“ChatGPT for geology” set to debut at conference on Monday

Vancouver-based VRIFY, a mining tech company, announced the close of its $12.5 million Series B funding round. Led by New York–based venture capital firm LGVP, and with continued support from Series A funders RCF Innovation and Beedie Capital, the round brings VRIFY’s total funding to over $30 million.

In a press release, VRIFY said it would use the money to accelerate the adoption of Dora, its AI-assisted mineral discovery platform. Dora is a research and development tool for geologists and geoscientists responsible for mineral exploration.

"The urgency to discover new precious metal and critical mineral deposits has never been greater,“ said Steve de Jong, founder and CEO of VRIFY. “Governments across Canada, the United States, Australia, and the world are finally recognizing the strategic importance of natural resources and the value of advancing them efficiently and with precision. As capital begins flowing back into the sector, 2025 is set to be the year of AI-assisted mineral discoveries and we're playing a pivotal role in making this happen.”

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VRIFY first announced its intention to enter the AI space at the 2024 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention (PDAC), when it was working with just a small group of beta clients. Since then, the company has added 26 early adopters to its roster, including Canterra Resources, RUA Gold, and Southern Cross Gold. VRIFY shared that last fall, Southern Cross’ exploration team used Dora to identify a high-grade gold discovery at its Sunday Creek project near Melbourne, Australia. 

Dora uses proprietary AI, data visualization, and deep-learning models to transform datasets into insights that companies can use to determine whether they’ve found a location for the material they’re searching for. The platform combines VRIFY’s own geological dataset — which it claims is one of the industry’s largest — and information from clients’ projects to help geologists uncover patterns. VRIFY says that with its purpose-built AI models, exploration teams can “accelerate discovery from months to minutes.”

“With Dora, we are putting the power of AI and tens of millions of dollars of R&D directly into the hands of geologists through our user-facing platform. It's like ChatGPT for geology,” said Jean-Philippe Paiement, chief technology officer of VRIFY. “We are not here to replace geologists and their vast knowledge of a project. We are here to supercharge that knowledge through a tool that enhances exploration accuracy, improves discovery rates, builds investor confidence, and makes the sector more attractive to investment.”

Speaking to VRIFY’s plans for the future, Paiement said, “True to our culture of rapid innovation, we are aggressively expanding our team and recruiting top geologists, geophysicists, and data scientists. We aim to scale our technical and business development teams rapidly within the next 12 months as we onboard forward-thinking companies eager to approach mineral exploration through a modern, geoscience-driven lens.”

In addition to Dora’s debut at PDAC on Monday, attendees can also join a conversation with VRIFY’s early-adopter clients on Tuesday. 

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