If critical minerals and datacenters represent the two sides of the global economic power barbell, and you cannot have one without the other, then it’s useful to take stock of how these two points of focus contribute to the wider dynamic, geopolitical tussle that has been simmering for about 15 years. It’s not a bad time to do so, especially given that China just held its 4th Plenum in Oct 2025 and the US executive branch issued its new National Security Strategy in Dec 2025.
A “strategy” is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means: it begins with an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes. – Quoting from the opening of the new US National Security Strategy
So any country that wants to scale datacenters (the ends) must have sufficient and unfettered access to the critical mineral inputs (the means) to do so, else the strategy fails. Critical mineral access alone is hardly the complete story, but they are more than just table stakes.
Over the next five years, datacenters are expected to grow at 3-4x the rate of global GDP growth, and their installed power capacity will grow even more sharply. Power capacity & consumption scales with servers, compute, and storage growth, which will outpace the buildings & infrastructure around them. When considering what it means for critical mineral inputs, some critical mineral consumption is tied to the construction + infrastructure buildout, while other critical minerals scale with power capacity & supply requirements.
To parameterize the critical mineral analysis as it relates to this specific growth challenge, RCF considered how forecast datacenter growth is expected to test the criticality of 8 metals: Gallium, Neodymium/Praseodymium (NdPr), Tantalum, Tin, Lithium, Copper, Aluminum, and Steel. In choosing these 8 metals, RCF sought to look at markets of different shapes and sizes, not necessarily to zero in on the most critical exposures, which are incredibly difficult to isolate. In terms of the starting point, global datacenter investment is estimated at approximately $250B with a power capacity of 47GW and a power consumption of 412TWh, as of the end of 2024.
Table 1: 2024 Starting Values
The table above summarizes cumulative metal and power consumption up to the beginning of last year, and begins to highlight the critical mineral conundrum. Whilst 35 tonnes of Gallium and 170 tonnes of Tantalum are small volumes, these same volumes constitute 9% of global gallium demand and 7% of global tantalum demand. In datacenters alone!
The other ‘small market’ chosen was Neodymium/Praseodymium, to test rare-earth magnet criticality. Interestingly, datacenter growth will not challenge rare- earth availability. Why? Rare earths are essentially required for permanent magnet applications, largely found within electric motors. Electric motors are minimal in a datacenter, found only in cooling fans, pumps, and a few other ancillary applications.
With respect to rare earth magnet criticality, other future facing technologies that move, such as drones, electric vehicles (EVs), missiles, robots, rockets, and submarines are more relevant than stationary capital stock. Datacenters silently hum; they don’t move. Looking forward over the next 5 years, while datacenter growth is aggressive and directionally certain, the overall trend amplitude remains highly uncertain. Therefore, RCF has chosen to scale the forecast to a bear, base and bull case; largely based on the power consumption basis.
Table 2: 2030 Forecast Volume & Cumulative Demand Growth
From 2024 to 2030, critical mineral demand will volumetrically increase by somewhere between 70% and 200% in 6 short years, for metals that scale with forecast power growth. These are the smaller markets, other than NdPr (rare earths).
The larger markets (copper, aluminum, and steel) grow at a slightly lesser rate. Their growth is more closely aligned with the physical structures; however, datacenters will indirectly drive higher copper, aluminium, and steel growth associated with surrounding infrastructure (grid enhancement, reinforcement, substation transformers, etc), which this analysis hasn’t covered. The key question is: can mine supply growth meet these steep demand curves? Based on forecast future volumes, datacenters command material tech metal inputs; however, they are far from the only demand sources.
Table 3: 2030 Global Demand from Datacenters Alone
The above analysis shows forecast demand for:
- Gallium ranging from 15-25% of 2030 supply, and
- Tantalum ranging from 10-18% of 2030 supply
Datacenters are not the only markets for both of these tech metals (Ga & Ta), so the supply side may struggle to realise this growth without much higher prices to incentivize either new or more marginally projects. That said, some of the larger tech metal markets (e.g., Tin) may also struggle to meet the projected increases. The overall increase in Tin consumption to 12kt, as well as total power demand growth up to 3% of the global demand, are high hurdles.
And while copper, aluminium and steel look like relatively modest increases, the associated and indirect demand could double the forecast requirement. So while 500kt of copper or 1Mt of aluminum for datacenters alone looks modest and manageable, a doubling of this demand for indirects (grid reinforcement, substations, transformers, and related electrification investment) starts to look pretty challenging.
Conclusion
This analysis is a representative test case to gauge the sufficiency of critical mineral supply for one of the fastest-growing applications: datacenters. RCF just wanted to run some of the numbers, to see what they look like from a marginal-demand- increase standpoint. Against this, we can test our internal supply assumptions, teasing out what it means for future mine investment opportunities.
Everyone knows that datacenter buildouts only form part of the race to lead the world’s future-facing energy, security, and technology architecture. Datacenters are the physical manifestation of artificial intelligence, as a part of the global digital data value chain.
But datacenters ultimately depend on sufficient power, water and physical positioning close to computational demand. And they need to earn an economic return for their investors. But even more fundamentally, nothing happens without the required critical mineral inputs, along with the extensive and complex global value chains that transform metal into machines.
That is why you are reading and hearing so much about critical minerals in the global public discourse. When considering national ambition, the physical building and ownership of datacenter supremacy lies at the epicenter of G2 strategic thinking. But it’s more than a G2 geostrategic consideration; the G20 and even the wider G200+ (aka the world) are all involved in ensuring the strategic means (critical minerals) are available to achieve the ends (datacenters + everything else). The everything else is economic security and well-being for the broader world.
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