Column: AI may not be the demand booster copper bulls expect

Mining06-04 09:14

(The opinions expressed here are those of Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.) From the Bronze Age to the AI age, copper is again at the heart of the latest big investment craze. The rationale is ...

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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nColumn: AI may not be the demand booster copper bulls expect\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2026-06-04 09:14 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.mining.com/web/column-ai-may-not-be-the-demand-booster-copper-bulls-expect/><strong>Mining</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>(The opinions expressed here are those of Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)\nFrom the Bronze Age to the AI age, copper is again at the heart of the latest big investment craze.\nThe rationale is ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.mining.com/web/column-ai-may-not-be-the-demand-booster-copper-bulls-expect/\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"ARTY","symbol_name":"ISHARES FUTURE AI & TECH ETF","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://www.mining.com/web/column-ai-may-not-be-the-demand-booster-copper-bulls-expect/","article_id":"2641199169","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":["https://www.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/AdobeStock_1966106364-e1780589654761.jpeg"],"rights":{"source":"mining_highlight","url":"https://www.mining.com/web/column-ai-may-not-be-the-demand-booster-copper-bulls-expect/","rn_cache_url":null,"directOrigin":true},"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2641199169","pubTimestamp":1780535640,"columns":[],"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"mining_highlight","name":"MINING.COM"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"One key variable in assessing likely copper demand is the scale of AI data center…","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"mining.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"ARTY":"ISHARES FUTURE AI & TECH ETF","BK4023":"应用软件","BK4543":"AI","ICOP":"iShares Copper and Metals Mining ETF","CPER":"美国铜指数基金","BK4585":"ETF&股票定投概念","COPJ":"SPROTT JUNIOR COPPER MINERS ETF","BK4535":"淡马锡持仓","AIPO":"Defiance AI and Power Infrastructure ETF","COPP":"Sprott Copper Miners ETF","XME":"金属与采矿指数ETF-SPDR","BK4587":"ChatGPT概念","AIYY":"YIELDMAX AI OPTION INCOME STRATEGY ETF","BK4528":"SaaS概念","UYM":"基础材料指数ETF-ProShares两倍做多","CHAT":"ROUNDHILL GENERATIVE AI & TECHNOLOGY ETF","AI":"C3.ai, Inc.","BK4588":"碎股","AGIX":"通用人工智能 ETF-AGIX","CPXR":"USCF DAILY TARGET 2X COPPER INDEX ETF","BK4551":"寇图资本持仓"},"translate_title":"专栏：人工智能可能不是铜多头预期的需求助推器","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"ARTY":1.5,"COPJ":1.5,"AIYY":0.6,"CPXR":1.5,"CHAT":1.5,"MHGmain":1.5,"AI":0.9,"XME":1.5,"UYM":1.5,"ICOP":1.5,"AIPO":1.5,"CPER":1.5,"COPP":1.5,"AGIX":1.5,"QCmain":1.5},"content_text":"(The opinions expressed here are those of Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)\nFrom the Bronze Age to the AI age, copper is again at the heart of the latest big investment craze.\nThe rationale is simple. Data centers need a lot of wiring, cooling and power, which means they need a lot of copper. AI data centers need even more.\nA crypto data center requires 21 metric tons of copper per megawatt installed, while an AI training data center in China has a copper intensity of 47 tons, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.\nThe ‌escalating global AI arms race will undoubtedly boost demand for copper. But by how much?\n\nAI to boost copper demand 50% by 2040 — S&P\n\nS&P Global forecasts usage in data centers and associated infrastructure will rise from 1.1 million tons in 2025 to 2.5 million tons in 2040.\nThere are, though, a lot of “buts” lurking in that forecast.\nDemand could be as high as 2.7 million tons or as low as 1.7 million, depending on the interaction of multiple fast-changing variables.\nAs the authors of “Copper in the Age of AI” put it, the “wide span underscores both the uncertainty and the scale of the challenge ahead.”\nThe delivery gap\nOne key variable in assessing likely copper demand is the scale of AI data center expansion.\nMany of the new megawatts of announced AI computing capacity are “bragawatts”, according to a study released by the Oxford Smith School and financial broker Marex Group.\nWhile media and markets are expecting and pricing a rapid ⁠exponential ramp-up in AI infrastructure, the outcome is likely to be “a roll-out that is delayed, lumpy, and constrained by physical realities.”\nThe biggest hurdle is grid connectivity. A data center can be built in 18 to 24 months but the average US waiting time for a grid connection was four years between 2018 and 2023.\nThat assumes there is enough power in the first place.\n\nAI data centers to worsen copper shortage – BNEF\n\nIreland built so many data centers that by 2021 the sector’s share of national energy consumption had risen to over 20%, threatening to overwhelm the country’s energy system.\nThe Irish grid operator imposed a de facto four-year moratorium on new applications, which has only just been lifted, albeit with strict new conditions.\nThrow into the mix long lead times for essential equipment such as transformers and a shortage of specialized labour and there is a growing gap between announced and delivered AI computing capacity, according to the Smith study.\nCopper, it warns, is in danger of falling down that gap.\nMore power, less copper\nQuantifying how much copper is used in data centers is also a fast-moving target.\nThe battle for AI supremacy is one of computing power, and as chips evolve, so must the architecture of rack design and wiring.\nS&P Global notes there is already a shift underway from copper to fiber optics in the interconnect cabling between processor racks.\nThis could result in copper intensity in data centers falling by 4 or 5 tons per megawatt installed, ‌not a ⁠trivial change given the overall 30- to 40-ton range deployed in non-crypto data centers.\nMore fundamentally, though, chip company Nvidia argues that even copper will be challenged to deliver the low latency and high bandwidth of next-generation AI centers.\nUsing traditional low voltages would necessitate “an unsustainable volume of copper cabling.”\n\nBellwether industrial metal copper is trading like an AI stock\n\nNvidia is proposing a transition to 800 volts, which means the same wire gauge can carry 157% more power. A simpler set-up also means fewer copper conductors and smaller connectors.\nReducing copper usage is both a cost consideration and, the company argues, a critical pathway to ever-increasing rack power.\nMaterial wars\nArdent copper bulls argue that such is the looming deficit in copper that the metal could itself become a bottleneck in the roll-out of AI capacity.\nThat may be more true of some of the other metals ⁠that go into connecting physical and virtual worlds.\nData centers are a sink for all sorts of minerals, 60 to 70 tons of them per megawatt installed, according to the World Economic Forum.\nThere’s copper, but also aluminum, cobalt, nickel, tin, gold, silver, germanium and gallium and, of course, a smattering of the increasingly ubiquitous rare earth metals.\nGermanium and gallium are more likely to pose a materials bottleneck than copper. Western supply of both metals is acutely tight after China imposed export restrictions in 2023.\nBig Tech is competing ⁠for limited supply with both the US Pentagon and the European Union, which is looking to build a strategic metals stockpile. It’s by no means certain it will win.\n\nPentagon’s ‘Deal Team Six’ aims to challenge China’s grip on rare earth power\n\nPricing complexity\nAll new industries are liable to the same disconnect between promise and delivery, but power availability, grid connectivity and critical metals supply are structural real-world inhibitors of the AI revolution.\nAnd while no-one’s going to stop using copper in data center design, its intensity of use is beholden to the race ⁠for ever more computing power, which in turn requires constant evolutions in AI architecture.\nThere are multiple moving parts to copper’s new data center demand vector. The market, which has seized on AI as the next big thing, may not be pricing that complexity.\n(Editing by Marguerita Choy)","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"isVideo":false,"video":null,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0,"need_auth":false,"need_login_tip":false,"code":"91000000","status":"200"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)","isDev":false,"isTTM":true,"tenantId":"TBGLOBAL","deviceId":"web-server-community-laohu8-v3","version":"4.43.1","shortVersion":"4.43.1","platform":"web","vendor":"web","appName":"ttm","isIOS":false,"isAndroid":false,"isTiger":false,"isTHS":false,"isWeiXin":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"isWeiBo":false,"isQQ":false,"isBaiduSwan":false,"isBaiduBox":false,"isDingTalk":false,"isToutiao":false,"isOnePlus":false,"isHuaWei":false,"isXiaomi":false,"isXiaomiWebView":false,"isOppo":false,"isVivo":false,"isSamsung":false,"isMobile":false},"href":"/m/news/2641199169","isCrawlerRequest":true}