Mariana Minerals taps Pronto to automate copper mine operations

On Thursday, Mariana Minerals announced a partnership with Pronto to deploy autonomous haulage trucks at its Copper One mine in Utah. The autonomous haulage trucks will begin operating next week at the site. Mariana Minerals was started in 2024 by Turner Caldwell, who spent nearly a decade at Tesla. Caldwell founded the startup to build a modern mining and refining operation, with the goal of bringing more refined metal into the ecosystem by attempting to automate almost every aspect of a mining operation.

Under the new partnership, Pronto’s autonomy system will be integrated into MineOS, a proprietary software developed by Mariana Minerals to run its mine operations. This integration will allow the company to autonomously dispatch the trucks and coordinate their routes without a human in the loop. Caldwell envisions a software-first approach where multiple operating systems use reinforcement learning to automate and coordinate operations across the entire mine. He argues that traditional Western mining companies have lacked the incentive to change, relying on spreadsheets, walkie-talkies, and paper reporting. While Caldwell noted that Mariana Minerals’ software-first approach could eventually benefit other mines, he maintains that the core business must remain selling metal rather than just software, comparing the strategy to how SpaceX vertically integrated rather than selling rocket re-landing software to NASA.

The partnership represents the first deal Pronto has secured since it was acquired by Atoms, a robotics venture run by Travis Kalanick. The acquisition reunites Kalanick with Pronto founder Anthony Levandowski, the controversial entrepreneur behind Otto, a self-driving truck startup that Uber acquired in 2016. Pronto provides self-driving systems for haulage trucks and other off-road vehicles.

While the integration of autonomous vehicles reduces the need for manual driving, Caldwell asserts that the primary objective is not labor cost reduction. Instead, the technology is intended to address a diminishing labor force in Western mining. According to Caldwell, “Part of this is a labor cost reduction, but that’s not really the goal. The goal is actually enabling more productivity with the constrained labor pool that we have. Automation, and autonomy, is going to create more jobs, because we will have more mines that are operating.”

Why it matters

Mariana Minerals is attempting to modernize mining operations by integrating autonomous haulage trucks into its proprietary ‘MineOS’ software, aiming to increase productivity and coordinate operations across its copper mine in Utah.