VelesLabs.ai Pre-seed $1M
john@veleslabs.ai
September 2026
September 2026
Building an AI powered x-ray for the Earth’s subsurface.
Sparse data in, layers and traps out. The same model serves oil and gas, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and geological hydrogen.
JEPA inference
Measured: three wells and their logs
Inferred by JENNIFER
Summary
- Between wells, the rock is unmeasured, new acreage is sparsely measured, someone still has to decide what is there before a well is drilled.
- We are building a “World Model” of the Earth’s crust that can be queried like a system, not like an exploration survey.
- It will be trained on open data from the Norwegian DISKOS database, the best public basin-scale database in the world.
- Norway is the market entry point, selling model licenses that will work for subsurface intelligence needs in CCS, geological hydrogen, and oil and gas.
- Ships as a licence pack and an API / MCP endpoint into existing subsurface tools.
Market
- 50% of oil remains undiscovered in Norway (Sodir, 2026)
- 70 new offshore areas available for exploration in 2026 (Norwegian Ministry of Energy, 2026)
- Expert Analytics offers market connections (e.g., Vår Energi meeting October) through their own clients and relationships with oil and gas industry in Norway
- Total Addressable Market: $19B/year globally on exploration (Wood Mackenzie, 2026)
- Serviceable Available Market: $3.5B/year exploration in Norway (Norsk Petroleum, 2026)
Pre-seed Ask: $1M
Validation
- Founder’s published data fusion research on serpentinization/white hydrogen (Aiken, 2022; 2025; 2026)
- Founder developed prototype model with multivariate zero-shot prediction on well quantities like seismic velocity and lithology (Aiken, in-review)
The Team
John M. Aiken, PhD
Founder, AI in Geosciences, Recurser, South Park Commons, Full time
Jack Whattam, PhD
Geologist, rift basins, volcanic-sedimentary systems, CCS, mining, University of Oslo, 20% commitment
Advisers
Ola Skavhaug, PhD
Market Adviser, CEO Expert Analytics
Thorsten Becker, PhD
Adviser, Computational Geoscience, Distinguished Chair in Geophysics, UT-Austin
Milestones
Month 1-4: data curriculum, model architecture, and training infrastructure
Month 4-8: Model training and validation, prediction on withheld NCS data
Month 8-12: Pilot program with partner company (e.g., Vår Energi)