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Everything is grown, mined, or manufactured
A mining company is, at heart, real estate: it takes land and turns it into productive progress. Physical automation also needs heavy-duty energy and heavy-duty mechanical systems, like the equipment that pulls in air, tempers it, and pushes it back out.
Superintelligence needs energy and minerals at its base, with data centers now measured in gigawatts. The energy comes from the sun, but capturing it takes minerals, and minerals come from the ground. Land is the whole thing.
Automating a mine means the same mine produces about 20 percent more gold per year, and the lower operating cost makes it worthwhile to work places that weren't before. A loaded machine weighs over 2 million pounds, is the size of a building, and moves around autonomously.
Why does clean energy need so much mining?
Solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and power lines are built from metals such as copper, silicon, lithium, and nickel. The International Energy Agency reported in 2021 that an electric car needs about six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car. It also reported that an onshore wind plant needs about nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity. The sun's energy is free, but the equipment that captures it comes from the ground.
How do autonomous haul trucks work?
Satellite positioning, radar, and sensors tell each truck where it is and what is around it. A control center assigns loads, routes, and dumping points to the whole fleet. Komatsu began commercial operation of autonomous haul trucks at Codelco's Gabriela Mistral mine in Chile in 2008. Mines value the trucks because they can run around the clock without shift changes.
Why are data centers measured in gigawatts?
A data center's electrical draw sets how much computing it can run, and nearly all of that power ends up as heat the building must remove. Operators therefore rate sites by power capacity rather than by floor space. The International Energy Agency estimated in 2025 that data centers used about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, roughly 1.5 percent of global electricity use.
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