For years, Vancouver’s Ideon Technologies has been asking the mining world to look deeper—literally. Now, the global industry is finally paying attention.

This month, the Richmond-based deep-tech company announced a global partnership with Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest and most influential mining companies. The deal marks the first worldwide adoption of Ideon’s REVEAL™ platform, a system that uses cosmic-ray muons—subatomic particles born from supernova explosions—to generate high-resolution, 3D maps of the Earth’s subsurface.

It sounds like science fiction. But for mining, it could mean a total rewrite of how we find and extract the minerals that power everything from electric vehicles to data centres.

“The last five years have been what I call trial purgatory—you’ve got to prove it, prove it, and prove it again,” says Ideon CEO Gary Agnew. “This partnership brings us out of that phase.”

For Ideon, the agreement represents validation at the highest level: a Tier 1 mining company adopting its platform not at one test site, but at six operations across multiple continents. It’s a signal that the era of pilots is over, and the era of enterprise-scale integration has begun.

While most people think of Ideon as an exploration company—a firm that helps miners locate ore bodies—Agnew says that only scratches the surface.

“People peg us as exploration,” he explains. “Yes, we help find new ore bodies. But we also map geotechnical faults and tunnels, improve extraction efficiency, and even support site restoration. We’re solving problems all along the value chain.”

That full-spectrum approach is what drew Rio Tinto in. Using a combination of muon imaging, advanced geophysical sensing, and AI-powered analytics, Ideon’s platform produces detailed subsurface models that theoretically reduce uncertainty and accelerate decision-making.

The result is precision mining: extracting more resources at lower cost and with less environmental impact, according to Agnew. It’s a vision that aligns neatly with Rio Tinto’s recent drive to modernize operations, improve safety, and reduce waste.

“Even amid Rio’s internal cost-reduction drive, they still chose to move forward with Ideon,” Agnew notes. “That tells you something about the value they see.”

Behind all of this lies a bigger story: global demand for critical minerals. Copper, nickel, and lithium are the new oil—indispensable to clean energy, AI infrastructure, and national security.

“The $12 trillion supply gap between now and 2050 is forcing everyone to rethink how to get more out of the ground—at lower cost and lower impact,” Agnew says. “Demand is a hell of a better partner for change.”

That shift has created what he calls a “decades-long runway” for innovation. Every national government, he points out, is now trying to secure domestic access to these materials. They’re funding new processing facilities, reshoring supply chains, and betting big on technologies that can make mining more efficient and sustainable.

Ideon’s story is also a story about Vancouver. The company has quietly grown from a five-person startup into a 70-person global team, with expansion underway in the U.S., Australia, Latin America, and Indonesia. By next year, headcount will likely surpass 100.

Richmond remains its operational headquarters—and, Agnew insists, the company’s beating heart.

“We’re building this business right here in Vancouver,” he says. “It’s been a mining capital for decades. We think it can be a mining-tech capital.”

There’s some irony in that, though. For all Ideon’s global activity, it doesn’t yet have an active deployment in British Columbia. “That really saddens me,” Agnew admits. “We’re working all over the world, and we want to see more collaboration here at home—between industry, government, and technology. The opportunity is enormous.”

He points to the province’s legacy of mining expertise and its growing deep-tech ecosystem—two strengths that could combine to position B.C. as a global hub for responsible resource technology.

Agnew is also frank about what still holds the industry back. “Mining is conservative. Progress happens at the speed of trust,” he says. “You have to prove it, prove it again, and then prove it one more time.”

That culture of caution is partly why Ideon’s recent momentum feels so pivotal. The company’s long slog through pilot projects and case studies has built credibility. With Rio Tinto now publicly validating the platform, Agnew expects what he calls “FOMO” to kick in.

“Believe it or not, those big, hardy miners—they get jealous when they see others moving forward,” he laughs. “They wonder why they’re not doing it, too.”

If all goes as planned, the Rio Tinto partnership will serve as Ideon’s launchpad for global expansion—and a proof point that precision mining is more than a buzzword. The company’s roadmap includes scaling its AI-driven data fusion capabilities, hiring across engineering and physics disciplines, and building out new regional teams.

But Agnew keeps one caution in mind: “It takes a long time to build trust, and it can evaporate quickly,” he says. “We have to continue being a great partner and delivering real value.”

He’s bullish nonetheless. Between the energy transition, defence spending, and AI’s insatiable appetite for minerals, the macro tailwinds are undeniable.

“Everything is going to demand more metal,” he says. “We’re in the right place, at the right time.”