# Copper: The Metal AI Actually Runs On

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147/copper-the-metal-ai-actually-runs-on.md
Podcast: [The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147)
Published: 2026-05-20T10:01:36+00:00
Episode link: https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/copper-the-metal-ai-actually-runs
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/198381581/49ac820d1678a60679d00add2154cf6a.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-flying-frisby-money-markets-and-more-161147/episodes/copper-the-metal-ai-actually-runs-on
Duration seconds: 225

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com There’s a lot more to AI than software. AI requires electricity, transformers, substations, cooling systems, data centres and more. That all means copper. Lots and lots of copper. Right on cue, the copper price hit fresh highs last week at $6.68/lb, before pulling back. So today I am going to take a long overdue look at copper. Was last week’s action just a spike that will soon fade away? Or was it part of something much bigger? TLDR - the second one. Let’s start with a 50-year chart to give you some historical context. Copper peaked in the great inflationary blow-off of 1980, before spending the next twenty years doing essentially nothing. The 1980s and 1990s were an age of globalisation, disinflation and cheap commodities. Who cared about hard assets or mining? Then came the rise of China and the supercycle of the 2000s. China urbanised, industrialised and turned itself into a superpower. Copper exploded higher, peaking in 2011. That boom then gave way to a long hangover. The 2010s were dominated by tech stocks. Mining died a death. To survive mining companies cut capex, reduced exploration and focused on balance sheet repair rather than growth. That decade of underinvestment laid the foundations of the shortages being revealed today. Meanwhile, while investors were busy buying software companies and meme stocks, the world quietly decided it wanted to electrify everything. The really striking thing about the chart is the speed of the rallies when they come. Then the amount of time copper spends going nowhere. Now here’s the ten-year chart, with the one-year moving average in red and the 55-day moving average in blue. To my eye, copper appears to have formed a major bottom in 2020 du…

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