Mariana Minerals is a vertically integrated critical minerals company operating across the United States. It combines mining expertise with software, machine learning, and automation to develop and operate mineral projects faster than traditional methods allow. The company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz and led by a team with backgrounds at Tesla, Palantir, and within the mining industry.
The company has two active projects. Lithium One is a GWh-scale commercial lithium extraction facility that draws on oil and gas produced water - claimed to be the first of its kind at that scale. Copper One is described as the first autonomy-first copper mine and refinery, designed from the ground up around autonomous operations. Underpinning both is PlantOS, a proprietary platform that uses reinforcement learning to control mineral processing operations autonomously in real time.
Mariana Minerals states that conventional mining projects typically take twelve years from discovery to production. The company's stated goal is to deliver ten critical mineral projects in ten years, with the software-driven approach intended to compress timelines, reduce costs, and improve environmental performance. Its minerals are positioned to supply clean energy, AI infrastructure, and defense technology supply chains.
