TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a news website focused on information technology companies, ranging in size from startups to established NASDAQ-100 firms.
Finding new sources of critical minerals is a costly business. Worldwide, companies spent $12 to $13 billion on exploration in 2023. The upshot: mining is the definition of a hit-or-miss business. Companies today use advanced models of the Earth’s crust to pinpoint the best prospects, but even then only about three out of 1,000 attempts to find a deposit are successful. Prospectors still have to drill deep into the Earth, pulling up cores of rock to prove if their hunch was correct. “About 70% of the the capital that exploration...