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Commodities & raw materials
How the raw materials behind the buildout — and behind industry broadly — get produced, priced, and sourced. Grounded in public market data; no price feeds.
Why does AI data-center buildout need so much copper?
A data-center buildout consumes copper at three layers at once — inside the hall (busways, power distribution, cabling), in the electrical plant that feeds it (transformers, switchgear), and across the grid interconnection that reaches it. Copper has no cheap substitute in most of these roles, so as AI compute scales, copper demand scales with it — and the constraint is mine and refining supply, not demand.
Read →What is responsible gold sourcing?
Responsible gold sourcing is the process of verifying a gold bar's origin and confirming it was produced without financing conflict, laundering, or human-rights abuse. It rests on three public pillars: the OECD Due Diligence Guidance (the risk framework), the LBMA Good Delivery and Responsible Sourcing standards (refiner accreditation), and a documented chain of custody from mine to refined bar.
Read →Where does industrial sulfur come from?
The overwhelming majority of the world's industrial sulfur is recovered as a byproduct of removing sulfur from oil and natural gas during refining and gas processing — not dug out of the ground. That makes sulfur supply a function of refinery throughput, and most of it is converted into sulfuric acid, the highest-volume industrial chemical, feeding fertilizer and metals processing.
Read →How is mercury regulated and traded globally?
Mercury is governed by a dedicated global treaty — the Minamata Convention on Mercury (adopted 2013, in force 2017) — layered with regional export bans in the EU (2011) and US (effective 2013). Together they restrict where mercury is produced, phase out its uses, and control cross-border movement. This is a regulation explainer, not a sourcing guide: the defining fact about mercury is how constrained its trade is.
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