By Staff Reporter
Copper Prices could hit $13,500 a tonne by 2028 on account of the data centres for artificial intelligence by 2028.
According to a BloombergNEF report, the demand for the red metal could climb to 400,000 tonnes a year, with anticipated prices at $13,000 by 2028.
“The race to build bigger, denser data centres for artificial intelligence is putting fresh strain on the copper market,” senior associate at BNEF Rosemary Katz said.
While AI is expected to play a huge role in shaping the movements, at the same time, energy transition projects and fragile mine supply add to the pressure.
“Traditional data centres such as your enterprise data centres usually would use servers that take up about anything between 1 to 10 kilowatts per rack. But now the advent of AI you see that jumping to 30-80 kilowatts per rack, and that’s a lot of power that is required to run these processes, and that in turn requires thicker copper lines … efficient cooling and that translates to 400,000 that you see,” said Katz.
She said that the supply was not keeping up with the demand, with global demand projection expected to rise to 35 million tonnes, with a negative surplus of 6 million in supply.
