# David Goldsmith

David Goldsmith promotes Mearth Infinium’s mining-as-a-service model: deploying integrated robotic and autonomous mining systems to increase production, rather than simply selling equipment. Goldsmith's posts also explore how space development could shape governance and cooperation.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/david-goldsmith/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidallengoldsmith
- LinkedIn followers: 19,705
- Topics: robotics
- Based on 18 dated posts, latest 2026-09-29

## Summary

Useful for explaining mining-as-a-service economics, remote operations, production-based contracts, and repeatable deployment in mining.

- Best for: Investment firms and industry conferences needing a speaker on autonomous mining economics.
- Not for: Paid sponsorship expecting documented targeted reach, procurement leads, engagement data, or recurring branded posts.
- Check first: Ask for audience demographics, per-post impressions, engagement, and role or seniority data.

### Takeaways

- They say mining sells material, not machines.
- They say payment depends on material movement, not equipment shipping.
- They distinguish a 33% proven return from a 46% calculated return.

## Main ideas

- **Mining sells material, not machines**: Goldsmith argues that equipment, software, and consulting are sold as ends in themselves, while buyers really want ore or metal moved at a workable cost. They make the case as a category claim, repeated almost word for word: the category is not equipment, it is production. The reasoning is buyer-side: leadership does not buy a truck to own a truck; it buys one to produce material. They reduce the goal to four recurring outcomes: more material produced, lower operating costs, improved safety, and better extraction economics. Those outcomes position their company against vendors.
- **Get paid when material moves, not when equipment ships**: Goldsmith's commercial argument is that the usual sequence—sell equipment or software, deliver a report, collect the invoice—ends the supplier's involvement just as the mine starts producing. They propose the opposite structure under the label Mining-as-a-Service: deploy autonomous narrow vein systems into operating mines and share in what the mine produces, so both sides gain if output rises and neither gains if it does not. They say that alignment changes how systems are designed and partnerships are structured. The posts cite 75-man-years of operational data, more than 25 years of validation, NASA Technology Readiness Level 8, and over $300M invested. Ask for independently verified contract and performance data.
- **Run many mines from one command center**: Goldsmith argues that remote-controlled mining is proven and that the coming change is scale, not invention. In their account, one surface operator controlling several machines has been routine on their team's work since the 1980s, across tele-robotic drills, scoop trams, longwall systems, and autonomous vehicles. The newer idea is a single command center coordinating mines in different countries: the operator's physical location stops mattering, while the equipment and ore body change and the command architecture stays the same. They attribute the gains to removing underground travel, ending shift changes that move people through shafts, reducing interruptions, improving telecommunications and robotics, and increasing equipment utilization. They cite three rates of return and label them: conventional operations at minus 24%, local surface operations at 33%, described as proven, and centralized command operations at 46%, described as calculated.
- **Fund a repeatable platform, not a single mine**: Goldsmith argues that mining capital usually goes into one asset at a time—a mine, a machine, a processing facility—when the better target is a repeatable deployment model. In their framing, the first mine matters less than what follows: one becomes five, five become twenty, and twenty become a hundred, while operational data, deployment experience, and network effects compound at each step. From that follows their ask: they want the right first capital partner, not just any investor—someone who sees the goal as building a system to produce critical materials rather than owning a single asset. The same logic drives an open recruitment pitch for mine operators, investors, strategic partners, and ecosystem builders.
- **Rebuild the extraction system instead of upgrading components**: Goldsmith argues that most mining innovation improves individual components—a better truck, drill, loader, or communications system—and that startups described as automating mining mostly add robotic haulage and sensors to existing machines. They call that old news, noting that their team members did haulage work in 1988. Their alternative is a system designed from scratch, not conventional loaders and scoop trams converted into robotic versions: pod systems of 21 or more connected components covering robotics, communications, positioning, sensors, drilling, narrow vein targeting, operations, and command centers, integrated into a single extraction architecture. They say the next generation is already being drafted.
- **Space as a test of how people govern, not a hardware problem**: A different strand of Goldsmith's writing asks what happens when humanity must rethink how it governs, collaborates, builds trust, and solves problems. In this argument, the Moon is usually treated as a technology challenge or a waste of money, but it may be one of the few goals powerful enough to force that rethink because it removes baseline assumptions such as air, water, travel, gravity, security, and governance. They conclude that the lessons worth learning concern people and shared survival, not rockets. The post introduces the idea and links to a longer piece.

## Work to read

- [The Future of Mining Is Not Underground. It's in Command Centers.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_mining-robotics-ai-activity-7472279299585155072-iv3K)
- [We Only Get Paid If We Deliver.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_mining-robotics-ai-activity-7476273191074619393-uZc0)
- [No One Is Building This Category.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_mining-robotics-ai-activity-7472656379011506176-UU2u)
- [Most capital in mining is deployed one project at a time.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_mining-robotics-ai-activity-7475192527147421696-QFnZ)
- [Today we're looking for partners. Tomorrow we may be your competition.](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_mining-robotics-ai-activity-7474819748577325056-CqKG)
- [The Moon as a Catalyst: Reframing Governance](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidallengoldsmith_the-moon-as-a-catalyst-reframing-governance-activity-7472649199130394624-Iojm)

## Brand relationships

- **Mearth Infinium** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Project MoonHut** (mention)

## Partnerships

Goldsmith’s posts invite commercial partners for the mining venture they promote: mine operators willing to host its autonomous mining systems, capital investors, and strategic or ecosystem partners. The company is not selling equipment and expects to be paid when material is produced, so a partnership conversation centers on production results rather than a media fee. The posts invite readers to start an introductory conversation and point to a presentation link. Ask Goldsmith for the appropriate inquiry link; no official partnership page or intake form is verified.

## Alternatives

- William "Hopper" Thomas: Choose William "Hopper" Thomas when the decision is about where the material physically comes from, not how it is dug. His two posts focus on the recovery end of the same critical-minerals problem: retired office electronics picked up in Kansas City, copper-bearing boards, heatsinks and wire sorted out, and that copper kept in a domestic supply chain. He ties shop-floor practice to policies a fund can act on — the CHARM Act directing the EPA to write a national recovery strategy from e-waste, old mine sites and coal ash; the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve (Project Vault), with Glencore and Mercuria named as the first buyers of listed metals; and a $16.3 million DOE proving ground at Missouri S&T covering underground testing and the energy cost of crushing ore. For an investor testing whether recycled feedstock can take real volume out of new mining, he is the most concrete voice of the three. He also gives anyone holding retired equipment a clear next step.
- Kristi Rogers: Choose Kristi Rogers when a campaign is about strategic risk rather than mine economics: what a mineral supply chain looks like when treated as a national-security problem. Rogers writes about two convenings — a National Security Institute discussion on Capitol Hill about securing U.S. armament stockpiles, alongside speakers from the American Enterprise Institute, the Reagan Institute and NioCorp, and a panel on illicit networks and gray-zone activity at a critical minerals and rare earths conference. The arguments pinpoint where the danger lies: downstream, not at the mine, as minerals are bought, aggregated, exported, processed and laundered into legitimate supply chains. They also address modernising stockpiles across logistics, energy, storage, workforce and host-nation collaboration. For a firm weighing sanctions exposure, corruption risk or the policy tailwind behind domestic production, Rogers frames the issue in the language of states and defence buyers.
- Ed V.: Choose Ed V. when the question turns on people: whether a mine or a defence plant can be staffed, and whether leadership can keep up with growth. The workforce post makes a scheduling argument a fund can use: a new mine takes three to five years to build and about the same to develop the operators and maintainers, so the hiring pipeline should start at groundbreaking rather than near completion. It names working programs rather than simply asserting a shortage: Colorado School of Mines expanding mining engineering enrollment through scholarships, Missouri S&T combining classroom work with an experimental mine, Freeport-McMoRan funding community college students from industrial automation to maintenance with paid internships, and Bevill State turning high school graduates into MSHA-certified miners on full-motion simulators. It also sizes the gap — roughly 600 mining engineering students nationwide against more than 200,000 mining workers retiring by 2029 — and extends the same logic to the defence industrial base through the Build Freedom program. The second post applies a scaling frame drawn from defence startups to a business outgrowing its leadership, a judgement investors make about a founder-run company.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/