Ideon deploys detectors down drill holes from surface (shown here) and in underground mine workings
KITIMAT – Rio Tinto Global Partnership has partnered with Ideon Technologies to eliminate the uncertainty of knowing what lies under the earth’s surface geologically speaking.
Ideon will apply its proprietary REVEAL™ subsurface intelligence platform to support Rio Tinto’s strategic efforts to unlock value across a range of different use cases and commodities, including copper and iron ore. This will build on current investments in Remote Operations Centres (ROCs) and automation to improve operational performance, reduce costs, and uphold the highest safety standards.
Geological uncertainty impedes growth, slows investment, drives costs, and delays time to market. The less uncertainty mining companies have in the subsurface (and ultimately in the outcome of their mine plans), the quicker they can move, the more value they can unlock with their capital, and the more they can compound value over time.
“Global demand for critical minerals is surging, driven by the need for energy resilience, rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, and geopolitical imperatives around security of supply,” says Ideon Co-founder and CEO Gary Agnew. “Yet the way we map and recover these resources hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades. The $12 trillion gap in critical mineral supply cannot be closed through incremental improvement. It requires the application of breakthrough technologies, bold leadership, and disciplined execution. Rio Tinto is demonstrating all three.
“Our partnership goes far beyond technology trials,” adds Agnew, “it’s about unlocking the future of mining through real enterprise integration that improves productivity, reduces cost, and increases confidence. By embedding our platform directly into Rio Tinto operations, we’re helping to re-engineer workflows, enabling faster, high confidence exploration and mining decisions. This is how long-term value will be generated in critical mineral exploration and development — scalable, intelligent, and highly integrated.”
The Ideon REVEAL™ Platform combines the power of cosmic-ray muons — subatomic particles created by supernova explosions in space — with advanced geophysical sensing technologies, multi-physics data integration, and AI-powered services. It generates high-resolution, high-velocity, 3D models of the Earth’s subsurface, enabling mining companies to identify, map, characterize, monitor, and extract ore bodies faster, more efficiently, with greater confidence. This results in faster targeting, shorter development timelines, reduced operational risk, and a smaller environmental footprint.
This partnership represents the first global-scale adoption of the Ideon REVEAL™ Platform by a Tier 1 mining company. The partnership spans six of Rio Tinto’s largest operations throughout the world, addressing a range of high-value operational challenges across the entire exploration and mining value chain.
This announcement builds on several years of collaboration between the two companies, including a successful deployment at one of the world’s largest copper mines Bingham Canyon in Utah.
There, Ideon muon-based imaging technology enhanced geological models, reconciled production tonnage, and became a decision-making tool for operational planning.
Rio Tinto has operations in 35 countries, producing iron ore, copper, aluminium, critical minerals and other materials needed for the global energy transition and for people, communities, and nations to thrive.
Ideon Technologies uses the energy from supernova explosions to image deep beneath the Earth’s surface, and is a leader in subsurface intelligence, pioneering the development and adoption of cosmic-ray muon tomography for industrial markets. By transforming geophysical data into reliable multi-dimensional models of the subsurface, Ideon helps geologists identify, map, characterize, and monitor geological features.
