Rewiring Innovation Investment for the Mining Industry

The global race for critical minerals is transforming how the mining industry thinks about growth, capability, and competitiveness. Geopolitical realignments, decarbonisation targets, and rapid technological change are reshaping the sector faster than internal R&D budgets or capital projects can adapt. For mining companies, governments, and investors, the challenge is no longer whether to support innovation - it’s how to invest in startups that can deliver both financial returns and strategic advantage.

This requires a different approach to venture investment: one designed for the timelines, risks, and opportunities of mining, not borrowed from Silicon Valley’s playbook.

Traditional venture capital was built for asset-light software, fast adoption cycles, and short exit horizons. Mining operates in the opposite conditions: high capital intensity, multi-year development paths, and risk environments that demand domain expertise and regulatory engagement.

As a result, the world’s most strategically important industry - responsible for the materials underpinning clean energy, AI infrastructure, and defence capability - remains systematically underfunded at the early stage.

Yet the opportunity is enormous. The International Energy Agency estimates that global demand for critical minerals will more than double by 2030, while the World Bank forecasts a sixfold increase in the production of metals such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt by 2050. Meeting that demand with sustainable, efficient, and low-emission processes will require a surge of new technology ventures - from AI-driven exploration and advanced sensors to novel refining methods and circular economy startups.

The question isn’t whether mining companies and their partners should invest - it’s how to do so in a way that endures beyond commodity cycles. A sustainable model must link corporate strategy with venture investment, giving mining companies, governments, and institutional investors exposure to the most promising startups while keeping the innovation value chain anchored in Australia.

This is precisely what Venture Capital as a Service (VCaaS) enables: a collaborative, cycle-resilient approach to investing in startups that complement internal R&D, strengthen national capability, and generate attractive, risk-adjusted financial returns.

Startups as the New Frontier of Mining Capability

The most transformative technologies shaping the future of mining - from AI-enabled exploration to electrified haulage, modular refining, and tailings reprocessing - are not emerging from within major producers. They’re being driven by startups: small, agile ventures willing to take technical risks and move faster than large organisations can.

Across the industry, breakthrough innovation is clustering around a few defining thematics. AI and data science are revolutionising exploration, with startups using machine learning and satellite-enabled sensing to locate ore bodies faster, cheaper, and with far less environmental disruption. Autonomy and robotics are transforming operations, from autonomous inspection drones to precision drilling and digital twin platforms that deliver real-time insight into asset health and ore body variability.

Meanwhile, electrification and decarbonisation technologies - including battery-electric fleets, renewable microgrids, and intelligent load management - are helping miners reduce costs and emissions in tandem. On the processing side, materials and chemistry startups  are pioneering low-carbon extraction methods, while others are developing modular refining and biomining processes that make previously uneconomic resources viable.

Finally, circular economy ventures are unlocking new revenue from tailings, e-waste, and mine by-products - turning liabilities into assets. Collectively, these startups represent a distributed R&D engine for the sector: one that advances faster, learns quicker, and compounds capability over time.

VCaaS: Investing in Startups for Financial and Strategic Return

Artesian’s Venture Capital as a Service (VCaaS) model offers a new way for mining companies, governments, and research partners to invest in startups strategically - combining the financial discipline of venture capital with the operational relevance of corporate R&D.

VCaaS funds are co-designed with partners around a shared mission - for example, critical minerals processing, mine automation, or sustainable supply chains. Instead of chasing speculative multiples, they target two outcomes in parallel: strong financial returns and direct strategic benefits, such as technology access, supply chain security, decarbonisation capability, and IP creation.

Where traditional VC relies on blended pools of investors and shorter time-frames, VCaaS creates sole-LP funds to optimise flexibility, alignment, transparency, and endurance. Partners maintain investment decision control, have flexibility in mandate focus, and retain full visibility across portfolio companies. They can activate financial and strategic co-investors, gain early access to proven technologies for pilot testing or acquisition, and build later-stage, de-risked pipelines for conviction investments and M&A opportunities. The result is a distributed, portfolio-based approach to R&D that strengthens internal innovation pipelines while capturing venture-scale upside.

VCaaS suits organisations taking their first exposure to startup investment and complements established corporate venture units seeking scalable early-stage capability, greater diversification, or expanded geographical reach.

Fit for Purpose: A Venture Model Designed for Mining

Mining innovation doesn’t move on shorter-term venture horizons. Exploration, permitting, and processing breakthroughs often take a decade or more to mature. The challenge is ensuring that investment continues across those long timelines - through both upturns and downturns - so that progress compounds rather than resets with each cycle.

Three structural dynamics make this shift essential:

1. Decarbonisation and electrification: Meeting global emissions targets requires deep shifts in energy use, materials processing, and waste management - areas where startups are leading with scalable, low-carbon solutions that traditional R&D and procurement models can’t deliver fast enough.

2. Technology intensity: Mining is becoming a data, automation, and sensing industry. The value is shifting from hardware to software-enabled intelligence - AI-driven exploration, autonomous systems, digital twins, and real-time optimisation. These technologies demand early-stage experimentation, integration partnerships, and continuous iteration - not the binary success/failure metrics that dominate conventional VC.

3. Strategic capital trends: Investors increasingly seek exposure to “real-economy innovation” - tangible technologies with measurable impact, asset linkage, and resilience. Mining startups sit squarely in this category, but their scale-up needs look different: capital for pilot infrastructure, regulatory engagement, certification, and market validation.

Unlike typical tech ventures, mining startups often face long validation cycles, hardware intensity, and dependency on industry pilots before reaching commercial inflection. They can’t always follow the growth patterns - or valuation curves - that software investors expect. What they need isn’t just capital, but patient partnership: access to sites, data, engineering collaboration, and co-design with operators.

That’s why VCaaS departs from the standard VC model. It blends strategic alignment, flexible mandates, and co-investment structures that allow mining companies, governments, and institutions to participate meaningfully from the earliest stages.

Returns are measured not only by financial multiples but by strategic integration - reduced costs, new IP creation, carbon reduction, and supply chain resilience.

In short, mining’s innovation opportunity won’t be unlocked by capital chasing exponential software returns. It will be driven by fit-for-purpose investment: patient, collaborative, and strategically aligned - exactly what VCaaS is built to deliver.

Lessons from Agriculture: How VCaaS Scaled Startup Investment Where Traditional VC Couldn’t

Mining isn’t the first sector to face the challenge of funding innovation that doesn’t fit the Silicon Valley mould. Agriculture has been going through a similar evolution over the last 5 years - and the lessons are strikingly relevant.

Both industries depend on long development timelines, real-world validation, and capital-intensive deployment. Both sit at the foundation of national productivity yet have historically struggled to attract venture capital because their startups don’t behave like software companies.

Agtech and mining tech ventures share similar profiles: they often require pilots rather than prototypes, engineering over coding, and years of refinement before commercial scale. Traditional VC models, built around short fund cycles and rapid exits, were never designed for that.

When global venture investors began to withdraw from early-stage agtech because it didn’t match SaaS-style return curves, Artesian stepped in with a new approach.

Through partnerships with Australia’s Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) - including Grains and Horticulture - and corporate partners such as GrainCorp, Artesian deployed Venture Capital as a Service (VCaaS) to crowd in public and private capital, complement existing R&D programs, and sustain investment through commodity cycles.

The results speak for themselves. Over the past 5 years, more than 60 agtech startups have been backed across automation, genetics, analytics, and sustainability. Many are homegrown ventures, others spun out of Australian research institutions or founded by global entrepreneurs who targeted Australia to leverage its deep domain expertise.

These startups have delivered not just financial returns but measurable productivity gains, cost reductions, and improved sustainability outcomes for the industry.

The success of VCaaS in agriculture showed that when venture capital aligns with industry timelines and strategic goals, early-stage ecosystems flourish. It proved that a well-structured, mission-driven capital model can:

• Crowd in institutional and private investors who would otherwise avoid long-cycle sectors.

• Complement traditional RD&E, converting research outcomes into investible ventures.

• Replace missing traditional VC capital, providing consistent early-stage funding and governance.

• Attract global founders and technologies seeking validation and partnerships within a sector-focused ecosystem.

• Deliver both strategic and financial outcomes.

Mining mirrors  agricultures challenges - a sector rich in potential but underserved by traditional venture finance. The opportunity is to replicate that proven playbook: to use VCaaS to link mining companies, governments, and research centres into a coordinated innovation platform that sustains startup creation, de-risks early technology development, and builds national capability.

Just as agtech investment helped Australian producers adopt new tools for automation, analytics, and sustainability, investment in mining technology can play a similar role in advancing the mining industry. By supporting startups that enable cleaner processing, resource efficiency, and traceable supply chains, mining tech investment can help build sovereign capability, diversify export value, and accelerate the shift toward low-emission, value-added manufacturing.

This approach not only improves operational efficiency, safety, and environmental performance but also strengthens Australia’s position as a trusted hub for critical-minerals innovation and applied mining technology.

Who Can Benefit

• Mining companies and service providers can gain early visibility into breakthrough startups, share pilot access, and co-develop technologies without carrying full balance-sheet risk.

• ·Governments and industry groups can use VCaaS vehicles to crowd in private capital, reduce reliance on grants, and align public funding with measurable capability-building outcomes.

• Universities and research institutes can connect science to market through structured commercialisation pathways, with professional capital management and access to industry partners.

• ·Family offices and institutional investors can access diversified portfolios of deep-tech mining startups with both strong return potential and long-term strategic relevance.

Together, these participants can turn fragmented pilot projects into a continuous, collaborative investment ecosystem - one that sustains capability and compounds knowledge over time.

Building a Sustainable Future for Mining Investment

Investing in startups is not an alternative to in-house R&D - it is the mechanism that makes innovation continuous, resilient, and scalable. Startups bring agility, experimentation, and external perspective; corporates bring scale, data, and validation. When those forces are linked through a structured model like Venture Capital as a Service (VCaaS), innovation stops being episodic and becomes systemic.

VCaaS provides the architecture to keep innovation investment steady through market cycles - enabling mining companies, governments, and investors to back early-stage ventures with confidence that their efforts will compound over time. It transforms fragmented pilot projects into a coordinated investment pipeline, connecting startups with the capital, data, and operational environments they need to commercialise breakthrough technologies.

• For mining companies, VCaaS builds resilience by integrating external innovation into long-term strategy and giving early access to frontier technologies without material balance-sheet exposure.

• For governments and industry groups, it offers a proven tool to crowd in private investment, scale sovereign capability, and ensure policy objectives - like those in the Critical Minerals Strategy 2030 - translate into measurable industrial outcomes.

• For universities and research institutes, it turns IP into investible ventures and links Australian science with global markets.

• For family offices and institutional investors, it creates diversified exposure to deep-tech innovation in one of the world’s most essential - and least digitised - sectors.

The mining sector has always invested in assets designed to endure. Its innovation strategy should be no different.

VCaaS offers a sustainable, collaborative model for startup investment - one that delivers both financial and strategic returns, strengthens national capability, and ensures that Australia not only extracts critical minerals but captures the full value chain of innovation built around them.