"Minerals like copper and cobalt are in high demand thanks to the $700 billion AI infrastructure buildout. Microsoft's 80-megawatt Chicago site, for example, required 2,100 tons of copper alone. Nickel, cobalt, and lithium are needed for the batteries that power data centers. Rare earths are critical to powering the magnets in server fans and hard drives that keep AI systems up and running."
"The problem is that most of these minerals are mined or processed by the U.S.'s main geopolitical competitor: China. The country is the leading refiner for 19 out of 20 of the most important strategic minerals, with an average market share of 70%, according to the International Energy Agency. Without a new source of minerals, the U.S. faces a precarious dependence on China for the raw materials underpinning its technological and economic future."
"In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Commerce and other agencies to pursue the exploration and exploitation of deep-sea resources. Several U.S. companies are now planning on extracting polymetallic nodules (PMNs), mineral-rich rock formations that sit unattached on the abyssal plain of the ocean floor."
"Of those is American Ocean Minerals, a firm that recently completed a $1 billion merger with Odyssey Marine Exploration and tapped former Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese to take the reins. The firm just earned a license to conduct research in an exclusive economic zone around the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. He claimed the EEZ holds a vast bounty of PMNs. "This could be hundreds of years of endowment," Albanese told Fortune."
AI infrastructure expansion increases demand for copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, and rare earths used in data centers, batteries, magnets, and storage devices. Many of these strategic minerals are mined or processed primarily by China, which refines most of the world’s supply and holds large market shares. This creates U.S. vulnerability and potential long-term leverage for Beijing over American industry. The Trump administration directed agencies to pursue deep-sea resource exploration and exploitation. U.S. companies are planning extraction of polymetallic nodules on the Pacific seafloor. American Ocean Minerals completed a major merger, hired Tom Albanese, and obtained a research license in an exclusive economic zone near the Cook Islands, claiming the area could contain a vast supply of nodules.
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