At a live final in Brisbane on 16 April, IntelliSense.io was named the winner of the Smarter Mine Sites category at the inaugural Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM) / LANDCROS Innovation Studios Mining Challenge — selected from a global field of 135 applicants.
The result is the latest in a series of independent recognitions validating what IntelliSense.io’s customers already see in production: that Scientific AI delivers measurable gains in net metal recovery.
What the Challenge Was
HCM and Founders Factory launched the LANDCROS Mining Challenge in late 2025, inviting start-ups from around the world to apply across three themes: Smarter Machines, Smarter Mine Sites, and Low Impact & Sustainable Mining. The program received 135 applications globally between November 2025 and January 2026.
Ten finalists were shortlisted and invited to Brisbane to pitch live to a panel of judges that included HCM’s global executive team, Tier-1 mining leaders, and external industry experts. One winner was selected per category.
IntelliSense.io was selected as the Smarter Mine Sites winner, alongside Rigid Robotics (Smarter Machines) and Clear Carbon (Low Impact & Sustainable Mining). As InvestMETS reported, IntelliSense.io came out ahead of high-calibre competition — including Canada’s NTWIST and US-based Strayos — to win its category.
HCM mining business president Eiji Fukunishi set the tone for what the challenge was designed to achieve:
Our three challenge themes are grounded in real and urgent challenges faced by our customers, mining sites, and the industry as a whole.
Why the Smarter Mine Sites Category Matters
The Smarter Mine Sites framing is precise: connecting the mining value chain to deliver measurable net metal recovery gains. This is not a vision statement for IntelliSense.io — it describes what brains.app does in live operations today.
Mining operations lose value at every handoff in the process chain. Ore grade variability from the mine is not communicated to the plant in time to adjust. Flotation circuits run on static setpoints that don’t reflect changing feed conditions. Thickeners approach high rake torque events without warning. Each circuit optimised in isolation leaves value on the table that a connected approach would capture.
brains.app addresses this by deploying Scientific AI (SciAI) — a fusion of physics-based (first principles) models and machine learning — across the full mine-to-market value chain. The platform tracks material from the mine plan through to final product, generating real-time recommendations and, where closed-loop control is deployed, directly driving setpoints based on continuously updated process models.
The four components of this Objective-driven AI architecture — Perception, Actor, World Model, and Critic — work together to predict the future state of a process for any given control action, evaluate those predicted outcomes against defined objectives, and select the best action. Operators can see exactly why the AI recommends what it does. Objectives can be changed in real time without retraining the model.
The Evidence Base
Recognition from HCM and LANDCROS reflects a track record built across live deployments in Chile, Australia, Kazakhstan, Brazil, the USA, Canada, Peru, and South Africa.
Across IntelliSense.io’s application portfolio, outcomes include:
- Stockpile & Inventory Optimization: 5–8% reduction in plant feed variability; $1.4M USD annual benefit; ROI achieved in 3.3 months
- Flotation Optimization: +1.0% recovery increase; +$38M USD annual financial impact
- Thickener Optimization: 5-hour warning on high rake torque events; $1.8M USD saved from a single stoppage avoidance; 22,000 m³ of water recovered
- Solvent Extraction Optimization: +3% copper mass transfer improvement; $2M USD additional copper production annually; $900K acid cost savings annually
These are outcomes from connected, continuously optimising systems — not one-time improvement projects.
A Pattern of Independent Validation
This win builds on a pattern of external recognition for IntelliSense.io’s technology and commercial delivery.
In November 2025, IntelliSense.io was awarded the Innovation Award in the Mining Technology Excellence Awards — an independent recognition programme powered by GlobalData, which analyses over one billion datasets across more than 200 countries. The award recognised IntelliSense.io’s advances in AI-driven industrial process optimisation.
InvestMETS — the same publication that covered the LANDCROS awards — recognised IntelliSense.io as Best Scale-up in its inaugural 2023 Global Mining Technology Awards. The nomination cited the company’s significant growth in headcount and sales, driven by its Scientific AI platform. Over the three years prior to that award, IntelliSense.io’s headcount tripled and sales more than doubled. The 30-strong judging panel for that programme included mining executives, finance leaders, and market analysts from across the Americas, Australia, and EMEA — voting anonymously and independently.
Taken together, these recognitions — from a technology media programme, an investment-focused industry publication, and now a global open innovation challenge run by one of the world’s leading mining equipment manufacturers — reflect consistent third-party validation across both the technology and the business behind it.
What Comes Next?
HCM stated it looks forward to exploring collaboration opportunities with all three category winners, combining their technologies with HCM’s expertise to co-create solutions for a smarter, more sustainable mining industry.
IntelliSense.io welcomes that conversation. The Smarter Mine Sites challenge is precisely the problem space our platform was built for — and the opportunity to explore what Scientific AI, integrated with HCM’s equipment and operational reach, could deliver for mining operations is one we approach with genuine excitement.
For operations teams looking to understand what connected, real-time process optimisation could mean for their specific circuits and value chain, the starting point is a conversation with our team.
Read the InvestMETS coverage of the LANDCROS awards here: Start-ups recognised in inaugural Landcros awards
Read more about IntelliSense.io’s 2023 InvestMETS Best Scale-up Award win here: IntelliSense.io wins the Best Scale-up Award at the InvestMETS Global Mining Technology Awards
