How Microsoft Discovery is speeding BHP’s copper innovation — critical to the energy transition

Geochemists and data scientists at BHP, the world's largest mining company, have assessed over 500,000 chemical reagents with the potential to more effectively extract copper-a mineral critical for energy infrastructure and countless everyday materials.

They did it with the help of Microsoft Discovery, made generally available today. This comprehensive platform on Azure allows researchers to use agentic AI and other tools to accelerate scientific breakthroughs and R&D. Scientific discovery has been a historically laborious process of trial and error that typically takes place in a lab and requires a series of sequential steps over many years.

"This project is about giving our scientists excellent tools to focus on the most promising copper leaching solutions, sooner. We're excited to be working with Microsoft to achieve this," said BHP Vice President Innovation Jessica Farrell. "It's an incredible example of how technology and human expertise can solve complex problems and shape the future of the mining industry."

Working with Microsoft and computational chemists at Prescience Insilico, the BHP team screened more than half a million molecules that might help extract copper more efficiently.

This involved running tens of thousands of quantum chemistry calculations and simulations and narrowing the field to a number of molecules for testing by scientists in Australian laboratories.

Built on Microsoft's Azure AI infrastructure, Microsoft Discovery accelerates R&D through teams of specialized AI agents trained to perform different R&D functions-from scientific literature reviews and hypothesis generation to experimental simulations and iterative learning, all in a fraction of the time it would take using traditional R&D methods. Powered by high-performance compute, the platform is designed to continuously improve-and provide scientists with information that was previously impractical to gather at the same speed or scale.

Prized for its ability to conduct electricity safely and reliably, copper has surged in demand globally amid the growth of electric vehicles, digital infrastructure and renewable energy.

"Copper is everywhere, from electric vehicles to solar panels, wind turbines and grid infrastructure," said Farrell. "Much of the critical infrastructure and enablers of the energy transition require copper."

But accessing copper has become increasingly difficult, a long-term trend that is driving the search for innovative approaches to copper mining and processing. Copper can be buried deep underground, spread out and of lower grade.

In nature, lower-grade copper deposits are tightly bonded to minerals and rock, requiring special processing to extract the underlying metal. One way to do this is through leaching, a hydrometallurgical process that dissolves copper so it can be recovered through solvent extraction.

"We want to find ways to process copper in new and novel ways, at a higher recovery rate," explained Farrell.

BHP began collaborating with Microsoft Discovery in early 2025. Microsoft Discovery is designed to mimic the scientific method, deploying AI agents equipped with a broad range of digital, physical and analytical tools. Microsoft Discovery's systems work simultaneously and bridge silos common in traditional R&D, connecting different data sources and enabling integration with physical labs, robotics and lab instrumentation.

Farrell said finding a new copper leaching reagent is a challenge scientists have been working on for decades.

"This work is increasing our speed, freeing up our technical experts to do more thoughtful analysis, and it's increasing our chances of success," said Farrell.

Related links:

Read more: Announcing Microsoft Discovery general availability for R&D and Microsoft Discovery app preview

Download: Microsoft Discovery app

Learn more: Microsoft Discovery

Learn more: Discoveries in weeks, not years: How AI and high-performance computing are speeding up scientific discovery

Sally Beatty writes about AI and innovation at Microsoft, focusing on the company's most cutting-edge breakthroughs and how emerging technologies are improving the lives of ordinary people. Previously, Sally was a feature reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York, where she broke news about media and marketing. A California native, Sally lived in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, where she wrote for the Journal about the societal impact of economic and political reforms and consumer spending trends. You can contact Sally on LinkedIn .

Lead image: Prized for its ability to conduct electricity safely and reliably, copper demand has surged globally amid the growth of electric vehicles, digital infrastructure and renewable energy. (Photo courtesy of BHP.)