A model is only as good as its data, and for Roman Teslyuk, the data wasn’t coming fast enough. “I hate delays,” Teslyuk, founder and CEO of Earth AI, told TechCrunch. For the last few years, Earth AI has been searching for critical minerals like copper, platinum, and palladium in parts of Australia where no one thought there would be any. The startup’s AI models suggested a few spots that have proven themselves promising, but locating rock with the highest concentration of minerals has been slower than Teslyuk would like. The problem, he said, was the labs.  “Since we ramped up the drilling capacity, we started getting these massive delays,” he said. Typically, labs that process rock samples for evidence of critical minerals have backlogs of around two months, Teslyuk said. But lately, as interest in developing new sources has jumped, the delays have more than doubled.…