Israeli Ai in the Service of Global Industry
Razor Labs recently signed a significant agreement with an international mining corporation and consolidated its position in the global mining industry with a cloud-based AI system that alerts of equipment malfunctions and prevents downtime. "The agreement opens up options for entering additional heavy industry fields," says Raz Roditti, co-founder and CEO
Apparently, there is no field that is more mentally distant from the Israeli high-tech experience than that of mining. Although mines satisfy the world's hunger for metals - iron, gold, copper, lithium (a strategic resource in the era of electric vehicles) and cobalt (intended for cellular devices) - it is a conservative industry based on giant machines and working hands, operating in distant places: Australia, South Africa, South America. Not something the "Startup Nation" is supposed to connect to naturally.
Not anymore. This outpost has also been taken over by Israel, more specifically, by an Israeli company, Razor Labs, which has developed an advanced, cloud-based artificial intelligence system designed to upgrade the mining process by predicting, identifying, and preventing malfunctions, saving many resources for mine owners. The system relies on a large number of sensors from which it receives data, which it processes and makes accessible to mine operators on a dashboard. Recently, the company signed a strategic agreement with a leading multinational mining corporation worth up to $31.2 million, a move that consolidates its position in the global mining field.
"The agreement reflects the market's confidence in our technology and the value it provides to the mining world. I believe that this agreement will help us further penetrate the mining industry as well as other potential industries," says Raz Roditti, co-founder and CEO.
What does the agreement include?
"It has three main components. The first relates to licensing. The corporation, which is one of the five largest mining companies in the world, will license our flagship product, DataMind AI, for five years. The total annual cost of this component is estimated at $3.3 million. The second component is the supply of hardware. The customer committed to purchasing equipment at a cost of approximately $9.1 million, mainly sensors and related equipment that connect the machines to the product and generate the required data. The third component is the implementation services, and I estimate that the expected consideration for these services will be about $5.6 million."
What are the benefits that the product provides to customers?
"You must understand how this market works. The mining and processing of metals involves extracting raw materials from large rocks that are ground. The mine owners operate huge machines, literally monsters, some of them 200 meters long and 40 meters high. But after all, this is outdated, non-digital equipment that operates with great intensity and is prone to malfunctions that can shut down the mines and, in some cases, even harm workers and cause serious injuries. This is where we come into the picture with a system that is actually a maintenance platform. We know how to present to operators, at any given moment, the state of the mine, predict equipment malfunctions, and provide recommendations for how to handle them. The system we developed, which includes over five different types of sensors and cameras, reads the data from the various sensors, and the AI algorithm cross-references all the information and provides the customer with a reliable forecast of all expected malfunctions in the machines.
"The large number of sensors from which the system derives the information and extracts insights - in the particular case of our client, we are talking about no fewer than 8,400 sensors at 14 mining sites - makes it possible to say not only what could go wrong but also what is the root of the problem. If a bearing is about to explode, the algorithm will investigate the reason and point to, for example, a crooked structure that is gradually wearing out the bearing. The data we collect and analyze provides customers with a holistic solution and enables them to make a leap forward in their activity."
What is the economic significance of this?
"Every hour of activity in the mine is worth a lot of money. Even if we save 10% of shutdown time in the mines caused by faulty equipment, we will reach phenomenal numbers because shutting down the activity reaches into the tens of millions of dollars."
Becoming an industry standard
Roditti is a serial entrepreneur who lives and breathes high-tech from an early age. Even before he was drafted into the IDF, he had already established 20 different ventures in fields such as gaming and e-commerce. After his release, he teamed up with two partners he met in the Talpiot program, Michael Zolotov and Ido Rosenberg, and together they founded five companies in eight years, one of which, a software company, was sold. Three of the four companies specialize in artificial intelligence, including Razor Labs, which they founded in February 2021. Initially, it operated in a wide spectrum of industries and provided services to a variety of institutions, from Assuta medical centers to the Tel Aviv Municipality. A call from a gold mining company led to a turnaround, and shortly thereafter the company went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Subsequently, it was also decided to focus on one market, the mining industry, with one product.
"We listened to the market. The global mining market is valued at $2 trillion, with thousands of active mining sites all over the world," explains Roditti the decision for the change, noting that the journey to achieving market recognition has been extremely challenging.
How do you get to know a unique market?
"From the moment we decided to go for the field, we established a team of experts specializing in industry and mining. We visited dozens of sites around the world, participated in industry exhibitions and conferences, and learned. We continue to learn and receive feedback, and to feed new insights into the system."
What is your vision? Where do you aspire to go?
"As a dominant player in the arena, we strive to become the standard in the industry and shape the standards in the field. Beyond that, we are also considering maintenance-as-a-service. There is a shortage of personnel and any streamlining of work processes is welcome. Alongside continued consolidation of our activity in the mining sector, we will consider entering other areas of heavy industry, such as electricity generation and automotive."
In collaboration with Razor Labs
