The AI buildout is usually told as a story about chips, power and capital expenditure. Beneath it sits a handful of metals few portfolios ever touch: gallium in power chips, germanium in fibre optics, and rare earths in the magnets that spin server fans and move robots. This report drills into the metals data landscape in China.

These metals, traded off-exchange, are refined overwhelmingly in China, and have faced escalating export controls from Beijing since 2023. Global vendors bring audited benchmarks and an export premium, but only local vendors see the supply move at the smelter. This report maps the broader ‘AI metals’ landscape, then narrows down to nine, with copper as a reference.

The AI Metals Landscape

AI depends on far more metals than copper and lithium, but not all of them pose a data problem. The table below lists 30 metals relevant to AI hardware and infrastructure, grouped into base metals, minor metals, rare earth elements and precious metals.

Each entry shows what drives AI demand for the metal and how its price is discovered. The pattern is consistent: the more specific a metal’s role in AI, the weaker its price infrastructure. Liquid exchange-traded futures on the London Metal Exchange (LME), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) cover the base metals, but the minor metals and rare earths central to AI hardware trade over the counter (OTC), with prices set by vendor assessment panels rather than cleared exchanges. The supply chain behind these metals spans mines, smelters and trading hubs worldwide, yet China sits at its centre, as both the dominant refiner and the primary source of the fundamental data that prices them.