Terra AI raises $20M to Accelerate Mineral and Reservoir Exploration to Meet Global Critical Mineral and Energy Demands
The fundraiser included a Series A investment led by Khosla Ventures and strategic investment from BHP Ventures
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Terra AI, the artificial intelligence platform helping solve subsurface uncertainty for mineral and energy development, today announced it raised $20 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures and strategic investment from BHP Ventures.
Terra AI's patented technology integrates nearly every type of exploration data to generate millions of geological models, enabling teams to evaluate a comprehensive range of potential subsurface scenarios. This allows project teams to identify the best drilling and geophysical approaches to reduce key uncertainty and rigorously assess project economics earlier than ever before. By going beyond geological visualization and delivering risk-quantified decision insights, Terra AI helps explorers on virtually every important decision across their portfolio from determining which assets to acquire in a portfolio to accelerating and de-risking resource development efforts. The outcome: resource pipelines are developed faster and more efficiently to help the world meet its resource needs.
"Explorers today face increasing complexities like rising project uncertainty and immense pressure to bring new resources online faster," said John Mern, CEO Terra AI. "This investment enables us to move to the next phase of Terra AI's growth by scaling our generative modeling engine, accelerating enterprise-grade deployments, and advancing the subsurface inference technology the industry needs to meet critical mineral demand."
Typically, new discoveries require an average of 17 years to advance to production. Terra AI's platform integrates explorers' full dataset to produce geologically realistic 3D models that map assets and uncertainty in minutes, allowing developers to make more informed decisions faster. Its geology reasoning agent works with operators to create precise and optimized exploration plans, enabling teams to develop critical assets with minimal time, cost, and environmental disruption. The same platform is now being applied to carbon storage sites where understanding subsurface uncertainty is equally critical to selecting safe, permanent storage locations.
"The world's ability to discover and develop critical resources is fundamentally constrained by outdated, fragmented exploration," said Rajesh Swaminathan, Partner at Khosla Ventures. "Terra AI is defining a new, AI-native exploration approach with their continuously improving 3D Earth model. We believe their technology will dramatically accelerate the development of the critical minerals the world needs, and we're excited to help them scale this vision globally."
Over the past year, Terra AI has demonstrated modeling capabilities on mining and reservoir projects from early exploration through production and has built strong early momentum with a growing roster of commercial customers across copper, gold, REE, and reservoir projects.
Its technology addresses the longest, most capital-intensive, and uncertain phase of subsurface resource development. Terra AI's modeling will dramatically compress the time and capital required to define deposits and reservoirs, opening ways to assess and develop resources at higher fidelity.
"Successful exploration depends on reducing geological uncertainty and progressing opportunities efficiently," said Laurel Buckner, VP of Ventures at BHP. "Terra AI's technology has the potential to improve drill targeting, support faster prospect evaluation, and help explorers focus capital on the highest-value opportunities."
The capital will accelerate deployment of Terra AI's generative geological modeling platform across mining, enhanced geothermal, and carbon storage.
To learn more, read Terra AI's Series A Announcement.
About Terra AI:
Terra AI solves the world's most critical subsurface problems with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. The company's patented platform fuses geophysics, geochemistry, and drilling data to generate probabilistic models of the underground—driving faster, more accurate, and lower-cost resource exploration. Backed by Khosla Ventures, BHP Ventures, Rio Tinto, and others, Terra AI is already being adopted in the field and creating value for priority projects with the world's leading resource companies. Learn more at www.terraai.com.
About Khosla Ventures:
Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investments in artificial intelligence, financial services, healthcare, consumer, enterprise, and sustainability sectors. It is known for making early capital investments in startups such as OpenAI, Instacart, Affirm, DoorDash, and Block. https://www.khoslaventures.com/
About BHP Ventures:
BHP Ventures is the in-house venture capital arm of BHP Group Limited. The fund invests in breakthrough technologies, shaping the future of BHP and the global resources industry. BHP Ventures complements the innovation already underway within BHP by enabling new partnerships and creating opportunities to strengthen the company's portfolio and lower emissions. BHP is a global resources company that produces essential commodities the world needs, including iron ore, copper, steelmaking coal – and soon potash. With operations and projects in over 90 countries around the world, BHP is the world's largest copper producer.
SOURCE Terra AI, Inc
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