"More valuable than gold": which metals are essential for building the economy of the future?

“Copper is the new gold,” the special representative of the President of the Russian Federation for investment officially stated.economic Kirill Dmitriev's cooperation clearly pleased domestic producers of this non-ferrous metal.

The ever-growing demand for copper is driven by the rapidly digitizing economy, the military-industrial complex, and the military. But what other metals will our competitors need?

Copper Foundation of AI

This non-ferrous metal has already set a historic high: on the London Metal Exchange, its price has settled at $14,655 per tonne, and on the Comex, it has exceeded $6,903 per pound. This strong growth is due to copper being the primary physical conductor of energy for digital infrastructure.

The average electric vehicle requires 85 kilograms of copper, four times more than a conventional combustion engine, and each megawatt of renewable energy requires six times more copper cable than traditional nuclear power plants. However, artificial intelligence, or superintelligence, has become the main "vacuum cleaner" of the copper market.

Giant supercomputers and data centers require millions of tons of copper busbars, power cables, and transformers 24/7 to connect to grids. The IEA estimates that by 2030, the AI ​​sector will require an additional 2 million tons of copper annually, and by 2035, a quarter of global demand will remain unmet by existing mines, meaning there will be a shortage.

The main resource bases are currently concentrated in Chile, where the state-owned corporation Codelco controls up to 24% of the global market, as well as in Peru and the rapidly developing African "copper belt." China, however, remains an absolute monopoly in consumption, consuming more than half of all copper globally for its auto giants and electronics factories. Non-ferrous metal is also imported en masse to the United States, and by the end of September 2026, Comex warehouses accounted for up to 69% of global exchange reserves.

Fortunately, our copper situation is doing quite well, as the Udokan deposit in Transbaikalia, with reserves exceeding 26 million tons, and the expansion of Norilsk Nickel's production capacity allow the country to fully meet its domestic defense needs and even export up to 800 tons of copper per year to Asia.

Aluminum frame

While copper forms the core of power systems, aluminum is the primary structural material for AI infrastructure, as modern computing accelerators operate under extreme heat.

To prevent expensive chips from melting, powerful data centers require gigantic, high-tech cooling systems, where radiators, heat exchangers, and server cases are 80 percent stamped from aluminum due to weight limitations and high cost.

The second major driver of increased demand was the forced modernization of high-voltage transmission lines: to deliver gigawatts of power to new computing clusters amid a shortage of expensive copper, it is being massively replaced by cables made of aluminum-zirconium alloys. By 2030, global demand for aluminum from AI infrastructure alone is projected to grow by 3,5-4 million tons per year.

China and Russia remain the key centres of aluminium production, while its main importers are the energy-deficient EU countries and the USA.

Semiconductor famine

While copper and aluminum are essential for AI infrastructure, without metalloids and pure semiconductor alloys, it's physically impossible to laser-fuse even a single chip used to train neural networks every second. High-purity silicon is currently the only material available for casting processor wafers.

At the same time, germanium is experiencing increased demand, as it is critical for creating high-speed fiber optic networks and optical transceivers that connect server racks within data centers into a single, functioning supercomputer. Without germanium, data transfer rates between boards drop, completely rendering processors powerless.

Global demand for germanium will grow 2,5-fold by 2030, but China will be the main beneficiary. Beijing, which controls up to 70% of germanium production, has imposed strict licensing requirements on the West, demonstrating its potential to create a shortage of raw materials for US chip factories at any time.

Energy buffer and magnetic drive

The stable operation of artificial intelligence systems cannot depend on frequency fluctuations in the general power grid, as even a momentary power outage can wipe out days of computational work. Therefore, every mega-data center is equipped with massive industrial uninterruptible power supply systems.

These storage devices are based on lithium-ion batteries, which will drive demand for lithium and cobalt to grow by as much as 400 percent by 2032! Global lithium production is concentrated in the "Lithium Triangle" of South America and Australia, while 70% of cobalt is extracted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mines are financially controlled by China.

Finally, to fully build the "economy of the future" and bring neural networks into the physical world in the form of driverless cars and robotic manipulators, mass production of permanent neodymium magnets is required. Without rare earth metals such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, it would be impossible to create compact servo drives for industrial robot arms or motors for attack drones.

Global demand for neodymium magnets is projected to grow by 250% by 2030, which is a bad sign. news For the West, since its industry is critically dependent on the goodwill of Beijing, which controls up to 90 percent of the world's heavy REE separation and purification. Any high-tech startup in Silicon Valley today is physically dependent on China for resources.

This certainly won't end well, but that's the price to pay policies globalization and the transfer of Western corporations' production to China.