The Boston company teaching machines to see mineral deposits that humans - and a century of exploration tools - have walked right over.
THE MARK. The VerAI wordmark - a name fusing the Spanish ver (to see) with the Latin veritas (truth). Boston, Massachusetts.
Most of the planet's land surface is what geologists call covered terrain - forests, ice sheets, gravel beds and young rock that hide whatever lies beneath. For more than a century, mineral exploration has largely avoided it, because the tools to look through cover simply were not good enough. VerAI Discoveries built its entire company on that blind spot.
Founded in Boston in 2020 by Yair Frastai and Amitai Axelrod, VerAI develops a proprietary AI Discovery Platform that reads the earth's geophysical signals - magnetic, gravimetric, electromagnetic and seismic data - and learns to recognize the fingerprints of concealed mineralization. The name itself is the thesis: ver, Spanish for "to see," joined with veritas, Latin for "truth," plus AI. The tagline follows plainly: seeing what others cannot see.
The stakes are not abstract. The energy transition runs on metal - copper for grids, nickel and cobalt for batteries, lithium for storage. Demand curves are climbing while the easy, near-surface deposits have largely been found. VerAI's argument is that the next generation of discoveries is already in the ground, just hidden, and that data can find it where intuition and luck cannot.
VerAI's platform turns decades of public and proprietary geophysical data into ranked, high-probability targets - before anyone spends money on a drill rig.
Magnetic, gravimetric, electromagnetic and seismic datasets across whole jurisdictions.
Machine-learning models detect the subtle signals of concealed mineralization under cover.
The platform surfaces high-probability, drill-ready targets and prioritizes them.
VerAI stakes projects and de-risks them with exploration and mining partners.
Conventional early-stage exploration is slow, expensive and heavily weighted toward the small fraction of ground that is easy to read. VerAI's pitch is a step-change on all three axes: the company reports that its platform improves the probability of discovery by two orders of magnitude, compresses targeting from years to weeks, and cuts early-stage exploration cost by more than 90 percent.
Those figures are the company's own, drawn from its platform's performance with partners - approximate by nature, as exploration outcomes always are. But the direction is the point. By ranking targets before the drill turns, VerAI aims to change exploration's dismal hit rate at the stage where money is easiest to waste.
It sits alongside a new cohort of AI-driven explorers - names like KoBold Metals, Earth AI and Fleet Space - but distinguishes itself by focusing squarely on covered terrain and by owning the assets it finds.
Proprietary machine learning that detects concealed mineralization under cover and generates ranked, drill-ready targets from geoscience data.
VerAI stakes 100%-owned projects and advances them through earn-in joint ventures with mining partners - 60+ projects plus royalties.
Strategic alliances that apply the AI to partners' advanced or producing assets to expand and de-risk their target pipelines.
What makes VerAI unusual is that it does not simply sell software by the seat. It uses the AI to generate and own mineral projects, then monetizes them two ways: earn-in joint ventures, where mining partners fund exploration to acquire a stake in VerAI's projects, and strategic alliances applied to partners' existing assets. Value accrues as equity in de-risked ground and as royalties - not as a SaaS subscription.
Its customers and collaborators are exploration companies, mining firms and industry investors looking for higher-odds targets and fresh critical-mineral assets, spread across prime mining jurisdictions in North and South America - the United States, Canada, Peru and Chile among them.
| Round | Amount | Date | Lead / Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | $12M | Mar 2023 | T. Rowe Price, Orion Resource Partners, Chrysalix, Blumberg Capital |
| Series B (first close) | $24M | Feb 2025 | Insight Partners (lead), Blumberg, Chrysalix, Orion Industrial Ventures |
Total raised to date: ~$39.4M. Insight Partners co-founder Jeff Horing joined VerAI's board with the Series B.
Yair Frastai and Amitai Axelrod launch VerAI Discoveries in Boston to apply AI to concealed-mineral exploration.
T. Rowe Price and Orion Resource Partners lead a Series A to scale exploration across the US, Canada, Peru and Chile.
VerAI grows its portfolio of AI-identified projects and strategic exploration partnerships across the Americas.
Insight Partners leads a Series B to accelerate development of 60+ projects and refine the AI Discovery Platform.
Ver (to see) + veritas (truth) + AI. A company built to see mineral truth in the ground.
Covered terrain makes up most of the earth's land - and it's exactly where VerAI hunts.
VerAI owns its discoveries, blurring the line between tech startup and mineral house.
Finding the copper, nickel, lithium and cobalt the energy transition depends on.
It uses a proprietary AI platform to detect concealed mineral deposits under covered terrain and generate high-probability drill targets, then advances those projects with mining partners.
VerAI was founded in 2020 by Yair Frastai (CEO) and Amitai Axelrod (COO), and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
About $39.4M total, including a $12M Series A (2023) and a $24M Series B led by Insight Partners (2025).
It analyzes magnetic, gravimetric, electromagnetic and seismic data with machine learning to see mineralization hidden beneath cover, aiming to improve discovery odds by two orders of magnitude while cutting early cost by over 90%.
Base and precious metals critical to the energy transition, including copper, nickel, lithium and cobalt, across North and South America.