If the twentieth century was powered by oil and gas, Turner Caldwell is convinced the next hundred years will be defined by metals.

"We're entering a metals-driven economy," said Caldwell, CEO and cofounder of Mariana Minerals, a software-focused mining startup. "Lithium and copper are going to be core, but our mandate needs to be broader than that. We're starting to chase aluminum, which goes into lightweight alloys and plays a major part in the electrification of the economy. We're looking at magnesium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, uranium, and rare earths. The beauty of the software backbone we're building is that we're architecting it to be as generalizable as possible for all the metals the modern economy depends on."

Metals are the invisible backbone of modern civilization. Power grids and electric motors depend on copper. EV batteries require lithium. Aluminum is essential for power lines, aircraft, and automobiles. Steel forms the structural frame of nearly every building, and lesser-known metals such as germanium are indispensable to the semiconductors inside smartphones.

Yet the supply chains underpinning phones, transportation, and electricity are increasingly at risk. China dominates global mining and controls as much as 90% of critical minerals processing worldwide—a figure that rises to 92% for rare earth magnet manufacturing, which is vital for smartphones and defense applications. The United States finds itself in what has been widely described as a critical minerals chokehold, the result of decades of aggressive Chinese industrial policy and declining American industrial capacity. The Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act in 2022 to boost domestic mineral production, and the Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits tied to domestically sourced battery materials, but rebuilding U.S. processing capacity remains a multi-year effort. With supply chains under strain, even high-volume essential minerals like copper and lithium are subject to extreme price volatility.

"Our goal is to reduce the cost of these core inputs to the modern economy over time," Caldwell said. "That enables us to ensure that everything downstream can move as fast as humanly possible, so we can unlock all the industries [like AI] that everyone is super excited about."

Mariana, which Caldwell cofounded in 2024 with Baker Tilney and Juan Lozano after spending nine years on factory design and construction at Tesla, is among a small group of startups attempting to disrupt the centuries-old mining industry at a pivotal geopolitical moment. Traditional mine development can take ten to twenty years from exploration to first production—a timeline that Mariana's software-first approach aims to compress dramatically. The San Francisco–based company has now secured a significant new funding round: Mariana raised $310 million in a Series B led by Khosla Ventures, Fortune has exclusively learned. Andreessen Horowitz, a longtime backer, participated in the round, along with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Greenoaks, Halo Fund, Pax Ventures, StepStone Group, BHP Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Greycroft, Mitsubishi Corporation, and others. Mariana has now raised $400 million in total and is valued at $1.5 billion.

That $400 million includes capital allocated to the mines Mariana operates: Copper One in Utah and Lithium One in Texas. Copper One is a previously idled copper mine that Mariana acquired in 2025 and restarted over four months using autonomous software. The company says the site is on track to produce 50,000 metric tons of refined copper annually. Lithium One, which broke ground in 2025, is expected to enter commercial production in 2027.

Mariana is positioning itself against massive incumbent miners such as Standard Lithium and BHP Group. The startup's thesis is that the surging metals demand driven by the AI boom makes an efficient, software-based mining operation not merely viable but essential.

"The AI revolution, physically speaking, depends on the mining of a huge amount of minerals and metals," said Travis Kalanick, the former Uber founder who now runs the physical AI and robotics company Atoms, in an email. "Data centers, chips, the grid, robots, EVs, defense systems: it all starts with copper and other critical minerals. So how existential is it? You cannot lead in the AI century without a domestic supply chain."

Copper, in particular, represents a chokepoint for electrification. AI-driven data centers are placing unprecedented demands on an aging American electrical grid. The International Energy Agency has projected that electricity demand from data centers could double by 2026, driven in part by AI workloads—growth that translates directly into additional copper requirements for transformers, wiring, and cooling infrastructure.

"If you look at the modern economy, it's basically an electrification story," Caldwell said. "That's true whether it's AI infrastructure, renewables and energy storage applications, the reindustrialization initiative, or the electrification of transport—land, air, and sea. All of that is going to be tied to how much electricity we can generate as a country and as the human race."

Because electricity generation requires copper, price volatility in that single commodity has the potential to stall America's industrial progress.

"If copper prices start to get crazy—and we've already seen them increase—all the downstream customers of those metals are going to face cost pressures," Caldwell said. "Which will slow the rate at which we modernize the global economy."

Copper is just one of dozens of metals whose supply will shape the trajectory of industries from artificial intelligence to renewable energy in the decades ahead.