DOE awards $73 million to four projects building domestic testing grounds for advanced mining technologies

On September 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation picked four projects for $73 million in funding through its Mine of the Future initiative. The money goes toward building domestic testing grounds where advanced mining technologies can move from the lab into real-world conditions.

The four projects span sites across Virginia, West Virginia, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, and Texas — a geographic spread that reflects the scale of what DOE is trying to build.

DOE selects four projects for $73 million in mining technology funding

The announcement came from DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, known as CMEI. The four projects were selected for award negotiations — contracts still need to be finalized — and the funding runs through DOE’s Mine of the Future initiative, administered by the Advanced Mining and Mineral Processing Technologies Office.

DOE describes it as a scalable proving ground designed to cut technical and operational risks while improving productivity and energy efficiency at domestic mines.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Assistant Secretary Audrey Robertson both framed the investment around two goals: supply chain security and American competitiveness. Wright said the funding will “help unleash America’s vast mineral resources” while cutting dependence on foreign sources. Robertson called the testbeds a step toward “redefining what’s possible in modern mining.” The administration has made critical mineral independence a stated priority, and these projects fit directly into that push.

Why the funding was directed toward real-world testbeds

The core problem DOE is trying to solve is a gap between the lab and the field. Minerals and mining stakeholders currently don’t have enough real-world sites to test new technologies under realistic conditions, and that gap slows everything down.

Lab-scale results are useful — but they don’t tell industry whether something actually works at field scale. That validation step cuts both technical and financial risk before a company commits to commercial adoption. Without it, promising innovations tend to stall out. DOE framed this $73 million as a way to speed up commercialization of technologies that have cleared the laboratory stage but haven’t made it into the field yet, a priority that aligns with the Trump administration’s push to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign critical mineral sources.

The testbeds are meant to close that gap systematically — at multiple sites, across genuinely different mining environments.

What each of the four selected projects will build

The four projects are distinct in focus and geography, which looks intentional. Each one targets a different piece of the broader mining technology challenge.

Innovative Wireless Technologies, Inc. (headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia, with project sites in Julian, West Virginia; Idaho Springs, Colorado; and Blacksburg, Virginia) will create a national testbed combining underground and surface mining environments. The focus is on validating digital, connectivity, and automation solutions — the kind of next-generation systems that need real-world conditions to prove out properly.

University of Arizona (Tucson, with its project in Sahuarita, Arizona) will build a nationally accessible underground testbed. Its emphasis is on electrification and energy management, alongside faster commercialization of mining technologies. DOE describes it as a scalable proving ground designed to cut technical and operational risks while improving productivity and energy efficiency at domestic mines.

Curators of the University of Missouri (based in Rolla, Missouri) will develop what DOE calls a multifunctional mining technology proving ground. Two complementary facilities anchor the project: one for underground technology testing, another focused on advanced comminution research — the science of breaking down ore. The university will design, build, and equip the facility as a national resource.

Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas, with its project site in Navasota, Texas) has perhaps the most striking description in the announcement. DOE says it will create “the world’s first synthetic mine” inside an existing, highly instrumented Texas drilling site — built for rigorous, repeatable, safe testing of mining tools, workflows, and automation systems under conditions that are genuinely hard to replicate in a conventional mine environment.

Broader effects on supply chains and the mining workforce

The testbeds aren’t just about proving technology. They’re designed to do something more practical: de-risk commercial adoption for the mining industry as a whole. When companies can point to validated field-scale results, the financial case for deploying new systems gets considerably easier to make.

DOE also expects these projects to support hands-on workforce training. The next generation of American miners and engineers will need to operate advanced, automated, and electrified systems, and building that training capacity alongside the testbeds means the workforce piece develops in parallel with the technology itself. Critical minerals extracted domestically feed into energy generation, manufacturing, and defense — better technology at U.S. mines, improving productivity and energy efficiency, strengthens that supply chain from the ground up.

Validation under real-world conditions 

Here’s what the announcement adds up to. DOE has selected four projects across multiple states to receive $73 million through its Mine of the Future initiative. The projects will build domestic proving grounds where advanced mining technologies — digital systems, automation, electrification, comminution, sensing tools — can be validated under real-world conditions before commercial deployment.

The four recipients are Innovative Wireless Technologies, the University of Arizona, the Curators of the University of Missouri, and Southern Methodist University. Each project targets a different aspect of the mining technology gap; all four include a workforce training component. Projects are currently in award negotiation, not yet under contract. The overarching goal, as the Department of Energy frames it, is securing U.S. critical mineral supply chains through domestic innovation.

Kelly Lippke

Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.