Lithosquare raises €22M to hunt critical metal deposits with AI
What's the deal? French startup Lithosquare has raised €22M in a seed round led by World Fund and Kindred Capital, with participation from Daphni, Omnes CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Ovni CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The company has built an AI-powered geology platform designed to speed up the discovery of critical metal deposits like copper, lithium, and nickel.
Founded in 2024 by mining engineer Aymeric Préveral-Etcheverry, later joined by Simon Leclair, Lithosquare aims to slash the time it takes to move from exploration to discovery — a process that typically spans seven to 15 years.
"We spent years in mining exploration and saw the same bottleneck on every project: too much time spent processing data, not enough on geology and fieldwork," Préveral-Etcheverry said.
Why now? The supply gap for critical metals could reach $350B per year by 2040, driven by surging demand from electric vehicles and data centres powering AI models. To meet that demand, more than 1,000 new mineral deposits need to be discovered and developed — a staggering target given the industry's sluggish pace.
The funding will let Lithosquare grow its team, expand internationally, and continue developing its platform.
What could go wrong? AI can accelerate data processing, but the physical realities of mining exploration remain unchanged. Discovering a deposit doesn't guarantee it can be profitably extracted. Geological uncertainty, permitting hurdles, and commodity price swings could all blunt the startup's impact regardless of how good its models become.
The signal: A €22M seed is substantial for a 2024-founded startup, underscoring how urgently investors view the critical minerals bottleneck. Lead investor World Fund, a climate-tech specialist, is channelling capital toward the infrastructure layer of the energy transition — not just the end products. With European and US policymakers actively legislating to secure domestic mineral supply chains, startups that can compress the exploration-to-discovery timeline are becoming strategic bets, not just venture plays.
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