Minerals

For founders developing technological innovations that enables supply of industrial and metallic minerals critical to society’s future.


  • All Ventures
  • CDL-Vancouver

Baniql

BANiQL has created a sustainable process for selectively extracting nickel and cobalt for use in lithium-ion battery production. This technology reduces CO2 and toxic waste emissions by up to 80%, lowers costs by 30%, and boosts product output concentration by 2 to 3 times.

baniql.com

AiSpanner

AiSpanner is reimagining maintenance project management for heavy industries with their emerging technology. AiSpanner has developed a cloud-based platform that creates an intelligent digital twin of industrial plants linked to maintenance planning, integrating data and enhancing efficiency, safety, and collaboration through advanced visualization, simulation, and predictive analysis. AiSpanner increases productivity by 20-25% and reduces maintenance shutdown time by 7% leading to increased productivity and reduced Operating costs (lower unit cost of production).

aispanner.com

CDL Mentor Endorsement
"The AI Spanner team, part of the Mineral Stream, is a highly coachable and well-prepared group that has developed a product aimed at reducing downtime and increasing efficiency in plant maintenance—initially focused on the mining and minerals industry. While purpose-built for this sector, their system has broader applicability across other industrial plants that undergo scheduled shutdowns. AI Spanner enables significant reductions in offline time and associated costs—potentially leading to multi-million dollar savings. This is a highly targeted solution within complex value chains where shutdowns are expensive and operational efficiency is critical. They not only bring technology to bear on a clear problem but also understand the risks and operational realities their customers face, especially when it comes to piloting new software in high-stakes environments. Many startups underestimate this challenge—AI Spanner does not. During CDL, they secured pilot engagements and demonstrated strong momentum. The founding team—a husband-and-wife duo—are highly complementary, consistently coachable, and engaged deeply with the mentor group, showing up with thoughtful questions and clear intent to learn. With the traction they’re seeing, this has the potential to become an organically growing company with meaningful impact across the mining value chain." – Adam Pidlisecky, Director AEiR, Seequent Ltd

Aisimpro Inc.

Aisimpro develops software solutions that optimize mineral processing by leveraging advanced soft sensors and model predictive control technologies. Its unique approach integrates real-time data analysis and machine learning to enhance operational efficiency by1-3% and improve decision-making in complex plant environments. Aisimpro's tools are designed to adapt to varying conditions, providing robust support for metallurgists.

aisimpro.com

CDL Mentor Endorsement
"AiSimpro is a company that has steadily earned my respect. Ali doesn’t just talk in theory. He listens, tests, iterates, and continues to move forward. What I’ve seen over our sessions is a founder who has matured quickly in how he sells, builds, and leads. The technology is grounded in real operational problems. AiSimpro offers an advanced process control platform using machine learning and AI for mineral processing plants. It connects real-time operational data with decision-making tools to improve recovery and throughput. This is not just a dashboard — it’s built to solve real plant bottlenecks and is an extremely scalable solution for optimizing a gold plant as a whole rather than its parts. What’s most promising is that AiSimpro is already being piloted at multiple sites, including Casa Berardi and Santa Elena. In some cases, pilots have already converted into paid engagements or are on track to. Ali is also learning how to sell. In earlier sessions, we refined his pricing strategy, moved away from free trials, and defined customer-facing outcomes. He now understands how to anchor his value in operational KPIs and how to identify true buyers versus influencers. These are important shifts that are already showing results in his conversations with multiple mid-tier mining companies. The team is small, but the direction is clear. He’s working on the right things — market segmentation, customer discovery, team buildout, and financial modelling to weigh the pros and cons of fundraising vs. bootstrapping, not the other way around. His product is being shaped by field data and customer feedback, not just ideas on a whiteboard. AiSimpro still has work ahead, but they’re putting real points on the board. I back what Ali is building and will continue to support him where it creates value." – Salar Javid, President, Javid & Company Inc

2S Water Inc.

2S Water has developed a sensor technology to detect and quantify metals in water in real time for the mining industry. Current solutions involve manually sending samples to a lab; a time delayed and error prone process. Realtime information is essential for process optimization, regulatory compliance, and early issue identification.  2S Water's proprietary sensor generates realtime data in a fully automated system that provides instant feedback to facility operators.

2swater.com

Aquarry

Aquarry has developed a carbon dioxide removal technology that converts flooded surface mines, also known as pit lakes, into massive carbon sinks. By dosing the pit lakes with low emission sources of alkalinity, CO2 is passively drawn down from the atmosphere, thus turning liabilities into revenue-generating assets. The process yields low-cost, high quality carbon credits alongside pit lake remediation.

aquarry.earth

CDL Mentor Endorsement
"With an energized and tech savvy CEO (Kate) and a practical and scalable technology, Aquarry is using common features of many mines (pit lakes) and reactive mine and other alkaline waste materials to provide sites for CO₂ uptake and effective storage as carbonates. The natural process of atmospheric CO₂ buffering on long timescales is via reactions with minerals in rocks. Aquarry is developing a practical route to accelerating that process." – Steve Larter, Research Chair in Petroleum Geology, University of Calgary

LithologIQ

LithologIQ provides digital tools that enable the mining industry to increase mineralogical knowledge quickly, accurately, and economically. Using an automated core scanner and sophisticated data processing software, their solution assists exploration and mining companies in their day-to-day decision making with significant impact on economic, operational and environmental performances.

lithologiq.ca

Innova Cleantech

Innova is a clean technology company focused on producing low-cost synthetic graphite and clean hydrogen from natural gas. The company’s key differentiation lies in its innovative methane pyrolysis process, which produces low-emission synthetic graphite, a critical material for the rapidly growing battery sector, particularly in electric vehicles. By meeting the rising demand for locally sourced graphite, Innova helps reduce reliance on Asian-dominated supply chains while simultaneously lowering carbon emissions.

innovacleantech.com

Transition Biomining, Inc.

Transition Biomining develops custom biostimulants that increase recovery of copper from low-grade ores by up to 25%. The company addresses the growing demand for clean energy raw materials by leveraging the power of native ore microbiomes in leaching without added capex.

transition.bio

Minpraxis

Minpraxis Solutions is focused on commercialization of a new device, called the Minpraxis Tester (MPT), for the mining industry. The MPT provides continuous strength measurement of ore samples, including samples that are not tested with conventional approaches, thereby providing a massive expansion in orebody information for mine design and production planning.

minpraxis.com

ELEMISSION

ELEMISSION develops advanced geochemical analysis technologies, specializing in real-time, large-scale microanalysis of drill core samples directly onsite. The ECORE Mobile Laboratory provides unprecedented speed and accuracy in delivering chemical assays and mineralogical data, empowering geologists to make faster, data-driven decisions. Unlike traditional methods, their technology reduces delays and costs by delivering Ore Body Knowledge (OBK) within hours instead of weeks, offering a unique combination of precision and mobility.

elemission.ca

MinersAI

MinersAI's AI enabled platform makes it easy for Junior Exploration and Financing Companies to find geoscience data for exploration by aggregating, standardizing and balancing mineral exploration data. The data is aggregated and processed in the same format and across vintages, allowing for robust analyses right in the MinersAI platform. MinersAI is building a marketplace for mineral exploration data to enable data discovery and utilization.

minersai.com

CDL Mentor Endorsement
"Minerals AI has a very mature system for handling tremendously variable and complex exploration, environmental and related data collected over very many years and providing the methodology to combine, interpret and display multiple different parameters. While many people have been doing this kind of thing on a limited basis and unlimited sets of data, Minerals AI has a more general and comprehensive methodology. This is useful not only for historical data but would also be useful to add current data incrementally." – Peter Bradshaw, Founder of BRIMM, University of British Columbia

Cetos Water

Cetos Water has developed a membrane-less and non-evaporative approach to clean the world's dirtiest and most concentrated wastewater streams cost and energy-efficiently and extract valuable minerals from waste streams. Cetos can treat brines up to 10 times saltier than seawater, removing 98% of salts and contaminants while recovering over 50% of the water, leveraging industrial waste heat with near 100% solvent recovery. By enabling industrial wastewater reuse at half the cost of current disposal methods, Cetos is delivering meaningful cost savings while eliminating harmful wastewater disposal practices and creating a circular water economy.

cetoswater.com