A Canadian AI mining startup announced Katie Zacharia as an adviser next to Kristi Noem. Her camp now calls that release fake, and the company has since rebuilt itself again.
A small Vancouver mining company, NovaRed, announced on June 24 that Katie Zacharia was joining its advisory board, eight days after naming former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem as an adviser. Zacharia, later fired after five days as White House press secretary, now calls the announcement fake. A friend says it went out without her consent, though talks about a role did happen.
The company has reinvented itself since. Renamed NRED Intelligent Mining, it dropped its copper-gold project in October and put everything into MetalCore, an AI platform meant to rank places worth exploring. In November it added more than 93,000 helium readings from public well records and changed its board again.
“That was fake.” That is how Katie Zacharia, the White House press secretary fired after five days on the job, answered when asked whether she still sat on the advisory board of a small Canadian mining company that had been promoting her name since June.
The company, now called NRED Intelligent Mining, is a tiny Vancouver outfit that has rebranded itself around artificial intelligence. Its story is a useful case study for anyone who invests in, or simply reads about, small AI startups: a press release can announce big names, those names can deny any involvement, and the business underneath can change shape in a matter of months. Here is what the Katie Zacharia AI startup link actually was, what the company does now, and what to take from it.
On June 24, NovaRed Mining, as it was then called, put out a release saying Zacharia was joining its advisory board. She had left a job as a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson two months earlier, where she worked under Kristi Noem as a deputy assistant press secretary for about a month.
The release said she would give the board strategic advice on exploration projects and on new AI work. It landed eight days after NovaRed announced Noem herself as a strategic adviser. An archived copy of the company website listed Zacharia among management from at least July.
Her résumé was already under a spotlight during her short White House stint, when she had to admit she never passed the California bar despite describing herself as an attorney for years.
Zacharia’s camp says she never actually joined. Sam Amsterdam, a marketing and media consultant who spoke as her friend and colleague rather than as her representative, said the release went out without her approval or consent. He did say there had been talks about a role. Amsterdam’s brother is listed in NRED management on the company’s site.
The company’s new chief executive, Valentin Saitarli, backed up the outline: there were discussions, but the role “never materialized,” he said, comparing it to buying a gym membership and never working out. Even so, the original release was still live on NRED’s website after her denial, and Saitarli said the site was being updated.
That is the reason the headline here stresses that the claim was never approved by her. The company announced it; she says she never signed off on it.
NovaRed started as a copper and gold explorer with no revenue. In January it held $65,689 in cash and warned that wouldn’t cover its expected costs for the next 12 months. Noem’s appointment also drew anger in Canada, where people recalled her calling the country the 51st state.
Then the advisory board filled up with people who weren’t geologists. Phil Ehr, a retired US Navy commander now running for Congress in Florida as a Democrat, joined early in the year and admitted he knew nothing about mining. He said Noem and a second DHS spokesperson, whom he recalls as Zacharia, appeared on the board without anyone consulting him, and he quit not long after. Other names included media executive Lee Caplin, a coproducer of True Detective, and Gregory Fedun, a past adviser to the Al Mualla royal family in the United Arab Emirates.
On October 7, the renamed NRED said it would walk away from the two option agreements behind its Wilmac copper-gold project. All its resources now go to MetalCore, which it calls an AI-driven mineral exploration platform, plus robotics and automation for mining. Saitarli replaced Brian Goss as president and CEO.
MetalCore is meant to rank promising spots to explore by combining many kinds of data into one probability score. NRED says it pulls together rock chemistry, geophysical surveys, local geology, structural trends, old reports, nearby deposits and property details. It has filed a provisional US patent application for the platform, which also mentions a blockchain-based system for verifying documents.
In a provisional filing, a company stakes an early claim while it finishes the invention. It is not a granted patent.
The latest move came in November. After the US Department of Energy added helium to its Critical Material List on October 23, NRED loaded 93,967 helium gas analyses from 52,148 wells in Canada and the US into MetalCore. The data comes from public records kept by regulators and geological surveys, and NRED says it hasn’t checked those records itself. It also says the readings don’t prove any helium can be recovered profitably, and that it owns no helium property.
The same announcement added Valentina Rozental to the board, while Brian Goss and Benjamin Asuncion stepped down as directors.
The practical lesson is simple: a press release is the company talking, not proof. Small listed firms can name famous advisers, and those people can later say they never agreed. When a junior company suddenly calls itself an AI business, look for three things before you trust the hype.
None of this means MetalCore can’t work. Combining scattered geological records is a reasonable use for AI. It does mean the people around a company and the product it sells are two separate questions.
NovaRed, now NRED Intelligent Mining, announced in June that she was joining its advisory board. She says that was fake, and the company’s CEO says talks happened but the role never materialized.
A small Vancouver company that dropped its copper-gold project in October to focus on MetalCore, an AI platform that scores places to explore for minerals.
The company named the former Homeland Security secretary a strategic adviser in June. She did not immediately answer a request for comment.
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