At a glance
Australia holds the world's second-largest copper resources, mined 704,000 tonnes in 2025-26 and earned A$13.3 billion from copper exports, forecast to reach A$21.1 billion by 2030-31.
Separate estimates from BHP and S&P Global put data centre copper at 27 to 47 tonnes per megawatt, almost all of it in power distribution and grounding.
S&P Global's one AI training example sits only a little above that range, so the larger totals quoted for AI campuses come mainly from their size.
On those rates, the copper in Australia's 1.6GW operating fleet is worth about US$640 million to US$1.1 billion, a Certified Strategic calculation.
Kantra Copper is up 105 per cent and AIC Mines 78 per cent over the year to 14 October 2026, while 29Metals and Aeris Resources are down.
Australia holds the world's second-largest copper resources and earned A$13.3 billion from copper exports in 2025-26, and the London cash price of copper set a record of US$14,850 a tonne on 17 August 2026. Every AI data centre moves its power on copper, at 27 to 47 tonnes for each megawatt of capacity in separate studies by BHP and S&P Global, most of it in the equipment and cables that carry electricity to the chips. The 50,000-tonne figure quoted online for a 1GW AI campus reflects the size of those sites. S&P Global's one AI training example uses only a little more copper per megawatt than its range for other data centres.
The AI data centre build is a growing customer for Australia's copper miners.
The 50,000-tonne figure comes from the size of AI campuses
The 50,000-tonne figure that circulates online traces to the Copper Development Association, a US industry body, which put a conventional data centre at 5,000 to 15,000 tons of copper and a hyperscale AI data centre at up to 50,000 tons, as reported by Forbes. Those figures describe whole facilities, not a rate per megawatt.
US market research firm Industrial Info Resources attached a size in February 2026: a single 1GW AI data centre "can require up to 50,000 tons", which works out to about 50 tonnes per megawatt. That sits just above the range in the other studies.
Source | Copper per MW | What it measured |
|---|---|---|
BHP, Microsoft Chicago | 27 tonnes | One building, 2,177 tonnes in total |
Copper Development Association, 2023 | 20 to 40 tonnes | Working range in the report |
S&P Global, January 2026 | 30 to 40 tonnes | Data centres other than crypto mining, inside the site |
S&P Global, January 2026 | 47 tonnes | An AI training data centre in China |
Industrial Info Resources, February 2026 | Up to 50 tonnes | A 1GW AI data centre |
Source: BHP, Copper Development Association, S&P Global, Industrial Info Resources
S&P Global's January 2026 report, from the ratings and data group, counts the copper in grid lines and power generation separately from the copper inside data centres. BHP's 27-tonne figure comes from Microsoft's Chicago facility, a 2009-era build.
S&P's AI training site in China, at 47 tonnes per megawatt, sits just above its 30 to 40 tonne band for other data centres. A 1GW AI campus is many times the size of a conventional data centre, so its copper total runs far higher even at a similar rate per megawatt.
Power distribution carries three-quarters of the copper
The Copper Development Association's 2023 study with market research firm BlueWeave found 75 per cent of a data centre's copper goes into power distribution, 22 per cent into grounding and connections, and 3 per cent into plumbing and air conditioning. It used about 400kg of copper a rack as a working figure.
The AI servers themselves hold a small share. NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 rack carries more than 3.2km of copper cabling in the backplane that links its compute and switch trays, The Register reported at its launch, yet the same study put a 120kW rack at "over 300kg of copper", about 2.5 tonnes per megawatt, which the report rounds to nearly 3.
NVIDIA's 800-volt direct current design, set out in May 2025 for its next generation of AI factories, data centres built to train and run AI models on large clusters of specialised chips, moves power at higher voltage and lower current, so thinner conductors carry the same load. NVIDIA says that reduces copper requirements by 45 per cent against standard 415-volt alternating current systems. It also says that on 54-volt rack power, scaled to 1MW racks, the busbars, the solid copper bars that carry power up a rack, could need up to 200 tonnes of copper in a 1GW site.
S&P Global estimates that replacing copper cables between racks with optical fibre would take 4 to 5 tonnes per megawatt out of a data centre. The fibre itself carries no copper, since its strands are glass, but subsea cables wrap their fibres in a copper layer that powers the signal repeaters placed about every 80km along the seabed, electronics distributor Mouser explains.
Aluminium carries part of the load outside the building. Most data centres connect directly to transmission lines, and S&P Global notes that the associated impact on metals "is thus more aluminum than copper". Inside the facility, the same report finds copper preferred over aluminium for its density and fire safety.
Data centres are a growing market for copper producers
S&P Global puts copper sold into data centres at 1.1 million tonnes in 2025 and forecasts 2.5 million tonnes by 2040. It expects AI training sites to account for 58 per cent of that demand by 2030.
BloombergNEF, Bloomberg's energy research arm, has data centres averaging about 400,000 tonnes a year over the decade, peaking at 572,000 tonnes in 2028, Data Center Knowledge reported. BHP has data centre copper use rising sixfold by 2050, to about 3 million tonnes a year. The cash price on the London Metal Exchange was US$14,751 a tonne on 14 October 2026, below the cash-price record of US$14,850 set on 17 August, Westmetall's LME data shows.
Australia's 1.6GW fleet holds up to US$1.1 billion of copper
Australia had about 1.6GW of operating data centre capacity across the data centre companies in Australia as at June 2026, on figures from researcher DC Byte published by Data Centres Australia and Mandala on 26 August 2026. At 27 to 47 tonnes per megawatt, that fleet holds about 43,000 to 75,000 tonnes of copper inside the buildings, worth about US$640 million to US$1.1 billion at the London price on 14 October, a Certified Strategic calculation that excludes grid connections. More capacity is coming, set out in the data centre capacity due between 2026 and 2030, and every new megawatt is a sale for copper producers.
Australia holds the world's second-largest copper resources
The federal Office of the Chief Economist ranks Australia second in the world for copper resources in its September 2026 Resources and Energy Quarterly, published on 2 October. The US Geological Survey puts Australia's reserves at 100 million tonnes, behind Chile's 180 million tonnes.
Mine output fell 2.2 per cent to 704,000 tonnes in 2025-26, after floods in Queensland and the closure of Glencore's Mount Isa underground copper mines in July 2025. The Chief Economist forecasts 968,000 tonnes by 2030-31 and export earnings rising from A$13.3 billion to A$21.1 billion over the same period. It names AI data centres among the drivers of copper demand to 2031 and links part of a 29 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise in copper exploration spending in the June quarter of 2026 to them.
Refined output fell to 377,000 tonnes in 2025-26 from 433,000 tonnes as the Mount Isa smelter ran short of ore concentrate. The federal and Queensland governments agreed in October 2025 to provide up to A$600 million over three years to keep Glencore's Mount Isa smelter and Townsville refinery running, and a study of the sites' future led by commodities consultancy CRU is due to the Queensland Government by the end of 2026. In South Australia, BHP's plans for its Olympic Dam operations target 500,000 tonnes of copper a year during the 2030s, with an investment decision on the smelter and refinery expansion due in 2027.
Copper sits on Australia's Strategic Materials List alongside aluminium, tin and zinc, rather than the Critical Minerals List, and falls outside the minerals covered by the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve.
Kantra Copper has doubled in a year on the ASX
Company (ticker) | One-year share move | Copper assets |
|---|---|---|
Kantra Copper (KAN) | +105% | Kanmantoo, South Australia |
AIC Mines (A1M) | +78% | Eloise, Queensland |
Hot Chili (HCH) | +39% | Costa Fuego project, Chile (in development) |
BHP (BHP) | +33% | South Australia and South America |
Sandfire Resources (SFR) | +24% | Spain and Botswana |
Evolution Mining (EVN) | +10% | Queensland and NSW |
Develop Global (DVP) | -9% | Woodlawn, NSW |
Aeris Resources (AIS) | -14% | Tritton, NSW |
29Metals (29M) | -27% | Golden Grove, Western Australia |
Source: Market Index and Yahoo Finance, closing prices on 14 October 2025 and 14 October 2026. Kantra Copper's move is adjusted for its 15-for-1 share consolidation in August 2026.
Kantra Copper, formerly Hillgrove Resources, approved the Emily Star underground front at Kanmantoo in July 2026 for A$20 million to A$22 million, with mining from the second half of 2027. 29Metals raised A$150 million at A$0.40 a share in January 2026 to fund Gossan Valley, the restart of Xantho Extended and a study on restarting its Capricorn Copper mine in Queensland, and its shares closed at A$0.305 on 14 October.
The CSA mine at Cobar in NSW changed hands when South Africa's Harmony Gold completed its US$1.01 billion purchase of MAC Copper in October 2025. Glencore joined the ASX on 14 October 2026, and sits with BHP, Rio Tinto and Sandfire among the copper producers in the ASX stocks earning from the data centre build.
What to watch
The Mount Isa study. CRU's report to the Queensland Government by the end of 2026 will shape whether Australia keeps refining copper in Queensland.
BHP's Olympic Dam decision. The 2027 investment decision on the smelter and refinery expansion sits behind BHP's 500,000-tonne target for South Australia in the 2030s.
The 800-volt rollout. Every site built on NVIDIA's design cuts copper per megawatt, and the number of megawatts in the queue decides whether total demand still rises.