I-Pulse welcomes Codelco as strategic investor

Codelco, the world’s largest copper miner, will provide capital and real-world experience to accelerate the commercialisation of I-Pulse’s breakthrough innovations for drilling, continuous underground mining, tunnelling, and rock crushing. Codelco joins world leading mining majors BHP, Ivanhoe Mines, Newmont, Rio Tinto, and Teck Resources in investing in I-Pulse and advancing the development of its family of technologies.

Over nearly 20 years, I-Pulse has pioneered the application of high pulsed power technology to revolutionise the use of electrical energy. This groundbreaking technology enables the release of short yet immensely powerful electrical discharges at minimal marginal cost. I-Pulse technology can take the energy of acell phone battery and safely and repeatedly turn it into the power output of a nuclear power plant for tiny fractions of a second. This has enabled I-Pulse to bring disruptive change to a multitude of industries, including mining, resource discovery, manufacturing, agriculture, and geothermal energy.

“All of our management and scientists at I-Pulse welcome our new shareholder Codelco,” Robert Friedlandsaid. “Minerals are crucial to our daily lives and critical to meeting global energy and technology demands. The way the mining industry has always crushed rocks with compressive force cannot deliver the step change required to produce the vast amount of copper and other critical minerals needed to improve national security, build data centres and AI infrastructure, and meet the many demands of the energy transition. Our technology can reduce the energy required to unlock critical minerals from rock by up to 80% and could render the ball and SAG mill circuits obsolete. We see I-Pulse technology as delivering a scale of change to the mining industry not seen since the invention of dynamite in 1867 by Alfred Nobel, who later went on to establish the Nobel Prize.”

“The world needs dramatically more copper and critical minerals. Traditional technology to crush rocks to extract the metals within requires vast amounts of energy, and to meet this challenge we must be more effective and more efficient," said Codelco Chairman of the Board, Máximo Pacheco. “I-Pulse’s portfolio presents opportunities with high financial and strategic potential for mining, and with this step, we maintain our leading role at the forefront of the industry and the energy transition.”

Using its proprietary high pulsed power technology in its I-ROX division, I-Pulse creates extremely powerful gigawatt-scale shock waves and tensile forces which tear rock apart from the inside. The use of tensile force fundamentally improves how we extract metals from the Earth. Current technology to crush rock requires 4% to 5% of the world’s electrical energy and electrical consumption will rapidly increase as demand for critical minerals skyrockets. I-ROX technology can massively reduce the energy required by conventional crushing and grinding technologies that use compressive force and, by breaking rock along mineralogical boundaries, can increase metal recoveries by approximately 5%. The increased recoveries will result in direct benefits for all the resource owners and host governments involved.

I-Pulse is also developing its G-Pulse drilling technology to liberate the Earth’s vast untapped resource of geothermal energy by using high pulsed power to soften hot granite before it comes into contact with a drill bit. Geothermal energy is an abundant source of carbon-free, continuous power that can significantly contribute to the world’s growing baseload energy supply. However, advanced geothermal energy systems require a massive reduction in the cost of drilling through hard granite. I-Pulse’s I-Mine division will combine the I-ROX rock crushing and the G-Pulse drilling technologies to enable continuous underground tunnelling, mining and processing, reducing costs and eliminating the need for chemical explosives. The practical outcome for underground mining is the elimination of poisonous gases, an increased productivity profile and a significant step change in safety in the mineral extraction process.

Codelco has half a century of experience in developing efficient mining technologies and deploying them on a world leading scale. The company has some of the world's largest copper reserves and produces over 5% of global copper supply. Chile is the world’s top copper producing nation and has one of the world’s largest reserves of untapped geothermal energy. More than 300 geothermal resources have been identified throughout Chile.

In addition, I-Pulse’s business verticals are developing and deploying a diverse range of pulsed power applications for various crucial industries.

• Bmax uses electrical arcs and shockwaves to weld or form metals without heat or pressure, enabling clean, low-cost manufacturing solutions for automotive parts, aerospace applications, EV trucks, luxury goods, and other industrial solutions. The company has worked for over 600 major global industrial customers and has recently opened a new manufacturing facility in Detroit, Michigan.
• BlueSpark Geothermal technology uses high pulsed power to create powerful shockwaves to clear blockages in wellbores without using harmful chemicals or mechanical interventions that may damage the well.
• I-Terra is commercialising a system to replace chemical herbicides for farmers by using high pulsed power and artificial intelligence to kill weeds down to the roots, increasing crop yields and eliminating chemical pollution.
• I-Pulse Water (IPW) deploys the most accurate and powerful geophysical survey technologies to locate hidden water resources deep in the Earth.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/13102025/i-pulse-welcomes-codelco-as-strategic-investor/