VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 6, 2025--
Ideon Technologies, the global leader in subsurface intelligence, announced a landmark enterprise partnership with Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest and most progressive mining companies. The five-year enterprise agreement is a major commitment by Rio Tinto and Ideon to solving mining’s hardest problem – geological uncertainty (not knowing fully what lies in the Earth beneath our feet) – which makes it difficult to identify, develop, and recover critical minerals as quickly and efficiently as the world needs them.
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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.
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), while advancing its vision for the mine of the future. These efforts will build on current investments in Remote Operations Centres (ROCs) and automation to drive operational performance, reduce costs, and uphold the highest safety standards.
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 initial phase of the global rollout spans six of Rio Tinto’s largest operations across multiple continents, addressing a range of high-value operational challenges across the entire exploration and mining value chain.
Today’s announcement builds on several years of collaboration between the two companies, including a successful deployment at Bingham Canyon — one of the world’s largest copper mines. There, Ideon muon-based imaging technology enhanced geological models, reconciled production tonnage, and provided a robust decision-making tool for operational planning. The partnership underscores the growing appetite for deep-tech solutions that unlock value across traditional industries like mining, energy, and infrastructure.
“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,” said Gary Agnew, Co-Founder & CEO of Ideon Technologies. “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,” added 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.”
About Rio Tinto ( www.riotinto.com )
Rio Tinto is a global mining and materials company with 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. Rio Tinto has a dual-listed structure, with the businesses of Rio Tinto plc, quoted on the London Stock Exchange and Rio Tinto Limited, quoted on the Australian Stock Exchange, managed as one company with a single board of directors.
About Ideon Technologies ( www.ideon.ai )
Ideon Technologies uses the energy from supernova explosions to image deep beneath the Earth's surface. Ideon is the global 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 with confidence. This reduces risk and cost of traditional methods, while saving time, optimizing return, and minimizing environmental impact across the mining value chain. In turn, this is helping accelerate the world's transition to low-impact mining and transform how companies find the critical minerals required to power the global shift to clean energy – improving peoples’ lives and enhancing economic prosperity.
Ideon Technologies team activating the REVEAL(tm) subsurface intelligence platform at Rio Tinto Kennecott Utah Copper (Bingham Canyon).
