In the last few years, gold and silver have given excellent returns to investors, but now a new metal is emerging. An expert estimates that its price will double in the coming time. Experts say that due to unlimited demand of AI and electrification, the world is on the verge of a major commodity supercycle, which could lead to a sharp rise in copper prices.
According to Robert Friedland, founder and co-chairman of Ivanhoe Mines, copper prices are going to rise further due to rising production costs and very high demand. Speaking at the Future Minerals Forum 2026 in Saudi Arabia in January, the mining giant painted a very promising picture for the red metal (copper).
While crude oil prices have remained stable at around $53 per barrel over the past five years, Friedland said copper prices, despite a slight uptick, reached an all-time high of $13,400 per metric ton during the same period, but there is potential for further increases.
A major reason for this surge in commodity prices is the rapid growth of AI data centers. He said that by the end of 2026, global data centers will use as much electricity as Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. Friedland mentioned Microsoft’s recently built “baby data center” in Chicago, which alone required 2 million kilograms of copper.
He said that each Tesla server requires gold, iron, gallium, antimony, tungsten, silver, several rare earth minerals, indium, tantalum, palladium, barium, niobium and titanium. He said that even if we ignore the dreams of green energy transition or AI centre, there is a severe shortage of metals like copper.
The need for copper is very high
Friedland said that to maintain our current lifestyle, to keep the world running as it is, we would have to extract 700 million metric tons of copper in the next 18 years. To put this huge figure into perspective, this is exactly the amount of copper that humanity has extracted in the 10,000 years since we emerged from the caves.
40% output will end here
Friedland stressed that to meet this huge future demand, six new top-class copper mines will need to come into operation each year by 2050. 40% of that new production will go entirely toward grid upgrades, power and data centers.
Why might copper prices double?
He said that since 1900, the energy required to produce one unit of copper has increased 16-fold, and the amount of water required to produce one unit of copper has doubled. He further said that it is therefore clear that the price of copper must double to meet future mining needs.
