AI data centers are about to consume vast amounts of copper, but global supply is falling short of demand—creating a decade-long opportunity for copper mining stocks.

What happened: Cloud providers such as Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet plan to spend some $765 billion（約120兆円） this year on AI infrastructure, a figure expected to increase to more than $1.6 billion（約2600億円） by 2031. AI data centers can need up to 50,000 tons of copper per facility, compared with 5,000 to 15,000 tons for traditional data centers. As a result, AI data centers could use half a million tons of copper a year by 2030.

Why it matters: S&P Global published a study predicting that global copper supply will be 24% short of demand by 2040, as demand from AI computation, grid expansion, renewable generation, electric vehicles, and other sectors is scaling faster than new copper supply can keep pace. The price of copper has already jumped 57% over the past five years and 35% over the past 52 weeks, signaling that the shortage is already affecting markets.

What to watch: Three investment paths are highlighted: Freeport-McMoRan (the world's largest publicly traded copper company, up 70% over the past 52 weeks), Southern Copper (the world's second-largest, more than doubled in price over the past year), and the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX), which holds 41 copper miner stocks and has net assets of about $8.2 billion（約1.3兆円）.