PEBBLE™ · AI TERRAIN INTELLIGENCE FOR MINERAL EXPLORATION
Drill targets from the field, the same day.
PEBBLE™ is an autonomous rover platform that collects its own data on site and fuses it with satellite and geological layers. Your geologists get a ranked, explainable shortlist of drill targets before the crew leaves the ground. No lab queue, no GPS needed, no hardware to buy.
Following the company? Traction, team and how to reach us.
RECOGNITION
Judges’ Choice at Venture North PITCH 2026, and a TiE50 2025 top-50 early-stage company worldwide.
PROGRAMS
Autonomous prospecting lead in a Canadian Space Agency LSEI consortium, selected June 2026.
FIELD-TESTED
Two weeks underground with no GPS at Asclepios VI, Swiss Alps, July 2026.
AS SEEN ON CBC’S DRAGONS’ DEN
Saw the pitch? Here’s the long version.
The episode aired on October 29, 2026. This page is what PEBBLE™ does, where it has run, who builds it, and how to start a pilot or a conversation.
PROGRAMS & PARTNERS Canadian Space Agency SpaceDIRT Unleashed Robotics Asclepios · EPFL Neurospace Cambrian College Ontario Centre of Innovation
THE PROBLEM
Exploration pays for a lot of holes that find nothing.
Drilling is the most expensive step in finding a mine, and most of it misses. For a junior exploration company, every dry hole is a season’s budget. The industry doesn’t have a data problem, it has a data-interpretation problem: one operator we spoke with had a petabyte of geological data and twenty years of drill logs, mostly untouched.
$12B
spent worldwide every year on mineral exploration that fails to find an economic deposit
1 in 1,000
exploration sites turn out to be economically feasible
Weeks
for lab assays to come back while the rig and the crew wait on the result
“Every hole that misses is money, time, energy and land disturbance that didn’t need to happen.”
Dr. Wintta Ghebreiyesus, Founder & CEO, in MaRS, October 2026
Feasibility rate from Moon Trades’ interviews with more than 100 mining professionals, as reported by Invest Durham, May 2026.
HOW PEBBLE™ WORKS
Read the ground, rank the targets, drill the best ones first.
PEBBLE™ is an autonomous terrain-intelligence platform: a ruggedized rover carrying the sensors, onboard analysis that works offline, and an AI engine that turns field and satellite data into georeferenced drill targets. It is hardware-agnostic: the stack rides on Moon Trades’ own rover or mounts on the vehicles you already run. Unlike software-only tools, it collects its own ground truth.
STEP 1
Scan the ground
A ruggedized rover carries LiDAR, hyperspectral imaging, XRF and LIBS geochemical sensors and inertial navigation across your site, with drone attachments for flyovers and shafts. It works offline, without GPS, around the clock, in ground unsafe for a crew.
STEP 3
Rank the targets, the same day
Machine learning scores locations by their probability of mineralisation and returns a ranked, explainable shortlist of drill targets with the evidence behind each pick, delivered the same day, so your geologists can audit it.
STEP 2
Fuse three layers of data
On-site readings are fused with satellite and aerial data and public geological layers in one georeferenced model. Edge compute on the rover does the analysis in the field, so results never wait on a lab.
STEP 4
Drill less, learn more
Teams drill the top targets first. Every result feeds back into the model and sharpens the next prediction on the same ground.
What a site gets
● A ranked, explainable shortlist of georeferenced drill targets, with the evidence behind each one.
● Same-day results on site, instead of weeks waiting on external assays.
● Fifty times the data coverage of a field team of geologists, collected without sending people into unsafe ground.
● Underground 3D mapping for tunnels, shafts and workings.
How a pilot works
1
Consultation
2
Pilot planning
3
Onboarding and deployment
4
Analysis and delivery
5
Follow-up and support
A 30-minute scoping call: your ground, your commodity, what a result would need to show.
Scope, site access, timing and success metrics agreed in writing.
The rover and crew arrive; your team is trained on the outputs.
Ranked targets and maps, explained to your geologists.
Drill results reviewed against the predictions; next step agreed.
Pilots are limited in scope by design and run four to six months from scoping call to review.
PROOF FROM THE FIELD
Tested where GPS doesn’t reach.
Ahead of the first commercial pilots, PEBBLE™ has been run in the conditions that break ordinary survey kit: underground, in the dark, far from the nearest lab.
Asclepios VI, Sasso San Gottardo, July 2026: the HiveR rover carrying the PEBBLE™ stack, and the analog crew running a survey from a tablet. 37 seconds, silent.
ASCLEPIOS VI · SWISS ALPS · JULY 10–28, 2026
Two weeks underground, no GPS, no daylight
Inside the Sasso San Gottardo fortress, on an analog lunar mission run with EPFL. The crew completed four excursions and all three experiments: tunnel mapping, mineral detection and full-scale analysis. When an inertial sensor failed mid-mission, the team diagnosed and fixed it remotely from Toronto without losing the excursion.
CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION
SUDBURY, ONTARIO · ACTIVE PROGRAM
Ontario mining conditions, with Cambrian College
An Ontario Centre of Innovation–supported field program at Cambrian College’s Smart Mining Facility, putting PEBBLE™ through the terrain and conditions of a working Canadian mining region.
LSEI ARCHITECTURE STUDY CONSORTIUM
SpaceDIRT
Unleashed Robotics
Moon Trades Technologies
CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY · SELECTED JUNE 2026
Autonomous prospecting lead on a CSA lunar architecture study
Part of the SpaceDIRT-led consortium chosen by the Canadian Space Agency to study resource prospecting on the Moon. Same sensors, same software, harder terrain: the work stress-tests what we deploy on Earth.
COMPANY
Built in Ontario, operating since 2024.
Moon Trades Technologies builds exploration intelligence for the resources industry. The company started in 2024 after more than a hundred conversations with mining professionals pointed to the same gap: plenty of data, not enough interpretation. Two years on, PEBBLE™ has moved from prototype to field programs on two continents.
Built for the ground, designed for the Moon: the roadmap runs from Earth’s critical minerals to prospecting off-world. The business today is Earth.
Judges’ Choice · Venture North PITCH 2026
TiE50 2025 · TiEcon Silicon Valley
RBC Women in Cleantech Accelerator · MaRS
SheBoot 2026 cohort
Spark Centre Landing-Pad graduate
TMU Alumni Rising Star 2025
Startupfest 2025 speaker
Dr. Wintta Ghebreiyesus
FOUNDER & CEO
Aerospace engineer with a bachelor’s, master’s and PhD from Toronto Metropolitan University. Has held leadership roles with Women in Aerospace Canada, mentors early-stage deep-tech founders, and spoke at Startupfest 2025.
Following the company and want the full picture: market, model, milestones and what comes next.
Research groups, robotics teams, mining services and agencies working on exploration or resource autonomy.
MEDIA & INTERVIEWS
In the press and on stage.
NORTHERN ONTARIO BUSINESS · NEWS
October 19, 2026
NORCAT INNOVATION · NEWS RELEASE
July 24, 2026
SHEBOOT · NEWS RELEASE
July 7, 2026
SPARK CENTRE · FEATURE
May 25, 2026
INVEST DURHAM · FEATURE
May 20, 2026
Press enquiries: use the form below and choose “Media”. A press kit with boilerplate, logos and approved photos is in preparation.
NEWS
Follow the journey.
MISSION UPDATE · SEP 4, 2026 · 5 MIN READ
Two weeks inside a Swiss fortress with no GPS and no daylight, four excursions, three experiments, and one remote repair from Toronto.
NEWS · JUN 9, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
Canada’s space and resources legacies could come together, and Moon Trades is building the blueprint
Moon Trades joins the SpaceDIRT-led consortium selected by the Canadian Space Agency to define how Canada prospects resources on the Moon.
Mission updates, about once a month
Field results, program news and the occasional long read. Unsubscribe any time.
CONTACT
Tell us what you’re exploring.
Pilot sites, partnerships, investment or press: pick a reason and it reaches the right person. We reply within two business days.