaS model to full ownership of the value chain to capture efficiency and control risk.

Operational Challenges in the Status Quo

• Mining and refining processes are highly bespoke, with flow sheets designed for specific assets and failing to adapt to heterogeneous ore grades or changing impurities.
• The industry suffers from an "incentive misalignment" where higher demand drives higher prices (contrary to manufacturing economics), discouraging supply expansion.
• Automation adoption is low due to long periods of capital investment without immediate revenue, causing "capital fatigue" during the waste-removal phase of mining.
• Labor shortages are acute, with the pool of skilled trades and engineers shrinking; in contrast, Chinese operations in Indonesia deployed ~13,000 personnel during construction phases where US counterparts mobilize a fraction of that.
• Construction and permitting cycles are sluggish (2–4 years in the West vs. ~6 months in China), largely due to fragmented data, high latency (3-week lag in reporting), and reliance on EPCs that sell hours rather than turnkey solutions.
• Incumbents (e.g., Rio Tinto, BHP) often outsource digital innovation to consultants (McKinsey, Palantir), resulting in <50% adoption of recommendations due to risk aversion and a fear of counterintuitive model outputs.

Mariana's Technology & Product Strategy

• Capital Project OS: A software stack designed to reduce construction latency, automate workflows (procurement, engineering), and democratize data access to run construction projects like manufacturing facilities.
• PlantOS: A reinforcement learning (RL) and AI system to remove humans from the loop in refining operations, optimizing 1,000+ control variables to maximize metal recovery and minimize reagent/energy consumption.
• Dynamic Refining: The thesis aims to build hyper-flexible circuits that can process changing ore grades without costly blending, reversing the industry standard of minimizing variability.
• Goal: To achieve global optimal operating conditions on an order-of-magnitude faster timescale than human-led tuning, similar to Google DeepMind's 40% energy reduction in data centers.
• Scale-Up Strategy: Focuses on integrating commercially demonstrated unit operations rather than developing novel chemistry, allowing for rapid deployment and financing while scaling toward the volume of major mining companies.

Talent & Cultural Shifts

• Mariana leverages a "hard tech" talent pool from companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Anduril, willing to work in "dirty spaces" to solve large-scale infrastructure problems.
• The company addresses the "talent retention" failure of the mining sector by creating a digital-first culture that offers competitive, tech-forward roles, preventing engineers from leaving for SaaS or FinTech.
• Vertical integration is driven by the need to control risk profiles and ensure innovation occurs at the pace required for battery and AI supply chains.

Specific Focus Areas & Commodities

• Lithium: Targeted for development due to depressed commodity prices (investment at the "trough") and a projected 4x demand increase over the next decade.
• Copper: A priority due to declining global ore grades; Mariana intends to use PlantOS to extract copper from lower-grade ores without significant cost increases.
• Iron, Zinc, Aluminum: Identified as high-volume critical needs for infrastructure, defense, and grid expansion.
• Rare Earths: Acknowledged as a bottleneck in refining where Chinese dominance exists; the company sees opportunity in process innovation for extraction and chemical intensity reduction.

Policy, Geopolitics, & Forward-Looking Statements

• Permitting Reform: The company advocates for reducing exploration thresholds, streamlining BLM and federal reviews, and utilizing LLMs to accelerate environmental assessments.
• Government Support: Recommends demand-side support (offtake agreements, price floors) to mobilize private capital and reduce risk for infrastructure funds.
• Global Expansion: While starting in the US to build a scalable platform, the company intends to expand internationally (including potential offshore/seafloor mining) as US resource bases alone are insufficient.
• 10-Year Mission: The metric of success is not just building 10 plants, but restoring the US capability to design, permit, and build complex mineral infrastructure cost-effectively and responsibly.
• Market Thesis: The "last massive untapped market" for hard tech disruption; current technology allows for the first-time ability to solve the industry's complexity and labor constraints simultaneously.