Verified
Freeport-McMoRan
Experimenting- Copper mining
- ~29,000 employees
- Chief Innovation Officer owns AI
- AI agents in ~10 areas (Sep 2026)
- No AI return figure
Freeport-McMoRan deploys AI mainly inside its mines and plants: concentrator models it built with McKinsey from 2018, predictive models and a reagent AI program in its leach initiative, and a Phoenix remote operations center that monitors equipment. Chief Innovation Officer Bert Odinet said in Sep 2026 that AI agents now run in about 10 areas, led by sales invoice processing, with significant savings he did not quantify. Freeport-McMoRan has published no return it credits to AI alone.
fcx.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Freeport-McMoRan builds its own process models, starting with TROI, a concentrator model first trained at the Bagdad mine in 2018 with McKinsey, and adds patented predictive leach models and AI agents in about 10 areas (Sep 2026).
- The models
- Freeport-McMoRan has not named the model or agent vendors behind its AI agents; its process models are machine learning built in-house on a central data warehouse, and Bagdad's driverless trucks run on Caterpillar's MineStar Command.
- The reach
- Freeport-McMoRan gives no count of employees using AI tools; Bert Odinet said in Sep 2026 that agents run in about 10 areas and that invoice agents had handled about $500 million of invoices for one product line in 6 months.
- The catch
- Freeport-McMoRan credits its largest technology gain, 214 million pounds of extra leach copper in 2025, to new applications, technologies and data analytics alongside additives and operating practice, gives AI no share, and has put no dollar figure on its invoice agents' savings.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~29,000 (Dec 2025)
- 13,900 in the U.S., 7,300 in South America, 6,600 in Indonesia (2025 Form 10-K)
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- No IT or AI spending figure in the 2025 Form 10-K or Annual Report
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- A central data science group worked with site teams (McKinsey); the Tucson leach lab has 15 staff (Nov 2025)
- Who owns AI
- Bert Odinet
- SVP and Chief Innovation Officer; leads innovation, corporate information systems and financial shared services
- Platform
- In-house process models plus agents
- TROI concentrator model (2018), predictive leach models, Integrated Remote Operations Center (2025)
- Models
- Not disclosed
- No language model or agent vendor named; process models are in-house machine learning
- Reach
- No user count
- AI agents in about 10 areas (Sep 2026)
- Use cases
- Mills, leaching, maintenance, invoicing
- Plus driverless haulage at Bagdad and machine learning in Grasberg levee monitoring
Key findings
Bert Odinet, Freeport-McMoRan's SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, told Fortune on Sep 29, 2026 that the company is implementing AI agents in about 10 areas, led by sales invoice processing, where agents handled about $500 million of invoices for one product line in 6 months with significant cost savings that Freeport-McMoRan has not quantified.
Freeport-McMoRan's leach initiative added 214 million pounds of copper in 2025, the same as in 2024, and 156 million pounds in the first 9 months of 2026; the run rate fell from about 240 million pounds a year in late 2025 to about 220 million in Oct 2026, and the 300 million pound target moved from 2026 to 2027.
Freeport-McMoRan credits the leach gains to new applications, technologies and data analytics, internally developed additives and operating tactics, and gives AI no separate share, although its Nov 2025 Tucson lab was opened to advance the program's reagent artificial intelligence work.
Freeport-McMoRan's 2025 Form 10-K says the Chief Innovation Officer leads innovation and technology initiatives, corporate information systems and financial shared services, with the CIO and CISO reporting to him, and the 2025 sustainability report says the Audit Committee oversees the company's use of AI where it affects financial reporting.
Freeport-McMoRan converted Bagdad's 33 haul trucks to driverless operation in 2025, the first major U.S. mine to do so, placing all 217 displaced drivers who sought new roles, while Kathleen Quirk said in Jan 2026 that the autonomous fleet was not yet performing as expected.
Where Freeport sits
- Stage
- Experimenting
Freeport-McMoRan has reported no business return it credits to AI since May 2025, which keeps it at Experimenting. Bert Odinet told Fortune on Sep 29, 2026 that AI agents processing about $500 million of sales invoices for one product line had delivered significant cost savings, but gave no figure. Freeport-McMoRan's leach initiative added 214 million pounds of copper in 2025 and 156 million pounds in the first 9 months of 2026, which its filings credit to new applications, technologies and data analytics together with internally developed additives and operating tactics, with no share for AI. The Bagdad concentrator gains from the TROI model date from 2018 to 2020 and come from McKinsey, outside the 18-month window. On rollout, Freeport-McMoRan has given no count of employees using AI tools, only Odinet's statement that agents run in about 10 areas. Freeport-McMoRan's AI work since May 2025 is on the record, from the Integrated Remote Operations Center to the agents and the No. 11 place on Fortune's 2026 AIQ 75, so it sits at Experimenting rather than Unknown. A dollar figure for the invoice agents' savings, an AI share of the leach copper, or a stated count of employees using AI under a named owner would move Freeport-McMoRan to Piloting.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- Bert Odinet, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer; the CIO and CISO report to him
- Platform
- Hybrid: Process models built in-house; agent vendors not disclosed; autonomy bought
- Models
- Not disclosed for agents; in-house machine learning process models
- Hosting
- Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud (Accenture contract, 2015) and Nutanix infrastructure at sites; where AI models run is not disclosed
- Reach
- No user count; agents in about 10 areas (Sep 2026)
How they deploy
More copper from existing assets
Freeport-McMoRan turned to AI to get more copper out of its existing mines without building new plants, according to McKinsey, which helped build the TROI concentrator model at Bagdad from 2018. Freeport-McMoRan's focus has since moved to leaching, where Kathleen Quirk said in Apr 2026 that the company leans heavily on innovation in basic mining practices and sees great potential in AI and other tools to improve operating performance.
Data foundation first
Bert Odinet said in Jun 2026 that having every Freeport-McMoRan system, from supply chain and finance to trucks, crushers and SX/EW plants, available for analytics and AI is critical, and that the company had worked on that foundation for the better part of a decade. McKinsey reported that Freeport-McMoRan had standardized performance data, added sensors to trucks, shovels and fixed machines, built a central data warehouse and moved its data architecture to the cloud before scaling its models.
Agents picked by workflow, measured by KPI
Freeport-McMoRan chose agent workflows that were high-volume, manually intensive and data-dependent, starting with sales invoices whose pricing varies with the by-products in each load, Fortune reported in Sep 2026. Bert Odinet said each agentic process has its own KPIs so the company does not fool itself about the agents' success, and that people new to a process should help redesign it.
Automation to grow with fewer new hires
Kathleen Quirk said on the Oct 2026 earnings call that a tight U.S. labor market led Freeport-McMoRan to convert Bagdad to driverless haulage, so that a Bagdad expansion can add autonomous trucks without hiring as many people as it otherwise would. Freeport-McMoRan committed to no job losses from the Bagdad conversion, a phrase Quirk coined, and its 2025 sustainability report says the Phoenix remote operating center also helps it allocate scarce personnel.
- Deployment model
- Freeport-McMoRan runs AI from a central innovation office with delivery in the operations. Bert Odinet, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, leads innovation and technology initiatives, corporate information systems and financial shared services, and the CIO and CISO report to him (2025 Form 10-K). In the Americas, Cory Stevens, President and COO of Freeport-McMoRan Americas and President of FM Technical Services, drives operational and innovation initiatives, Justin Cross leads operational improvement, and the FM Technology Center in Tucson runs leach research. Freeport-McMoRan opened an Integrated Remote Operations Center in Phoenix in 2025 to centralize monitoring of haul trucks, shovels and plants through equipment sensors across its U.S. copper operations. McKinsey described the earlier concentrator work as cross-functional agile teams that paired a central data science group with metallurgists and operators at each site, reusing about 60% of the model code from site to site.
- Model providers
- Freeport-McMoRan has not named a large language model provider or the vendor behind its AI agents. Freeport-McMoRan's process models are its own: TROI, a machine learning model for concentrator throughput and recovery built with McKinsey data scientists, and patented systems that adjust leaching in real time from sensor data and locate unleached copper in stockpiles. Bagdad's 33 driverless haul trucks run on Caterpillar's Cat MineStar Command system, and Freeport-McMoRan signed with Gecko Robotics in 2024 for inspection robots that gather data for machine learning models, Bill Cobb said at the time.
- Data and infrastructure
- Freeport-McMoRan signed a 5-year contract with Accenture in Jul 2015 to move its IT to a hybrid cloud built on Microsoft Azure, with Avanade, a deal Bert Odinet announced as VP and CIO. A Nutanix case study, undated, says Freeport-McMoRan runs mission-critical applications at remote sites on more than 270 Nutanix nodes and uses Nutanix Frame on Azure for engineers' remote workstations. McKinsey reported that Freeport-McMoRan's central data warehouse captures second-by-second readings from equipment sensors and that its data architecture had moved to the cloud. Freeport-McMoRan has not said which cloud or data center its AI models and agents run on, and its 2025 Form 10-K notes that some of its systems are managed by third parties and that it carries no cyber risk insurance.
Platforms and internal tools
TROI concentrator modelOct 2018
TROI (throughput, recovery, optimization and intelligence) is a machine learning model Freeport-McMoRan built with McKinsey at its Bagdad, Arizona concentrator to predict plant behavior and recommend mill settings for each ore type every 1 to 3 hours. Freeport-McMoRan later packaged TROI for its other Americas concentrators under the Americas' Concentrator program, according to McKinsey; Freeport-McMoRan has not reported on TROI in its own filings since then.
Leach predictive models and the Center for Innovative SolutionsNov 2025 (Tucson lab)
Freeport-McMoRan's leach initiative uses patented systems, including a predictive model that adjusts leaching in real time from sensor data and a system that finds unleached copper in stockpiles for deep raffinate injection. Freeport-McMoRan opened the Center for Innovative Solutions in Tucson in Nov 2025, with more than 200 column cells and 15 employees, to speed its Leach to the Last Drop and reagent artificial intelligence initiatives.
- Users
- 15 employees at the Tucson lab (Nov 2025)
AI agentsBy 2026
Freeport-McMoRan is implementing AI agents in about 10 areas, Bert Odinet told Fortune in Sep 2026; sales invoice processing, where pricing depends on the by-products in each load, is the largest, and agents processed about $500 million of invoices for one product line in 6 months before a planned extension to other product lines.
Integrated Remote Operations Center2025
Freeport-McMoRan's Integrated Remote Operations Center in Phoenix centralizes functions that need no presence at a mine, such as monitoring haul trucks, shovels and plants through equipment sensors, across the U.S. copper operations. Bert Odinet said in Jun 2026 that the center standardizes monitoring and response and gives AI a clearer view of operating standards, and Freeport-McMoRan job postings tie it to a Remote Asset Monitoring Process for equipment health across North American sites.
Bagdad Autonomous Haulage SystemMar 2025 (command center); full fleet Oct 2025
Bagdad's 33 Caterpillar 793 haul trucks run driverless on Cat MineStar Command, controlled from a command center that opened in Mar 2025; the fleet had moved more than 50 million tons by May 2026, and Bagdad is the only Freeport-McMoRan site with autonomous haulage. Freeport-McMoRan describes the system as automation and does not call it AI.
Vendors and partners
McKinsey & Company2018
Built the TROI concentrator model with Freeport-McMoRan teams · McKinsey data scientists worked with Bagdad metallurgists and operators from 2018 and published the program as a case study in Feb 2020.
CaterpillarJul 2023
Cat MineStar Command autonomy for Bagdad's haul trucks · Freeport-McMoRan announced the Bagdad conversion in Jul 2023 and closed the implementation phase on Oct 1, 2025.
Microsoft Azure, Accenture and AvanadeJul 2015
Hybrid cloud for corporate IT · Accenture signed a 5-year contract in Jul 2015 to move Freeport-McMoRan's IT to the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure; later terms are not public.
Nutanix
Infrastructure for applications at remote mine sites; Frame on Azure for engineers · Described in an undated Nutanix case study covering more than 270 nodes.
Gecko RoboticsSep 2024
Inspection robots that gather data for machine learning · Bill Cobb said at the Financial Times Mining Summit in Sep 2024 that Freeport-McMoRan had just signed with Gecko Robotics.
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
Central innovation office over IT and security; delivery through the Americas operations and technical services
Freeport-McMoRan places AI, information systems and cybersecurity under Bert Odinet, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, whose remit also covers financial shared services; the CIO and CISO both report to him (2025 Form 10-K). Freeport-McMoRan Americas, led by President and COO Cory Stevens, carries operational and innovation initiatives at the mines, including the leach program and FM Technical Services. The Integrated Remote Operations Center in Phoenix, opened in 2025, centralizes equipment monitoring for the U.S. copper operations.
Freeport-McMoRan has not published how many data scientists, AI engineers or technologists it employs. McKinsey described a central data science group that worked with metallurgists and operators at each site, Freeport-McMoRan's Tucson leach lab had 15 employees in Nov 2025, and the Integrated Remote Operations Center in Phoenix is staffed through roles such as remote asset monitoring supervisors and engineers. Freeport-McMoRan had about 29,000 employees and about 65,500 contractor personnel at the end of 2025.
Reporting lines
Board of Directors
Richard Adkerson, Chairman
Audit Committee oversees AI use as it affects financial reporting and reviews IT security at least annually
President and CEO
Kathleen Quirk
Chief Innovation Office
Bert Odinet, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer
Innovation and technology initiatives, corporate information systems and financial shared services; the line to the CEO is inferred, not published
Chief Information Officer
Not named in the 2025 Form 10-K; responsible for the strategy, deployment and risk management of technology systems
Chief Information Security Officer
Not named in the 2025 Form 10-K; reports on cybersecurity to management and the Audit Committee
Chief Financial Officer
Freeport-McMoRan Americas and FM Technical Services
Cory Stevens, President and COO
FM Technology Center and Center for Innovative Solutions, Tucson
Leach research; reporting line inferred from Cory Stevens's remit over technical services
Integrated Remote Operations Center, Phoenix
Opened 2025; reporting line not published
Bagdad operation
Jeff Monteith, General Manager
Freeport-McMoRan's 2025 Form 10-K and 2025 Annual Report list Bert Odinet as SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, with separate CIO and CISO roles reporting to him, while Fortune's Sep 2026 article calls him SVP and CIO. Neither filing names the current CIO or CISO, and Freeport-McMoRan has not published Odinet's reporting line or where the Integrated Remote Operations Center sits.
Where the AI workforce sits
Chief Innovation Office, including information systems, cybersecurity and data science
Freeport-McMoRan has not published a headcount for its central technology or data science staff.
Not disclosedOperations, technical services and site teams
Metallurgists and operators sat on every site's model-development team in the concentrator program (McKinsey); the Tucson leach lab had 15 staff in Nov 2025.
Not disclosed
Named people
Use cases
Freeport-McMoRan uses AI in concentrator optimization, leach recovery, equipment monitoring and maintenance, tailings and levee monitoring at Grasberg, and AI agents in about 10 business areas led by sales invoice processing. Freeport-McMoRan has published no return it credits to AI for any of them: Bert Odinet called the invoice agents' savings significant without a figure (Sep 2026), and the 214 million pounds of extra leach copper in 2025 is credited to new applications, technologies and data analytics together with additives and operating tactics. The Bagdad concentrator gains from 2018 come from McKinsey and are too old to count. Freeport-McMoRan reports no firm-level AI return.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI agents for sales invoice processing Freeport-McMoRan uses AI agents to process sales invoices whose pricing varies with the by-products in each load; the agents handled about $500 million of invoices for one product line over 6 months, Bert Odinet said in Sep 2026, with significant cost savings he did not quantify and plans to extend to other product lines. | Finance and commercial | In production | |
| AI agents in other high-volume workflows Freeport-McMoRan is implementing AI agents in about 10 areas chosen for high volume, manual effort and data dependence, each with its own KPIs, Bert Odinet told Fortune in Sep 2026; Freeport-McMoRan has not named the other areas. | Enterprise workflows | Pilot | |
| Leach recovery models and reagent AI Freeport-McMoRan uses sensors, data analytics and patented predictive models to steer leach solution into dry parts of its stockpiles, and its Tucson lab advances a reagent artificial intelligence initiative alongside new additives. Freeport-McMoRan reports incremental leach copper of 214 million pounds in 2025 and 156 million pounds in the first 9 months of 2026, credited to new applications, technologies and data analytics, additives and operating tactics with no AI share. | Americas mining operations | In production | |
| TROI concentrator optimization TROI recommends mill settings by ore type at Freeport-McMoRan's concentrators. McKinsey reported that Bagdad's throughput passed 85,000 tons of ore a day in one quarter of 2018, 10% above the prior quarter, with recovery up one point, and that the gains let Freeport-McMoRan avoid most of a planned $200 million expansion (Feb 2020); Freeport-McMoRan has not updated those figures. | Americas mining operations | In production | |
| Equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance Freeport-McMoRan's Integrated Remote Operations Center in Phoenix monitors haul trucks, shovels and plants through equipment sensors, and Bert Odinet said in Jun 2026 that AI analyzes truck data to find maintenance issues, judge their urgency and trigger a response. | Maintenance and remote operations | In production | |
| Driverless haulage at Bagdad Bagdad runs 33 driverless Caterpillar haul trucks on Cat MineStar Command, the first fully autonomous haulage fleet at a major U.S. mine, and more than 200 drivers moved to other jobs. Kathleen Quirk said in Jan 2026 that the fleet was not yet delivering the performance Freeport-McMoRan expected; Freeport-McMoRan calls the system automation, not AI. | Americas mining operations | In production | |
| Machine learning in tailings and levee monitoring PT Freeport Indonesia's engineers use machine learning to find patterns in geophysical data and satellite radar (InSAR) imagery for monitoring levees and embankments in the lowland tailings area around Grasberg, according to the 2025 sustainability report. | Indonesia (PT Freeport Indonesia) | In production | |
| Light vehicle telematics at Morenci Morenci trialed a telematics system in 2025 that combines GPS tracking, risk detection and fatigue monitoring in light vehicles, part of what Freeport-McMoRan calls technology with integrated AI; early results showed fewer safety events, lower maintenance costs and less idle time, without figures. | Safety | Pilot | |
| Inspection robots feeding machine learning Freeport-McMoRan contracted Gecko Robotics in 2024 for robots that inspect equipment and generate data for machine learning, Bill Cobb said in Sep 2024; Freeport-McMoRan has not reported on the deployment since. | Maintenance | Announced |
Adoption
Freeport-McMoRan spread AI through its operations before its offices: a standardized data warehouse and sensors about a decade before 2018, the TROI concentrator model at Bagdad in 2018 and then across the Americas, AI and data analytics in leaching by 2021, driverless haulage and a remote operations center in 2025, and AI agents in about 10 business areas by Sep 2026. Freeport-McMoRan has not said how many of its roughly 29,000 employees use AI tools, whether staff have a general-purpose AI assistant, or how many models are in production. Fortune ranked Freeport-McMoRan No. 11 on its 2026 AIQ 75, up from No. 31 in 2025, on a survey of technology leaders, not on reported returns.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
Jul 2015
Freeport-McMoRan signed a 5-year contract with Accenture to move its IT to a hybrid cloud on Microsoft Azure, with Bert Odinet as VP and CIO.
Oct 2018
Freeport-McMoRan's Bagdad team began running the TROI model's mill recommendations, which McKinsey said lifted copper output 5% and throughput 10% in a quarter.
Jul 2021
Richard Adkerson described a breakthrough in Freeport-McMoRan's leaching technology using AI and data analytics on the second-quarter call.
Jul 2023
Freeport-McMoRan announced it would convert Bagdad's haul truck fleet to autonomous operation with Caterpillar.
Sep 2024
Bill Cobb said Freeport-McMoRan had signed with Gecko Robotics for inspection robots that feed machine learning models.
2025
Freeport-McMoRan established an integrated remote operating center in Phoenix for its U.S. operations.
Mar 2025
Bagdad's autonomous command center came online, and the driverless fleet grew to 15 trucks by May 2025.
Oct 2025
Freeport-McMoRan closed the Bagdad autonomy implementation on Oct 1 with all 33 trucks running, and placed No. 31 on Fortune's first AIQ 50 list.
Nov 2025
Freeport-McMoRan opened the Center for Innovative Solutions in Tucson to speed its leach and reagent artificial intelligence work.
Sep 2026
Bert Odinet said Freeport-McMoRan is implementing AI agents in about 10 areas, led by sales invoice processing.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology budget
Freeport-McMoRan does not disclose a technology or AI budget. Freeport-McMoRan expects capital expenditures of about $4.4 billion in 2026 and $5.2 billion in 2027, and said in Oct 2026 that the 2027 increase mainly reflects mining equipment for productivity improvements in the U.S. and cost inflation; neither figure is broken out for technology.
What AI itself costs
Freeport-McMoRan has not published what it spends on AI models, agents, cloud compute or data science staff, and has given no cost for the Integrated Remote Operations Center or the Tucson leach lab.
Reported ROI
Freeport-McMoRan has reported no return it credits to AI alone in the last 18 months. Bert Odinet told Fortune in Sep 2026 that AI agents processing about $500 million of invoices for one product line realized significant cost savings, without a figure. Freeport-McMoRan's leach initiative added 214 million pounds of copper in both 2024 and 2025 and 156 million pounds in the first 9 months of 2026, credited to new applications, technologies and data analytics together with additives and operating tactics; the run rate stood at about 220 million pounds a year in Oct 2026, against about 240 million in late 2025, and the 300 million pound target moved from 2026 to 2027. McKinsey reported in Feb 2020 that the Bagdad concentrator model let Freeport-McMoRan avoid most of a planned $200 million expansion, and later estimated a systemwide opportunity of 200 million pounds a year worth $350 million to $500 million of EBITDA, a projection Freeport-McMoRan has not confirmed.
Productivity and headcount
Freeport-McMoRan had about 29,000 employees at Dec 31, 2025, plus about 65,500 contractor personnel. The Bagdad autonomy conversion displaced more than 200 haul truck drivers, and all 217 who sought new roles were placed by Sep 2025, including about 80 in other mine jobs and 15 retrained for the autonomous system. Kathleen Quirk said in Oct 2026 that autonomy lets a Bagdad expansion scale without needing as many people, and that productivity gains from technology are the biggest driver for controlling unit costs; Freeport-McMoRan has not put a cost or headcount figure on either.
Governance and risk
Board oversight
Freeport-McMoRan's Audit Committee oversees information technology security, cybersecurity and the company's use of technology, including AI, to the extent it affects financial reporting and internal controls, according to the 2025 sustainability report. Freeport-McMoRan's board discussed technology and innovation initiatives, including AI, among its key topics in 2025, and the Audit Committee hears from the Chief Innovation Officer at least once a year on IT security.
Management of technology risk
Freeport-McMoRan's CIO and CISO lead cybersecurity risk management and report to the Chief Innovation Officer, who sits on the enterprise risk management committee (2025 Form 10-K). Freeport-McMoRan runs annual cybersecurity training, quarterly phishing tests and independent reviews of its security program at least once a year, and does not carry cyber risk insurance.
Disclosed AI risks
Freeport-McMoRan's 2025 Form 10-K says it uses AI in software and platforms to produce copper, improve business processes and respond to threats, may apply AI in decision support, material characterization, equipment reliability, extraction optimization and remote or autonomous operation, and that AI use may raise its exposure to cyberattacks and to leaks of confidential information.
Measuring agents
Freeport-McMoRan sets specific KPIs for each agentic process to check that the agents deliver the intended outcome, Bert Odinet told Fortune in Sep 2026. Odinet said in Oct 2026 that value comes from putting AI in the hands of people who will be honest about the results and willing to change how they work.
Workforce commitments
Freeport-McMoRan committed that no Bagdad haul truck driver would lose a job with the company because of the autonomy conversion, and its 2025 sustainability report says it offers affected workers other jobs as it centralizes site functions in the Phoenix remote operating center.
Recent signals
Oct 27, 2026
Freeport-McMoRan reported 55 million pounds of incremental leach copper in the third quarter, cut its leach run rate to about 220 million pounds a year and moved its 300 million pound target to 2027, while lab tests of a next-generation additive showed more than 4 times the recoveries of the first.
Oct 27, 2026
Kathleen Quirk said on the Q3 call that a tight labor market led Freeport-McMoRan to driverless trucks at Bagdad so an expansion can scale without as many new hires.
Oct 6, 2026
Freeport-McMoRan rose to No. 11 on Fortune's 2026 AIQ 75 from No. 31 in 2025, the only mining company on the survey-based list.
Sep 29, 2026
Bert Odinet told Fortune that Freeport-McMoRan is implementing AI agents in about 10 areas and that invoice agents handled about $500 million of invoices for one product line in 6 months.
Aug 2026
Freeport-McMoRan's second-quarter Form 10-Q reported 47 million pounds of incremental leach copper in the quarter and still targeted a 300 million pound run rate by the end of 2026.
Jun 29, 2026
Bert Odinet said making all Freeport-McMoRan systems available for analytics and AI is critical, citing AI that flags haul truck maintenance issues and the Integrated Remote Operations Center.
May 13, 2026
Bagdad's driverless fleet passed 50 million tons of material moved, the only autonomous haulage operation at Freeport-McMoRan.
Apr 23, 2026
Kathleen Quirk said Freeport-McMoRan sees great potential in AI and other tools to improve operating performance, and that a heated-leach pilot had started at Morenci.
Apr 22, 2026
Freeport-McMoRan's 2025 sustainability report described machine learning in Grasberg levee monitoring, the Phoenix remote operating center and Audit Committee oversight of AI use.
Feb 13, 2026
Freeport-McMoRan's 2025 Form 10-K named AI among the systems it uses to lower costs and among its cybersecurity risks, and put the CIO and CISO under the Chief Innovation Officer.
Jan 22, 2026
Kathleen Quirk said Bagdad's autonomous fleet was not yet delivering the performance Freeport-McMoRan expected, as the company reported 214 million pounds of leach copper for 2025.
Nov 24, 2025
Freeport-McMoRan opened the Center for Innovative Solutions in Tucson for its Leach to the Last Drop and reagent artificial intelligence initiatives.
Nov 2025
Freeport-McMoRan named Cory Stevens President and COO of the Americas, effective Dec 1, 2025.
Quick answers
- How does Freeport-McMoRan deploy AI?
- Freeport-McMoRan deploys AI mainly inside its mines and plants: concentrator models it built with McKinsey from 2018, predictive models and a reagent AI program in its leach initiative, and a Phoenix remote operations center that monitors equipment. Chief Innovation Officer Bert Odinet said in Sep 2026 that AI agents now run in about 10 areas, led by sales invoice processing, with significant savings he did not quantify. Freeport-McMoRan has published no return it credits to AI alone.
- What does Freeport-McMoRan use AI for?
- Freeport-McMoRan uses AI in concentrator optimization, leach recovery, equipment monitoring and maintenance, tailings and levee monitoring at Grasberg, and AI agents in about 10 business areas led by sales invoice processing. Freeport-McMoRan has published no return it credits to AI for any of them: Bert Odinet called the invoice agents' savings significant without a figure (Sep 2026), and the 214 million pounds of extra leach copper in 2025 is credited to new applications, technologies and data analytics together with additives and operating tactics. The Bagdad concentrator gains from 2018 come from McKinsey and are too old to count. Freeport-McMoRan reports no firm-level AI return.
- Who leads AI at Freeport-McMoRan?
- AI at Freeport-McMoRan is led by Bert Odinet (Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer); Justin Cross (Vice President, Operational Improvement). Ownership of AI on the org chart: Bert Odinet, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer; the CIO and CISO report to him.
- What AI platform does Freeport-McMoRan use?
- Freeport-McMoRan builds its own process models, starting with TROI, a concentrator model first trained at the Bagdad mine in 2018 with McKinsey, and adds patented predictive leach models and AI agents in about 10 areas (Sep 2026).
- Which AI models does Freeport-McMoRan use?
- Freeport-McMoRan has not named the model or agent vendors behind its AI agents; its process models are machine learning built in-house on a central data warehouse, and Bagdad's driverless trucks run on Caterpillar's MineStar Command.
- How many Freeport employees use AI?
- Freeport-McMoRan gives no count of employees using AI tools; Bert Odinet said in Sep 2026 that agents run in about 10 areas and that invoice agents had handled about $500 million of invoices for one product line in 6 months.
- What return has Freeport-McMoRan reported from AI?
- Freeport-McMoRan has reported no business return it credits to AI since May 2025, which keeps it at Experimenting. Bert Odinet told Fortune on Sep 29, 2026 that AI agents processing about $500 million of sales invoices for one product line had delivered significant cost savings, but gave no figure. Freeport-McMoRan's leach initiative added 214 million pounds of copper in 2025 and 156 million pounds in the first 9 months of 2026, which its filings credit to new applications, technologies and data analytics together with internally developed additives and operating tactics, with no share for AI. The Bagdad concentrator gains from the TROI model date from 2018 to 2020 and come from McKinsey, outside the 18-month window. On rollout, Freeport-McMoRan has given no count of employees using AI tools, only Odinet's statement that agents run in about 10 areas. Freeport-McMoRan's AI work since May 2025 is on the record, from the Integrated Remote Operations Center to the agents and the No. 11 place on Fortune's 2026 AIQ 75, so it sits at Experimenting rather than Unknown. A dollar figure for the invoice agents' savings, an AI share of the leach copper, or a stated count of employees using AI under a named owner would move Freeport-McMoRan to Piloting.
Open questions
- What dollar savings have Freeport-McMoRan's invoice-processing agents delivered, and which model or agent vendor runs them?
- What share of Freeport-McMoRan's incremental leach copper comes from AI models and reagent AI, as distinct from additives, heat and operating tactics?
- Does TROI still run at Freeport-McMoRan's concentrators, and what does it return now, beyond McKinsey's 2018 to 2020 figures?
- Which cloud or data center hosts Freeport-McMoRan's AI models and agents, and which large language models does it use, if any?
- How many Freeport-McMoRan employees use AI tools, and does the company offer staff a general-purpose AI assistant?
- Which other areas are among Freeport-McMoRan's roughly 10 agent deployments?
- Who are Freeport-McMoRan's current CIO and CISO, whom the 2025 Form 10-K describes without naming, and is Bert Odinet also CIO, as Fortune wrote?
- Has Bagdad's autonomous fleet reached the performance Freeport-McMoRan expected, and what has it done to cost per ton?
Sources
Company
- Freeport: America at 250, Breaking Ground, Bert Odinet on AI (Jun 29, 2026)
- Freeport: Freeport climbs to No. 11 on Fortune's AIQ 75 list (Oct 6, 2026)
- Freeport: Named among top companies generating results using AI (Oct 16, 2025)
- Freeport: New leaching lab opens doors in Tucson (Nov 24, 2025)
- Freeport: Bagdad autonomous haulage passes 50-million-ton mark (May 13, 2026)
- Freeport: Bagdad autonomous haulage fleet conversion fully implemented (Oct 1, 2025)
- Freeport: Bagdad's autonomous command center comes online (May 21, 2025)
- Freeport: Kathleen L. Quirk biography
- Freeport: Cory Stevens biography
- Freeport: 2025 Annual Report on Sustainability (Apr 22, 2026)
- Job posting: Lead Supervisor, Integrated Remote Operations Center, RAMP, Phoenix
Filings and results
- Freeport-McMoRan 2025 Form 10-K (Feb 13, 2026)
- Freeport-McMoRan 2025 Annual Report
- Freeport-McMoRan third-quarter 2026 results (Oct 27, 2026)
- Freeport-McMoRan second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q
- Freeport-McMoRan fourth-quarter 2025 results (Jan 2026)
- Business Wire: Freeport announces appointment of Cory Stevens (Nov 4, 2025)
Earnings calls
Partners and vendors
- McKinsey: Inside a mining company's AI transformation (Feb 5, 2020)
- McKinsey: Freeport-McMoRan turns data into value
- Accenture: Accenture and Avanade to help Freeport-McMoRan implement a cloud-based IT model on Microsoft Azure (Jul 15, 2015)
- Nutanix case study via CaseStudies.com: Freeport-McMoRan global mining operations
News
- Fortune: Agentic AI early adopters have failed, pivoted, and learned these 3 lessons (Sep 29, 2026)
- Fortune: AIQ 75 ranking and methodology (2026)
- International Mining: Freeport to introduce Gecko robots to power AI inputs (Oct 2024)
- The Northern Miner podcast, episode 249: Freeport leaching technology using AI and data analytics (Jul 2021)
- MINING.COM: Freeport-McMoRan names Kathleen Quirk as CEO (Feb 2024)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Freeport-McMoRan profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 5, 2026
