The Intelligent Miner Newsletter Feb 2025

I’ve been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and the implications of its industrialisation, since OpenAI’s Stargate announcement on January 21, 2025.

The Stargate Project is a new company, backed by all the usual tech suspects, which, over the next four years, plans to build AI infrastructure for OpenAI (your man with ChatGPT) in the US. OpenAI has committed US$500 billion to this endeavour – roughly the equivalent to the annual GDP of Sweden, as Ed Zamanillo of SLR Consulting explains in this Linkedin article – with $100 billion deployed immediately.

“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” OpenAI said in it’s announcement.

This all sounds very nice. But I’d love to see the supply projections and risk assessments that will help make this commitment a reality. At the heart of the datacentres, servers, grids, cables etc. that underpin the development, hosting and functioning of AI platforms are minerals and metals. AI at this scale is going to require gargantuan quantities of metals, many of which have already been deemed ‘critical’ in many countries (the US included) thanks to the energy transition.

For an industry that supplies raw materials that are essential to societal progress and are the foundation of virtually every other sector globally, meeting this requirement is an awfully big ask. The mining and metals value chain is one that’s currently suffering due to historic underinvestment in grassroots mineral exploration, rising capital and operational costs, a rampant skills shortage and lack of social acceptance. Supply shortages are projected for many key metals by 2030, including copper, which is the hard hitter.

I’m going to be frank… It’s not impossible, but unless a significant portion of that $500 billion is directed into strengthening mining and metals supply chains immediately, including the acceleration and adoption of transformational technologies, decarbonising mining and metals processes, attracting and upskilling talent, reform in policy and permitting… Stargate’s roll out could be severely stunted.

And even if that investment is made tomorrow. Will an industry that’s already starting to buckle under the weight of an 8-billion person population and the demands of electrification be able to come up with the goods in under four years…? Send me your thoughts.

Carly