The amount of data in exploration today is vast, much more than any one person or team can fully unpack and interpret on their own. This is where DORA, VRIFY’s AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, plays a vital role. By putting this AI platform into the hands of their geoscience team, Cartier Resources was able to identify new high-potential targets in the heart of the historic mining region of Val-d’Or, Quebec.
Revisiting this prolific district with AI, Cartier is pushing boundaries and demonstrating how legacy data and AI can come together to accelerate intelligent decision making at their Cadillac Project. To date, the output is a targeting strategy that combines historical insight with AI-analysis, giving Cartier the best chance at successfully making the camp’s next high-grade discovery.
The Challenge
The Cadillac region presents a paradox: Rich in opportunity, yet layered with complexity and disparate exploration data sets. With this, Cartier faced four major challenges:
- Identifying and prioritizing previously unknown targets within a data-rich, historically mined district, potentially defying the saying that “all the easy stuff has been found” in known-mining districts
- Delivering unbiased, high-confidence targets on an accelerated timeline, while also aligning with Cartier’s existing technical strategy
- Introducing a progressive and data-driven exploration approach to enhance the efficacy of a conventional exploration campaign
- Articulating the rationale behind technical targeting strategies to investors with clarity and confidence
Despite the region’s history, one key question remained: By applying DORA, could prospective areas that were potentially overlooked or underexplored be identified?
The Process
1. Data Compilation,Standardization and Merging: Cartier and VRIFY worked together to compile, clean, and standardize 158,000 drill-hole assays, 8,500 surface samples, 15,000 structural measurements, district-scale magnetics, EM, gravity data, and several high-resolution IP and VLF surveys.
2. Feature Processing and Engineering: VRIFY’s proprietary algorithms converted raw data layers into 148 derivative geoscientific products (e.g., geochemical maps, lineament density, and structural complexity maps), sharpening signals and adding information to embed further geological context directly into DORA’s models.
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3. AI-Assisted Pattern Recognition: DORA weighted products mapping structural patterns, derivatives of the regional magnetics, and mobile and ore–pathfinder element anomaly maps as important multiparameter features associated with Au mineralization — signatures that human review could have missed. This data-driven approach provided new perspectives on the footprints and controls of Au-mineralization in the Cadillac system.
4. Target Generation and Ranking: Probabilistic predictive modelling produced a refreshed prospectivity map, validating historic resource areas and highlighting multiple areas of high prospectivity outside of the known mineralization.
5. Drill-Ready Program Design: Cartier is planning a 100,000m campaign starting in August 2025 where 25% of the targets being tested are from AI insights generated by DORA. The overall plan calls for approximately 600 holes with two rigs dedicated to expanding known gold zones and evaluating new high-priority, near-asset targets.
6. Investor-Focused Visualization and Iteration: The team prepared an interactive 3D model with target ranking to clearly communicate the rationale behind each collar and established a feedback loop to re-run their models in DORA as new assays arrived.
The Opportunity
By adopting DORA, Cartier has taken a pivotal, data-driven leap toward modernizing their exploration strategy in the Cadillac mining district. Leveraging the project’s rich legacy dataset, DORA was able to rapidly deliver highly contextualized targets, lowering risk and enabling smarter, faster decisions.
Key Opportunities Unlocked by DORA
- Accelerated Target Generation: Converted decades of legacy data into prioritized drill targets and new geological insight, with the potential to identify a new zone of mineralization
- Sharper Focus: AI-assisted analysis flagged and ranked exploration targets, as well as identified under-explored zones with compelling geological signatures that may have been previously overlooked or deprioritized
- Quality Results: Cartier’s high-quality dataset unlocked precision depth modelling with remarkable clarity
- Investor Confidence: Enabled more transparent, data-driven targeting decisions that strengthened technical rationale and investor trust
- Future-Proofed Framework: Bridged historical and modern datasets into a cohesive, dynamic model that is retrained with each new data point, ensuring the model and Cartier’s drill plan get smarter as more on-the-ground testing is completed
- Digital Exploration Leadership: Positioned Cartier as a technology-forward exploration company, setting a benchmark for how mature mining regions can be revitalized with AI
Together, these benefits are redefining what brownfield exploration can look like, while positioning Cartier as an innovator in the mineral exploration space.
"We are very impressed by the results generated from DORA. These results reveal potential extensions of known mineralization laterally and at depth, and more significantly, map out new subsurface zones of high prospectivity. We're particularly excited by the discovery of multiple areas that showed high prospective scores where little to no drilling or modern exploration efforts exist." Adding, "We will drill these areas and have planned contingency drilling to follow up on successes."
Philippe Cloutier, President &, CEO of Cartier Resources
Read the most recent news from Cartier here.
The Future
With an extensive 100,000-metre drill campaign planned over the next 18 months, Cartier Resources is using AI to help focus their efforts and move faster with confidence, blending geoscience expertise with modern technology to drive smarter exploration.
With the models delivering actionable targets and investor-friendly visuals, Cartier is:
- Advancing toward a high-impact drill campaign with 25% of the plan dedicated to testing bluesky targets and those generated by DORA
- Validating each DORA target with multiple drill holes to properly test each area and ensure the highest chance of success
- Exploring hybrid 2D/3D visualization methods for internal and public communications
- Creating new pathways for investor interaction and technical storytelling through immersive media
- Deepening its partnership with VRIFY to expand AI usage in future exploration phases
By pairing DORA, VRIFY’s AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, with Cartier’s geological expertise, the Cadillac Project has entered a new era of data‑driven exploration. Hundreds of new drill metres focused on high‑confidence targets will influence their next chapter, proving that legacy datasets, when paired with AI, can deliver unbiased, game-changing targets.
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To learn more about how AI is supporting mineral exploration processes, book a demo to see how DORA, our AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, can help make game-changing insights.
