Congo has set new conditions for cobalt exporters, according to a government circular reviewed by Reuters, potentially complicating a recently introduced quota system as the country seeks to keep a tight grip on the key battery mineral…The new conditions require miners, among other things, to pre-pay a 10% royalty within 48 hours and secure a compliance certificate, the circular shows…The Democratic Republic of Congo replaced a months-long export ban with a quota system in October, aiming to boost state revenues and tighten oversight in a country that produces more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, a key component in electric vehicle batteries…No shipments have moved since the ban was lifted as producers seek clarity and work to meet compliance rules, Reuters has previously reported…The joint circular from the mines and finance ministries, dated November 26, sets out procedures for exporters, including mandatory quota verification, joint sampling, weighing and sealing of lots, and issuance of a new Quota Verification Certificate (AVQ) by the Authority for the Regulation and Control of Strategic Mineral Substances' Markets (ARECOMS)…Congo allocated 18,125 metric tons of export quotas for the fourth quarter of 2025 and plans 96,600 tons annually from 2026…Cobalt is currently trading around $24 a lb or $52,910 a ton, compared with $16 a lb or $35,275 a ton in August. Prices have been climbing since hitting a nine-year low around $10 a lb in February when the export ban was introduced.

Artificial intelligence is often cast as intangible, a technology that lives in the cloud and thinks in code. The reality is more grounded. Behind every chatbot or image generator lie servers that draw electricity, cooling systems that consume water, chips that rely on fragile supply chains, and minerals dug from the earth…That physical backbone is rapidly expanding. Data centers are multiplying in number and in size. The largest ones, “hyperscale” centers, have power needs in the tens of megawatts, at the scale of a small city. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta already run hundreds worldwide, but the next wave is far larger, with projects at gigawatt scale. In Abu Dhabi, OpenAI and its partners are planning a 5-gigawatt campus, matching the output of five nuclear reactors and sprawling across 10 square miles…Mineral footprint…Chip fabrication itself is resource-hungry. A single cutting-edge fabrication plant can consume as much electricity as a small city and require vast amounts of ultrapure water. But the deeper story lies farther upstream, in the minerals that make advanced chips and data centers possible…They need gallium and germanium for advanced circuitry, silicon for chips, rare earths for cooling fans, copper for the cabling that binds servers together. A single hyperscale campus can contain nearly as much copper as a midsize mine produces in a year…By 2030, data centers could be consuming more than half a million metric tons of copper and 75,000 tons of silicon each year—enough to lift their share of global demand to 2 percent, according to the IEA. For gallium, the leap is sharper still: Data centers could account for more than a tenth of total demand. Those percentages may sound modest, but they come on top of surging requirements from electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense industries, all chasing the same finite supply…That supply is highly concentrated. China controls 80–90 percent of global refining of silicon, gallium, and rare earths. In 2023 it restricted exports of gallium and germanium; since late 2024 new curbs have followed on tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, indium, and molybdenum. All are critical inputs for microprocessors, diodes, and server hardware. Prices for many of these metals have spiked. Washington, Brussels, Tokyo, and Seoul have responded with critical-mineral strategies, from recycling programs to alliances with resource-rich countries in Africa and Latin America…The scramble for minerals, as for chips, leads to concentrated supply chains and high barriers to entry, with clear geopolitical stakes. Securing stable, sustainable access will shape who can truly harness the AI revolution.