Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO) is one of the world's largest mining companies and one of the industry's most advanced AI-and-automation adopters. Its long-running "Mine of the Future" program pioneered automation at scale in the Pilbara iron-ore region of Western Australia — most famously AutoHaul, the world's first fully autonomous heavy-haul rail network, along with fleets of autonomous trucks and drills and AI-driven orebody modeling and processing optimization. Rio Tinto also partners with technology vendors (for example, Ideon Technologies for muon-tomography imaging and Fleet Space for exploration) rather than only building in-house. It is included here as an adopter, not a vendor: it does not sell AI products, but it is a leading example of how a mining major deploys autonomy and AI across exploration, extraction, haulage, and processing. Its value rests on its mineral assets and commodity markets, with AI and automation as levers on cost, safety, and productivity.