Guest Post — Seeing Underground: Quantum Sensing in Mineral Exploration

By Zeynep Koruturk, Dr. Kris Naudts, and Donald Harmitt @ Firgun Ventures.

Firgun Ventures is a VC firm investing in Series A/B quantum scale-ups globally.

Demand for critical minerals is rising just as copper exploration is becoming harder. The IEA projects copper supply to fall around 25% short of primary requirements by 2035, while the cobalt gap has widened to more than 25% following the DRC’s export quotas. Closing those gaps will require more primary supply, making new discoveries increasingly important. Yet many of the accessible targets have already been found, pushing exploration towards deeper, more complex targets. S&P Global estimates that average copper drilling depth has risen nearly 50% since 2010 to around 600 metres, which means every unsuccessful deep target can require substantially more drilling before miners learn that the ore is not there.

That cost is what makes measurement before drilling worth paying for, and two instruments are being built for the job. Quantum gravimeters use clouds of laser-cooled atoms as a stable reference for small variations in gravity caused by underground density differences, while quantum magnetometers read subtle magnetic field changes that reveal particular rock formations. Neither technology produces a complete underground map or removes the need to drill. What they offer is a better-calibrated sense of where to drill and, just as usefully, where not to. Better subsurface information informs which targets get funded, and underscores the question of who controls a country’s geological picture. And a useful by-product of deploying quantum technologies in the mineral sector is meeting the increasing material needs of quantum itself.