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Freeport pushes Grasberg mine restart to 2028 as copper market tightens
Freeport Indonesia has pushed the full restart of the Grasberg Block Cave copper mine into early 2028 — an estimated 3% of global copper supply — extending one of the biggest supply shocks in the global copper market just as shortages of sulphur and sulphuric acid are threatening output elsewhere.
The delay matters because Grasberg is no marginal asset. The Indonesian mine produced about 1.5 billion pounds of copper in 2023, or roughly 680,000 tonnes, equal to around 3% of global mined supply.
Freeport had previously expected a faster recovery from the September mudflow incident, but the company now says wetter-than-expected conditions, groundwater issues and damage to ore-handling systems have slowed the restart. Production in undamaged areas has resumed, but only at around 40–50% of capacity as of April 2026.
That removes flexibility from a market already running with little spare capacity. The International Copper Study Group recently cut its 2026 mine supply growth forecast to 1.6%, down from 2.3%, citing constraints in the DRC, Chile and Indonesia, including Grasberg and Kamoa.
The timing is awkward. Copper demand is being pulled higher by grid upgrades, electrification, defence spending and data centres, while mine supply growth is slowing. Global mined copper output rose just 0.9% in 2025, according to Reuters commentary on the ICSG data, despite stronger long-term demand signals.
The sulphur problem adds another pressure point. Sulphur and sulphuric acid are critical inputs for solvent extraction and electrowinning, a process Goldman Sachs estimates accounts for about 17% of global copper supply. China’s move to restrict sulphuric acid exports from May, combined with disruption to Middle East sulphur flows, has raised the risk of further curtailments in copper-producing regions such as Chile and the DRC.
For investors, the signal is clear: copper’s supply problem is no longer just about long permitting timelines and underinvestment. It is now about operational fragility at tier-one mines, input shortages, geopolitics and infrastructure risk.
Consensus forecasts still vary. Goldman recently maintained a 2026 copper surplus forecast, while other analysts including JP Morgan have warned of deficits as supply disruptions cut into inventories.
But Grasberg shifts the risk to the upside. If one mine representing roughly 3% of global supply cannot return to full production until 2028, and sulphur constraints begin forcing cuts elsewhere, a 3–4% deficit may prove conservative. A 5–6% shortfall is no longer an extreme case. It is the scenario copper bulls will now be watching.
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Sherritt exit exposes fragile nickel supply chain as Cuba loses key operator
Sherritt International has suspended direct participation in its Cuban joint ventures, effective immediately, after new US sanctions targeting Cuba materially changed the company’s ability to operate on the island. The Canadian miner is repatriating expatriate employees from Cuba and has asked its Cuban partners to repatriate personnel from Canada.
The move is another shock to nickel cobalt supply chains, especially to the West.
Sherritt’s Moa joint venture in Cuba mines and processes nickel and cobalt, with feed then refined at the company’s Fort Saskatchewan refinery in Alberta. Sherritt says there is no immediate impact on the Canadian refinery, which will continue producing finished nickel and cobalt for sale, but its available feed inventory is expected to last only until about mid-June.
That creates the market question now being underpriced: what happens after June, especially as the strain is wider than Cuba with nickel supply was already tightening before Sherritt’s exit:
- Indonesia cutting 2026 ore mining permits to 250–260 million wet tonnes from 379 million tonnes in 2025. Indonesia now accounts for roughly 65% of global nickel supply, which means any disruption there moves the whole market. That risk is now spreading through the inputs chain
- Indonesian nickel processors rely on the Middle East for about 75% of their sulphur, used to make sulphuric acid for HPAL processing
- Australian miners have also been hit by diesel shortages and higher fuel costs as global oil-product flows are disrupted. Australia imports 84% of its petroleum products, with diesel stockpiles falling to about 30 days, forcing some smaller mining operations to scale back
If Cuban partners cannot operate Moa reliably, the mine may have to remain curtailed or shut. If Cuba can operate the mine but can no longer rely on Canadian processing, it needs another route for material. That may open the door for China, already dominant in Indonesia’s nickel buildout, to take a larger role in Cuban nickel supply.
Sherritt has not been formally designated under the US executive order, but said such a designation “could occur at any time.” The company also warned the order may lead financial or service providers to stop supporting Sherritt’s operations or other business activities.
The timing matters. Moa was already fragile. In February, Sherritt said it would pause mining and processing in Cuba because of fuel supply constraints, after receiving notice that scheduled fuel deliveries to Moa would not be made.
The mine has also operated inside a deteriorating Cuban energy and labour environment. Sherritt previously cut 2025 guidance, citing lower-than-expected mixed sulphide production from Moa, while outside reporting has pointed to skilled labour shortages and blackouts as recurring operating pressures.
For Cuba, the blow is economic. Sherritt is one of the island’s most important foreign investors, while nickel and cobalt remain among Cuba’s key hard-currency export sectors.
For the nickel market, the bigger message is supply-chain risk.
This is not a demand story. It is a control story. A Western-linked nickel-cobalt chain running from Cuba to Canada has been interrupted by sanctions, fuel shortages and operating risk. That makes alternative sources of non-Chinese nickel more important, from Canadian sulphide projects to potential deep-sea supply from companies such as TMC.
If Moa shuts, supply tightens. If China steps in, control consolidates. Either way, Sherritt’s Cuba exit is bigger than one company. It is another warning that critical mineral supply chains can break quickly, and markets do not always price the break before it happens.
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Why the Next Big Tech Companies Will Look Like Commodity Traders
Commodity tokenization is emerging as a practical bridge between capital and the physical constraints shaping the next generation of industries.
- Commodity tokenization connects capital directly to constrained physical assets and supply chains.
- The real opportunity lies in verification, custody and production-linked financial structures.
- Future startups will bridge software, finance and physical infrastructure to unlock efficiency.
For most of the last decade, you could build a very large business without ever thinking about the physical world. Software scaled. Capital was cheap. Supply chains mostly worked.
That’s no longer true.
If you’re building in AI, energy or anything tied to infrastructure, you’ve probably already run into it: the constraint isn’t code — it’s materials. Copper doesn’t move fast enough. Permitting takes too long. Supply chains are tighter than people expected.
And yet, the way we finance and trade those materials hasn’t really evolved.
That’s where commodity tokenization starts to get interesting — not as a crypto narrative, but as a way of connecting capital more directly to physical assets.
So what is commodity tokenization, really?
At a basic level, it’s simple.
You take a real-world asset — say copper in a warehouse, or a stream of future production — and you create a digital token that represents a claim on it.
That token can then move in ways the underlying asset can’t:
- It can be split into smaller pieces
- Traded more easily
- Used as collateral
- Embedded into other financial products
People have been doing versions of this for a long time. Gold ETFs are an obvious example. But tokenization pushes it further — it makes these claims more flexible, more programmable and in theory, more accessible.
The important thing to understand is that the token itself isn’t the innovation.
The structure around it is.
NOAA ruling opens door to new era of deep-sea mining
The deep-sea mining industry has moved one step closer to commercial reality after US regulators accepted The Metals Company USA’s consolidated application as compliant, a decision that could help set the permitting template for other companies looking to extract critical minerals from the ocean floor.
The decision comes after the NOAA’s final rule on January 21, which revised US deep-seabed mining regulations for exploration licences and commercial recovery permits, and created the option for qualified applicants to submit a consolidated application rather than move through a slower two-stage process. In other worse, US regulators have opened a clearer, faster pathway for deep-sea mining companies to seek approval for both exploration and commercial recovery.
The decision to accept TMC’s application moves it into the certification stage, after which it will be posted to the Federal Register, followed by a draft Environmental Impact Statement, public comment, a final EIS and NOAA’s final decision on whether to issue the licence and permit, according to the company announcement.
NOAA’s determination does not grant final approval. But it does move deep-sea mining from theory into a more defined US regulatory process, with the potential to accelerate an industry long held back by legal uncertainty, environmental opposition and slow-moving international negotiations.
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The application covers around 65,000 km² in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, up from the roughly 25,000 km² commercial recovery area in TMC USA’s earlier April 2025 application. TMC estimates the area contains 619 million tonnes of wet polymetallic nodules, with potential exploration upside of another 200 million tonnes.
Those nodules contain nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, metals central to batteries, defence, manufacturing and energy infrastructure. For Washington, the strategic case is clear, deep-sea mining offers a potential new source of critical minerals outside China-controlled supply chains and beyond the bottlenecks of conventional land-based mining.
Shortly after his election to a second term, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order accelerating deep sea mining permits and licenses in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.
Trump’s Executive order marked a significant escalation in US efforts to secure domestic supplies of key metals and counter China’s dominance in the sector through deep-sea mining, as well as a boost for America’s offshore critical minerals industry.
“This determination marks an important step forward in NOAA’s transparent, rules-based process, and brings us ever closer to providing the US with a new, abundant and lower-impact source of critical metals” — said Gerard Barron, Chairman and CEO of The Metals Company.
TMC said it expects the latest review process to conclude before the end of Q1 2027.
Final approval is still not guaranteed. Environmental review, public comment and political scrutiny remain. But NOAA’s determination is a signal to the wider sector: the US is starting to build a permitting route for commercial deep-sea mining. For an industry waiting for a trigger, this may be the moment the race begins.
As we projected in 2024, deep sea mining is coming, whether the environmental lobby like it, or not.
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US pushes allies to pay critical minerals premium
- US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has urged allies to pay a “national security premium” for critical minerals sourced outside China
- US and EU are now assessing reference prices, border-adjusted price floors, price gap subsidies and offtake agreements
- US was 100% net import reliant for 12 critical mineral commodities in 2024, according to the USGS
The US is urging allies to pay more for critical minerals sourced outside China, in a direct challenge to the low-cost supply chains that have dominated global mining and processing for two decades.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told the Financial Times that allies must be ready to pay a “national security premium” for minerals from trusted suppliers.
“When trading partners express concerns about the economic cost of price floors or mechanisms, I just say: what you’re talking about, which is cost efficiency, this is why we are in the situation we’re in,” Greer told the FT. “There is a premium we pay, and I call it the national security premium, and we will all pay a national security premium to have a secure supply chain.”
The message is blunt: cheap minerals helped build China’s dominance and higher-cost supply may now be needed to break it. Greer is developing proposals for allied trading partners, including Europe, to create price mechanisms that support non-China mineral supply chains.
Any premium would mark a major change in how critical minerals are priced with calls, not just to diversify, but to pay for diversification.
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What is the critical minerals premium?
The latest plan says both sides will assess mechanisms including reference prices, border-adjusted price floors, standards-based markets, price gap subsidies and offtake agreements, focused first on selected critical minerals and supply chains, according to the official US-EU Critical Minerals Action Plan.
That matters because many Western projects fail at the same point: not geology, but economics.
New mines and processing plants need long-term price certainty. China’s scale, state support and processing dominance can make Western projects look uneconomic when judged only against spot prices.
Washington’s answer is to create a different market.
Why now?
The US was 100% net import reliant for 12 critical mineral commodities in 2024, while another 28 critical mineral commodities had import reliance above 50% of apparent consumption, according to the USGS.
China remains central to this problem.
The USGS said the US imported at least 29 mineral commodities from China from 2020 to 2023, according to a USGS analysis of mineral import reliance.
For example, a major US defense prime conducted a recent, rare deep trace of its titanium supply chain, reaching 13 tiers down — it led directly to “Chinese mines, Chinese roads, and Chinese trucks” as confirmed by their supply chain specialists, according Stanford’s recent Critical Minerals and the Business of National Security report.
See our analysis on China’s titanium dominance: vertical supply chain, cost edge, and global ripple effects.
This is the policy gap Washington is trying to close. Critical minerals are needed for batteries, electric vehicles, grid equipment, semiconductors and defense systems. But many supply chains still run through China.
Can critical minerals become “free-range eggs”?
The Oregon Group raised the core problem in 2024: commodities are meant to be identical. A tonne of nickel is a tonne of nickel. A kilo of rare earth oxide is a kilo of rare earth oxide. That makes it hard to charge a premium based on where or how the material was produced.
But the same analysis argued that the market may still split. Just as consumers pay more for free-range eggs, Western buyers may need to pay more for critical minerals produced under higher environmental, labour and security standards.
The challenge is scale.
That is the gap the US is now trying to close.
No longer through consumer branding, but through policy.
What changes for prices?
The result of any official policy to pay a premium could be a more fragmented, birfucated global minerals market. One price may reflect the cheapest available material, often shaped by Chinese supply. Another may reflect verified, secure, non-China supply backed by allied buyers, offtake contracts, subsidies or price floors.
The US-EU action plan already points in that direction, with tools including price gap subsidies and offtake agreements.
Europe is also trying to build its own pricing infrastructure. EIT RawMaterials, an EU-funded agency, is working with Metalshub to develop a regional trading and pricing system for critical minerals such as rare earths, because weak price transparency has made it harder to finance new projects, according to Reuters.
The direction is clear. Governments want markets to price security, not just volume.
Conclusion
The premium will not be free.
Higher critical mineral prices could raise costs for battery makers, automakers, defense suppliers and grid equipment manufacturers. It could also create tension with allies if Washington is seen as shifting the cost of supply-chain security onto Europe and other partners.
There is also execution risk. Price floors can support new supply, but they can distort markets if they are too broad, too slow or too political. The question is whether governments can design a premium that funds real capacity rather than protecting uneconomic supply.
For now, the US is making the strategic choice explicit. If allies want critical minerals outside China, they may have to pay more for them.
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US invests $8.6 billion in critical minerals deals since January 2025
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US government investment in equity stakes in private-sector critical minerals companies since January 2025 hit US$8.6 billion, in the biggest such push into strategic industries since the Second World War.
The push is part of a wider US$20.9 billion across sixteen deals involving direct government ownership, as Washington works to lock in critical supply from an industry where private capital has sometimes struggled to deliver secure supply of copper, nickel, cobalt, rare earths, lithium, and more.
In particular, following China’s export controls on rare earths in April and October 2025, the US scaled up its investment in critical minerals companies, which now account for nine of sixteen deals to date, using a range of grants, loans, and tax incentives.
The mining deals include:
| Company | Date | Equity | Agency | Authority | Tools Used |
| MP Materials | Jul 10, 2025 | $400 million | Department of Defense | DPA Title III, OSC | Equity, Loans, Warrants, Offtakes, Price Floors |
| Lithium Americas | Oct 1, 2025 | — | Department of Energy | DOE LPO Loan | Loans, Warrants |
| Trilogy Metals | Oct 6, 2025 | $36 million | Department of Defense | OSC + DPA | Equity, Warrants |
| ReElement Technologies | Nov 2, 2025 | — | Department of Defense | OSC Loan + DPA | Loans, Warrants |
| Vulcan Elements | Nov 2, 2025 | $50 million | Department of Defense, Commerce | CHIPS + OSC Loan | Equity, Loans, Warrants, Grants |
| Korea Zinc | Dec 15, 2025 | $2.2 billion | Department of Defense, Commerce | OSC, CHIPS | Equity, Loans, Warrants, Grants |
| USA Rare Earths | Jan 26, 2026 | $280 million | Department of Commerce, Energy | CHIPS | Equity, Loans, Warrants |
| Atlantic Alumina | Jan 12, 2026 | $150 million | Department of Defense | Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program | Equity |
| Orion Critical Mineral Consortium (Orion CMC) | 2026 | $100 million | Development Finance Corporation | DFC | Equity, Loan |
“Decades of lackadaisical policymaking and oversight have left glaring holes in America’s supply chains and industrial base – vulnerabilities that the Trump administration is committed to using every tool at our disposal to rectify” — said White House spokesman Kush Desai to Bloomberg.
The process started under President Joe Biden (2021-2025), with deals totaling at least US$80million:
- US$30 million equity investment in TechMet in FY2022
- US$50 million equity investment tied to Phalaborwa Rare Earths through TechMet/DFC structures
We suspect this cost number is likely only the “tip of the iceberg” once you start including the Trump’s administration’s US$12 billion for the critical minerals stock pile “Project Vault”, and others.
And private co-investors include JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, as well as foreign partners including Emirati sovereign wealth fund and Japan.
On partnerships, the number is easier to undercount than overcount because many are frameworks rather than cash deals. At a minimum, the US has built a sizeable architecture that includes the Minerals Security Partnership, which brings together 14 countries and the EU; the older Energy Resource Governance Initiative launched in 2019; the U.S.-Canada Critical Minerals Action Plan in 2020; the U.S.-Brazil Critical Minerals Working Group in 2020; MINVEST; the U.S.-DRC strategic minerals partnership; and, in February 2026 alone, Reuters reported 11 new bilateral deals plus a trilateral arrangement involving the EU and Japan.
It is part of an attempt to accelerate a model that turns the US government into financier, equity holder, offtake architect and geopolitical broker. And, after years of the US talking about mineral security, they are now starting to put the money where their mouth is, so to speak.
For mining companies the scale of the investment by the US government helps put a floor in the risk involved in moving ahead with projects.
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Why the Next Big Tech Companies Will Look Like Commodity Traders
NOAA ruling opens door to new era of deep-sea mining
US pushes allies to pay critical minerals premium
US invests $8.6 billion in critical minerals deals since January 2025
Russia imposes helium export controls amid global shortage
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- Russia has imposed helium export controls through the end of 2027, requiring special approval for shipments outside the Eurasian Economic Union
- Qatar produced about 63 million cubic meters of helium in 2025, close to one-third of global supply
- helium spot prices have doubled since the Middle East crisis began
- Russia is the world’s third-largest helium producer and accounts for around 8% of global output
Russia has imposed helium export controls through the end of 2027, requiring special approval for shipments outside the Eurasian Economic Union, just as the global helium market is already under strain from Middle East disruption.
This is no niche gas story: helium sits inside semiconductor manufacturing, MRI systems, aerospace, welding and leak detection.
But, the conflict in the Middle East has disrupted up to a third of global helium supply after attacks on Qatar’s gas processing facilities, putting helium at the top of global headlines. Helium spot prices have doubled since the Middle East crisis began, with warnings that spot helium prices could spike by 50%–200% in severe shortage scenarios.
Buyers, particularly in Asia, are scrambling for supply after Qatar halted LNG production and associated helium output. Because helium is extracted as a byproduct of natural gas processing, damage to gas infrastructure translates directly into lost helium volumes.
Why do Russia’s helium export controls matter now?
Qatar produced about 63 million cubic meters of helium in 2025 out of roughly 190 million cubic meters globally, or close to one-third of world supply.
Russia is the world’s third-largest helium producer and accounts for around 8% of global production, adding another shock to global helium supply.
Who is exposed?
Chipmakers are near the front of the line, with reports that helium shortages are already starting to affect parts of the tech supply chain, with executives warning that tightening supply was forcing companies to seek alternatives. Helium is used in cooling, leak detection and precision manufacturing in semiconductors, and there are few easy substitutes in the most demanding applications.
Medical imaging is another pressure point, with almost no substitutes for helium in cryogenic applications requiring extremely low temperatures, even if some superconducting systems are being designed to use less of it over time.
Conclusion
Russia’s export controls land at a moment when helium moves from a “background industrial gas” to a strategic priority, fitting a broader pattern already visible across critical material chains: once supply concentration meets war, sanctions or state intervention, “non-core” industrial inputs can turn strategic very quickly.
And the biggest global beneficiary at the moment is the USA:
China moves to halt sulphuric acid exports as war-driven supply shock deepens
China is planning to halt sulphuric acid exports from May, tightening an already stressed market for one of mining’s most important industrial chemicals, according to Argus Media — increasing risks for copper, nickel and fertilizer supply chains.
Since the start of the Middle East crisis and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, sulphur prices have increased approx 70%; and, for example, sulphuric acid prices in Chile, which buys over 1 million tons of Chinese sulfuric acid every year where a fifth of the copper output in Chile — the world’s No. 1 producer — involves a type of processing that depends on sulfuric acid, have increased 44% in just one month.
The problem, as we highlighted in our recent analysis — Strait of Hormuz is chokepoint for sulphuric acid and critical metal processing — the Middle East accounted for around 24% of global sulphur production at 83.87 million metric tons last year; including 50% of seabourne trade of sulphur, which must be exported via the Strait of Hormuz.
And, the sulphuric acid market was already tight before the latest Middle East disruption, increasing 500% before the latest conflict in Iran started.
Sulphuric acid is a core input across hydrometallurgy, especially for acid-intensive processing routes such as HPAL nickel and oxide copper leaching. For example, Indonesia has the clearest exposure to the tightening sulphur supply — the country now accounts for more than 60% of global nickel production — and imports around 75% of its sulphur from the Middle East.
The loss of Chinese volumes will be difficult to offset, given the parallel shortage of sulfur feedstocks, according to Peter Harrisson, an acid analyst at consultancy CRU told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also reports that Beijing’s planned export halt will cover sulphuric acid produced as a byproduct of copper and zinc smelting, cutting another source of supply to overseas buyers just as war disruption has already squeezed the market.
A tighter acid market threatens higher costs and possible bottlenecks for miners and processors in major producing regions, including African copper belts and Indonesia’s nickel sector, both of which depend heavily on reliable sulphur and acid supply.
For a market already discovering that sulphuric acid can become a strategic choke point, China’s planned ban is another sign that this crisis is spreading far beyond oil.
Read our latest analysis:
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How tokenization could reshape commodity supply chains
For decades, global commodity supply chains have operated in a largely analog way. Metals are extracted from the ground, sold through layers of intermediaries, shipped across continents, and ultimately delivered to manufacturers. Those manufacturers often have limited visibility into where those materials originated—or how they moved through the system.
That model worked reasonably well when supply chains were stable and commodities were abundant. But in today’s world of geopolitical fragmentation, energy transition demand, and increasing scrutiny around supply chain transparency, the traditional structure is beginning to show its limits.
A growing number of companies are now asking whether emerging technologies—particularly tokenization—could fundamentally change how commodities move through global supply chains.
SUPPLY CHAINS BUILT FOR A DIFFERENT ERA
Modern commodity supply chains were designed primarily for efficiency. Producers sold raw materials to traders, traders sold to processors and manufacturers, and pricing was largely determined through global exchanges or long-term contracts.
While this system created liquidity and scale, it also introduced complexity and opacity. A single ton of copper or nickel may change hands multiple times before it ever reaches the factory floor. For manufacturers trying to track sourcing, environmental standards, or geopolitical risk, that lack of visibility can create real challenges.
Recent supply disruptions have made those challenges even more apparent. Companies building everything from electric vehicles to renewable energy infrastructure increasingly need reliable access to critical materials. That includes copper and lithium. It also includes nickel and rare earth elements.
Yet the traditional commodity trading system often offers limited transparency into how those materials are sourced and delivered.
Why The Next Billion-Dollar Startup May Be Built Around Commodities
Founders who bridge physical and digital economies may build the next generation of unicorns — by Anthony Milewski for The Entrepreneur
Key Takeaways
- Commodity supply gaps are creating overlooked, high-growth opportunities beyond traditional software startups.
- Electrification and AI infrastructure are driving structural demand for critical minerals worldwide.
For much of the past two decades, the most valuable startups in the world were built on software. Founders created platforms that scaled quickly, required relatively little physical infrastructure and relied primarily on code rather than raw materials. From social media to cloud computing, the formula for building a large company is increasingly centered on digital products.
But a subtle shift is underway.
As the global economy becomes more electrified, more automated and more dependent on physical infrastructure, the next wave of high-growth startups may look very different.
In fact, some of the most significant entrepreneurial opportunities ahead may not be in software at all. They may be in commodities.
The physical economy is back in focus
For years, entrepreneurs were encouraged to avoid capital-intensive industries. The conventional wisdom was simple: software businesses scale faster and require less upfront investment than companies dealing with physical resources.
That logic helped fuel one of the most remarkable periods of digital innovation in history. But it also had an unintended consequence. While startups flooded into apps, marketplaces and social platforms, far fewer entrepreneurs focused on the physical materials that underpin modern economies.
Those materials are now back in the spotlight.
The global push toward electrification, renewable energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing is driving enormous demand for commodities such as copper, lithium, nickel and rare earth elements. These resources power everything from electric vehicles and battery storage systems to data centers and transmission infrastructure.
In other words, the technologies shaping the future depend on a massive foundation of physical materials.
And the supply of those materials is far from guaranteed.