Terra AI, a Palo Alto company that uses AI to model what lies underground, raised a $20m Series A, announced on 3 June 2026. Khosla Ventures led the round, and BHP Ventures made a strategic investment. The company's description of itself lists Rio Tinto and other strategic investors as backers.
The company did not disclose a valuation, its total funding or the size of its earlier rounds. Chief executive John Mern is the only executive named in the announcement and in Pulse 2.0's report.
“Terra AI is defining a new, AI-native exploration approach with their continuously improving 3D Earth model.”Rajesh Swaminathan, Partner, Khosla Ventures
What Terra AI does
Terra AI sells a patented platform that combines geophysics, geochemistry and drilling data to generate probabilistic geological models of the subsurface. The company describes a generative modelling engine, a continuously improving 3D Earth model and a geology reasoning agent for exploration planning. It says the platform produces 3D models in minutes.
The pitch rests on the slow pace of mineral discovery. The announcement says new discoveries average 17 years to go from exploration to production. Terra AI argues that better models of where resources sit can improve drill targeting and cut the uncertainty that makes projects slow.
The company said it has a growing roster of commercial customers across copper, gold, rare earth element and reservoir projects. It did not name them.
The patented platform is described as integrating exploration data across mining and reservoir projects, and the company says the same approach can be applied to enhanced geothermal and carbon storage sites. Pulse 2.0 said it works with major resource companies on copper, gold and rare earth element projects, but gave no customer names.
What the money is for
Terra AI said it will use the funding to scale its generative modelling engine, speed up enterprise deployments and advance its subsurface inference technology. Deployments are planned across mining, enhanced geothermal and carbon storage, so the company is extending beyond mineral exploration into energy projects.
Mern said the investment enables the company to move to the next phase of Terra AI's growth. He said explorers today face increasing complexities like rising project uncertainty.
Who invested
Rajesh Swaminathan, a partner at Khosla Ventures, said Terra AI is defining a new, AI-native exploration approach with its continuously improving 3D Earth model. He described the existing methods as fundamentally constrained by outdated, fragmented exploration workflows.
Laurel Buckner, vice president of ventures at BHP, said Terra AI's technology has the potential to improve drill targeting. The announcement did not say whether BHP is also a customer.
What is not known
The announcement and the Pulse 2.0 report did not give Terra AI's headcount, its founders beyond Mern, its founding year or its earlier funding. The investors listed in the company's boilerplate and in the release differ slightly, with the release naming Khosla Ventures and BHP Ventures and the boilerplate also naming Rio Tinto.
Both sources rely on company statements and name no independent analysts or customers, so the claims about speed and accuracy of the models are the company's own.
Company website: terraai.com