Can you give an overview of VerAI’s business in the US?

Our business partnerships and operations are concentrated across both North and South America, focusing on prospective, stable, supportive jurisdictions with favorable investment environments. The US stands out as an attractive location with highly prospective geology, a rich history of mining, strong infrastructure, and an extensive amount of high-quality geological data from the US Geological Survey (USGS).

In 2024, VerAI partnered with US Critical Materials to utilize our AI-powered Mineral Targeting Platform for exploration at their Sheep Creek rare earth element (REE) property in Montana. We delivered high probability exploration targets in exchange for royalties and also retained the option to invest capital to drill those targets, for which we can receive additional royalties. This partnership allows us to have exposure to highly strategic REE products, adding to our portfolio of copper, nickel, gold, lithium, and platinum group element assets.  We also have projects in Arizona, where we are currently in discussions with groups for potential earn-in agreements on copper projects there. Nevada is the next big region of focus for VerAI in the US, and we are currently targeting a large area within one of the key prospective gold belts for target generation and related partnership opportunities.

How will the recently secured US$24 million in Series B funding fuel VerAI’s growth?

Our successful fundraising rounds have enabled us to prioritize drilling our own 100% owned projects in Chile and Ontario, and allowed us to expand the team, scale the business, and look at opportunities to expand further in the US, Canada and South America. 

What kind of partners is VerAI looking for?

In respect of our wholly owned projects, and given our strong capital backing, we will continue to advance these projects through our own funding including the current drilling in both Chile and Ontario. We are open to having conversations with potential earn-in partners on these projects following a typical joint venture (JV) model. The sweet spot for our technology is to have partnerships with groups that have an existing mine or an advanced stage asset, to see if we can generate high probability targets close to their operation. This creates the potential for transformational value creation for both sides, particularly if an existing mine is under pressure to replenish reserves or an advanced stage asset requires additional resources or higher-grade mineralization to take it through to development. 

What are the key gaps in the US exploration sector that VerAI can help solve?

There are no more easy discoveries as remaining ore deposits are concealed under covered terrain, making them challenging to discover with traditional exploration methods. VerAI is unlocking opportunities by changing the way the world discovers concealed mineral deposits. Our proprietary AI/ML Discovery Platform identifies mineral deposits in underexplored, covered terrains, essentially making the invisible visible. Our technology increases the probability of success in discovering economic deposits by two orders of magnitude, shortening the targeting time from years to months, and reducing the targeting costs by over 90%.

How willing is the mining industry to adopt AI technologies?

There has been momentous activity in the AI space over the past years, but there is still significant skepticism as well. However, it is well understood that exiting methods of making new discoveries have not been working for some time and we need to look at new approaches. What sets VerAI apart is that we are not a service provider, and our whole model is based on partnership and sharing the risk/reward with the groups that we work with. We believe our business model is truly unique, combining the advantages of a royalty generation-type model with our proprietary technology to generate significant value.  Our technology allows us to generate targets quickly, and there are no fees or costs to our partner company unless the targets are successful. Essentially, we are generating truly drill-ready targets, bypassing a lot of the costs, risk and time taken using existing early-stage exploration.

Why have juniors struggled to raise capital in recent years?

The exploration sector has been neglected for a long time, as it was considered to have poor performance by investors.  However, we may see this changing with increased commodity prices and the development of new exploration technologies.