Ten major mining tech trends in 2026: Part 2

Metal markets may be fragmenting but for the emergent global mining technology sector the dominant trend is convergence. Experienced mining leader Laura Tyler said at a big 2025 mining event in Australia computational power, AI and robotics had moved society and industry to the “next portal of development and discovery”.

Automation and robotics were set to change today’s work and workplaces. New scientific revolutions could potentially change “how we extract resources tomorrow”, she said.

But it is not just technological confluence creating a foundation for mining and metals technology firms to become more influential and more investible.

The industry is seeing, finally, a coming together of capital markets and mining and metals tech. Traditional equipment manufacturers are bolting on tech and tech companies. And mining’s widening public aperture is increasing scrutiny of its operational deficiencies and vulnerabilities – energy, water, sub-surface insight, health and safety are just a few of the areas – and the technology available to address them.

Add geopolitics and the race to build, or rebuild, sovereign industrial capability to this mix and the momentum behind a nascent mining and metals tech sector is unmistakable. “We’re just beginning the broader critical minerals super cycle,” Orion Industrial Ventures managing partner Mark Frayman said at Australia’s IMARC conference in October. OIV has just closed its first minerals, materials and energy tech fund. “It’s [minerals] at the forefront of all geopolitical discussions globally. We'll see technology and technology access, much like it is in semiconductors, become really strategic and the leading start-ups will get government funding. We’ll start to see really large influxes of capital come into the sector.”

Frayman said this month innovation was a key to “identifying, developing and operating natural resource assets at viable economics and in a sustainable way”.

“We believe the emerging companies developing these technologies today will scale into the leading mining and mining service companies of tomorrow,” he said.

Mining and metals technology is not yet recognised – by investors, government or even the mining industry itself – as a separate stratum of the circa-US$200 billion-a-year mining equipment, technology and services (METS) vertical.

However, there are clear trends moving the sector to a new level of prominence, among them the repositioning of METS majors as tech companies rather than equipment or service entities.

Major themes elevating the profile of mining and metals tech in 2026 are:

• Surging tech financing and M&A
• Growth in demand for automation, operational edge control and AI in mining
• Increased material recycling and mine tailings reprocessing
• Geopolitics and sovereign supply chains
• Water pressures and scarcity
• Biotech and AI convergence
• New public mining and metals tech champions
• A critical need for greater sub-surface visibility and insight
• Coarse ore grinding and flotation breakthroughs
• OEMs using tech to grow the aftermarket pie

AI shifting mining’s biotech horizons

The Untapped report highlighted the increasing potential of biotechnology advances to help shape mine water quality outcomes and hence energy and chemical footprints associated with water treatment. A broader 2025 examination of biotech recovery of minerals by US biochemists points to prospects for leveraging nature's ability to “extract and differentiate metal ions in biotechnologies that could become the next generation of mining and refining”. Their paper, sponsored by the US Department of Energy and released in September, suggested while research indicated bio-hydrometallurgical metal extraction and separation had “inherent advantages compared to pyro- and hydro-technological incumbents” these were generally a long way from being commercially realised.

“Many fundamental questions related to microbe-metal interactions remain unexplored,” the Columbia University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory biochemists said.

Again, capital markets are evidently looking for the right connections between accelerated biomining, processing and recycling advances, generally leveraging AI and machine learning-based design tools, and the mining and metals sector’s need to quickly grow production of certain materials.

France’s Genomines ($45 million) and US-based Endolith ($16.5 million) and Alta Resource Technologies ($10 million) were among the companies to add heavyweight investor names to their registers in 2025.

Genomines, which has raised more than $60 million so far, is out on the edge of the biomining frontier with its plans to start actual plant-based metal farming in South Africa. Genomines CEO and cofounder Fabien Koutchekian, a former mining engineer, said the company aimed to demonstrate a scalable new resource base of super hyperaccumulator plants. “When you’re a mining company you have to deploy enormous amounts of capital to get a mine up and running – easily one-to-five billion euros. Our idea is to transition this industry towards smaller mining companies.”

Endolith is working with the likes of Rio Tinto, BHP and South32 to deploy engineered super bugs to recover copper and other minerals. Founder and CEO, American astrobiologist Liz Dennett, said: “We grow our microbes on site. We use continuous low-dose inoculation. And then we use real-time genomic monitoring. I lead with the fact we’re using microbes but really it’s biological intelligence. At our core, we’re a platform play. Every data point we touch, every time we run microbes within the ore and bring the data together, our algorithms get smarter. We’re able to use technologies like AI, like data science, like machine learning, so that these microbes are able to drive the changes. And you’re able to turn these heap leaches from a black box into something that you can really instrument.

“What that means is we’re using microbial communities that we’ve adapted through some really unique techniques and we’re combining that with a cloud-native platform and intelligence.

“These are three technologies that make a Venn diagram that could really only exist in 2025.

“Mining is the last industry to get this biological intelligence layer.”

Public sector champions emerge

Mining industry leaders complain the entire sector is worth less than Nvidia. Spare a thought then for mining and metals technology firms historically buried under major miners’ interminable procurement arms and investor indifference.

Now, though, mining and metals tech is surfacing on public equity markets and the entities leading the charge might just create the beachhead that inspires others to follow.

Australian Securities Exchange-listed IMDEX, which started life 45 years ago as a gold explorer, is closing on a A$2 billion market valuation as acquisitions and growing market uptake of its sensors and software continue its metamorphosis into global mining tech player. Sensors and software-as-a-service (SaaS) contributed two-thirds of its A$431 million FY2025 revenues.

IMDEX has bucked a long-term trend of Australian mining tech firms being picked off by international groups. It has been doing significant deals offshore, adding technology and market presence.

The company’s share price has climbed by more than 40% in the past 12 months as it has demonstrated sound integration of acquired businesses while investors continue to wake up to the potential of its sub-surface intelligence tools and vision.

ASX-listed Chrysos Corporation is another climber, rising more than 50% in the past year and passing $1 billion market-cap in the second half of 2025. The company is getting international traction for its non-destructive, clean mineral testing technology, with which it is seeking to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar traditional assay business.

Australian mining software company RPMGlobal went from $3.07 to $4.95 and a market cap of circa-$1.1 billion on the back of buyout speculation that proved on the money with Caterpillar’s bid.

And ASX-listed mineral processing and metal recycling tech firm Metallium’s shares surged 550% during 2025 before dipping over the past three months. The company was still worth about $540 million this week as it moves into a year of critical scaling and commercialisation activity in the US.

Other impressive public movers over the past year, albeit at the microcap end of the market, have been Canada’s CoTec Holdings, which has fingers in a few mining cleantech pies, and MineHub Technologies, up more than 190% and 44%, respectively, again on the back of a combination of market development milestones and the more favourable macro tailwinds behind the sector.

On the flipside Australian asset management software vendor COSOL had a rough 2025 and Tribe Technology’s London listing was a short-lived affair.

But public mining and metals tech companies of scale are on investor radars.

Large mining tech acquirers such as Bentley Systems, Constellation Software, Hexagon, Schneider Electric, Orica, Sandvik, Komatsu and Hitachi Construction Machinery aren’t doing a lot to promote the sector. Epiroc and Weir are upping the ante.

All say digital and automation revenues are an increasingly important part of their future.

Underground intelligence

Tony Diering has been working at the intersection of modelling software and design of the world’s biggest underground mines for more than three decades and has seen the evolution of block caving from production rates in the millions of tonnes per annum to today’s 30Mtpa-plus monsters, with costs going from hundreds of millions of dollars to $10 billion or more.

Diering, who developed specialised software at SRK Consulting, Gemcom and Dassault Systemes and now runs his own advisory firm, has become an advocate for muon tomography and the sub-surface “x-rays” it has been delivering to BHP and a host of other companies. He sits on an advisory council with Canadian muon survey leader Ideon, which has raised $17 million of private funding since 2020.

Diering said last year on a webinar involving managers from Australia’s first block cave mine, Northparkes in New South Wales, the industry was for the first time able to survey an underground block cave in a similar way to an openpit survey.

“Modelling in cave mining has always been challenging because of the lack of visibility inside of the cave,” Diering said.

“If you compare it to an openpit mine, where there is a direct line of sight of the orebody, caving without this visibility is like mining while blindfolded. Even with advances in modelling techniques, there is still a fundamental gap between what we think is happening and what is unfolding underground.

“Ideon addresses this uncertainty by providing a 3D view of the subsurface across time periods, fundamentally reshaping how we understand and manage cave behaviour.”

With the escalating costs, scale and risks involved in large-scale underground mining, it is a critical breakthrough and Ideon’s recent maiden “global partnership” with Rio Tinto and wider deal pipeline reflect industry awareness of this.

Deswik chief operating officer Calliope Lalousis says surface mineral deposits are declining and ore grades are falling. “Underground innovation is transforming how we access deep reserves. From block caving projects to advanced simulation optimising sequencing and ventilation, digital mine planning is no longer optional, it’s the key to making complex underground operations safer, more efficient and more sustainable,” he says.

Deswik chief technology officer Glenn Wylde, another experienced leader who has been around the mining industry for a long time, says technology integration can be a game-changer in a new era of increasingly complex and high stakes underground mining.

“Simulation has a huge place to play in the future, specifically reducing options and providing decision support in real time,” he says. “There’s so much data available, but very little of it is used by the person making the decision. Emulating an environment and giving actionable options will be tremendously valuable.”

Grinding and flotation have new coarse

BHP’s chief development officer Catherine Raw is optimistic that coarse particle flotation and new ways of leaching low-grade primary sulphide ores can make a material difference to the world’s copper output in the near term. “Being able to process marginal ores and bring them into production in the next five years could actually bring a huge incremental uplift to the world supply,” she said at the recent Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh.

A race to dominate these large new mining equipment and technology market segments has started.

Denmark’s FLS says opportunities offered by coarse particle flotation to improve resource recovery and cut energy and water use have long been recognised. “However, until recently, coarse particle flotation remained a technical challenge. Current innovations ... are changing that,” the company says.

Metso minerals president Piia Karhu said the company’s major focus on coarse ore grinding and beneficiation would include course flotation technology in 2026.

“Coarse flotation is something that has been long looked at in the industry because targeting coarser materials means that there is less grinding required,” she said.

“We’ve been working on this for years already. We’ve been doing intensive testing during the recent year and the results are very good. So we are looking forward to launching this product.”

Glencore Technology, these days an almost invisible part of mining and metals trading giant Glencore, has also been doing an enormous amount of work behind the scenes on coarser grinding and flotation options. Director of strategy and innovation Mike Hourn said the industry-wide trend towards lower copper content ores was “a challenge that we face every day as a mining company”.

“We see very gradual decline in copper grade in ores, particularly as we move into the large porphyry systems in Chile and Peru,” Hourn said.

“I think the average grade these days for a copper deposit is around 0.4% copper, which is an enormous amount of earth that needs to be moved for a very small amount of copper.

“We’re looking at two key aspects of our technology portfolio to address that. One is water and making sure all of our technologies – Albion [leaching], the Jameson Cell, the IsaMill – can work in hypersaline water conditions.

“The other thing that we are actively developing, and this is a theme across the industry, is the ability to get [high] performance out of increasingly coarser particle sizes. We’re doing specific developments with the IsaMill to be able to handle and mill material up to one millimetre in feed size. And we're also working on a variant of the Jameson Cell, which is quite advanced, that can float particles of a size range of 500-to-600 microns.

“What that allows us to do is get similar recoveries as you would get out of a copper concentrator today, but to be able to do it with a tailing stream that has a particle size of 400-to-500 micron instead of the 70-odd micron that you would see today.

“That unlocks two key potential benefits for the future copper mine.

“One is that you can now stack tailings on the surface rather than a wet tailing stand, which means you maximise water recovery ... and then eliminate the need to have a wet tailing stand, which in and of itself is one of the major risks that any modern mine faces.

“The coarser that you break a mineral the less energy you will also use.

“If you can process minerals at 0.5mm, or 500 micron in size, you are only using about 25-30% of the energy you require for a 70-micron grind size.

“So in chasing a significant reduction in water use we’re also chasing a better than 50% reduction in energy use.

“So these are exciting new technologies. They are being developed at the moment and we would expect to be deploying these materially in projects around the world in about 3-4 years.”

OEMs using tech to go after more market share

Technology acquisitions and alliances are transforming the aftermarket businesses the world’s leading manufacturers of mining equipment have spent the past 25 years building.

These typically account for two-thirds or more of the annual revenues of mining OEMs.

London investment firm Panmure Liberum said Weir’s mining software and sensor acquisitions, including Micromine, were being combined with its internally built NEXT platform to expand the $11.5 billion company’s growth potential.

“Across more than 110 customer sites NEXT enables predictive maintenance, process optimisation and improved uptime, making digital capability an increasingly decisive factor in capturing OE and aftermarket opportunities,” Panmure Liberum said.

“These technology-led initiatives are reshaping [Weir] minerals into a solutions provider capable of delivering higher growth and deepening customer lock-in across the lifecycle of a mine.”

Weir CEO Jon Stanton said Micromine added “an established, high-quality business and proven performer that is complementary to Weir’s aftermarket-focused business model”.

Similarly, Caterpillar was pursuing digital opportunities beyond RPMGlobal to “connect the end-to-end value chain to help miners be more productive”, the company’s Resource Industries president Denise Johnson said. “Our vision is to build an ecosystem of products and services enabled by technology to help our customers become safer, more productive, efficient and lower their total cost per tonne,” she said.

“In mining, like in other industries, our customers’ ability to use data to drive insights and efficiencies in operations will be a key differentiator. We are uniquely positioned in our ability to integrate data from machines, from energy systems and infrastructure and especially as we move further into autonomy and precision mining, to help customers be successful.”

Caterpillar used its appearance at the major CES 2026 consumer electronics event in Las Vegas, USA, in January to announce an expanded alliance with tech giant Nvidia and the launch of a Cat AI assistant, which Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed said would enable customers to “more easily buy, maintain, manage and operate their equipment”.

Japan’s Hitachi Construction Machinery meanwhile invested $3 million in Canadian mining software firm Rithmik Solutions late in 2025, saying the tech minnow had valuable “expertise in AI-powered asset health management and operational data analysis for mining machinery”.

As well as asset management, HCM wants to “explore opportunities to apply Rithmik's AI analysis to a platform such as [HCM’s] LANDCROS Connect Insight with the goal of achieving more advanced operational data analysis”.

“Instead of conventional analysis based on design values, AI will learn from actual operating conditions and automatically set optimal reference values for each machine. This approach will enable asset health and operational management with unprecedented precision,” the manufacturer said.

Click and read the Ten major mining tech trends in 2026: Part 1 here.