Energy, Minerals, and the Physical Stack Behind AI

May 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Turner Caldwell, CEO of Mariana Minerals, and Drew Baglino, CEO of Heron Power—both veterans of Tesla—discuss the physical infrastructure bottlenecks limiting AI and reindustrialization. They argue that U.S. dominance requires accelerating critical minerals supply, grid upgrades, and manufacturing, using software-driven autonomy and power electronics to outpace legacy systems and global rivals like China.

Core Technologies and Operating Systems

Mariana Minerals operates as a "software-first" mining and refining company, with a quarter of its staff as software and machine learning engineers. It deploys three operating systems: Capital Project OS for lifecycle management from process development through construction and procurement, using agentic workflow automation; Plant OS for reinforcement learning (RL) control of refineries, tuning variables like temperatures and flow rates for heterogeneous feedstocks; and Mine OS for RL-based short-interval autonomous control of mining, handling thousands of daily decisions. The company does not sell software but integrates it into operations: it runs a high-grade copper mine in southeast Utah and is building a lithium refinery in Texas, targeting ten projects in ten years.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Intro to US Minerals and Grid Lag** - Highlights 50-year US deficit in critical minerals vs. China and outdated grid tech
2 (01:52) **AI as Physical Infrastructure Challenge** - Frames AI dominance as energy, mining, manufacturing, and grid projects
3 (03:33) **Guest Introductions** - Turner Caldwell (Mariana Minerals) and Drew Baglino (Heron Power) on their companies
4 (06:15) **Reshoring Critical Supply Chains** - Risks if US firms fail: lose silicon carbide leadership to rivals
5 (08:20) **Drew's Shift from Tesla to Grid** - Front-row to edge innovations (EVs, Megapack) but grid unchanged for 100+ years
6 (10:35) **US Manufacturing Competitiveness** - Labor <10% of costs; focus co-located supply chains like China's industrial clusters
7 (12:10) **Mariana's Full-Chain Autonomy Strategy** - Mining to refining with AI for engineering, construction, operations

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Erin Price-Wright speaks with Turner Caldwell and Drew Baglino about what it will take to close America's critical minerals gap and modernize the power infrastructure that underpins the AI economy. With the US more than 50 years behind China in critical mineral supply and grid infrastructure built on systems designed a century ago, they examine where the real bottlenecks are and how to move faster.

The conversation covers how automation, reinforcement learning, and vertically integrated operations can compress the timelines for mining and refining, and why co-locating supply chains matters more than labor costs in the race to reshore manufacturing. Baglino explains how solid state transformers can replace aging mechanical grid equipment with silicon and software, while Caldwell outlines how Mariana Minerals is applying autonomous systems to remove the know-how bottleneck from critical mineral processing.

They also discuss the lessons both founders carried from Tesla — techno-optimism, appetite for risk, and mission-driven talent — and what durable industrial policy, smarter permitting, and a federal grid investment framework would unlock for American competitiveness.

Resources:

Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/tbc415

Follow Drew on X: https://x.com/baglino

Follow Erin on X: https://x.com/espricewright

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