Tech giants weigh buying into copper miners to secure data-centre metal

What happened

Speaking at the Financial Times Metals and Mining Summit in London on 15 October, Anglo American chief executive Duncan Wanblad said talks with technology companies about buying equity in the miner were 'absolutely being had', MINING.COM reported. No stakes have been taken, but he described 'deep expressions of interest'.

The choice for the tech side, he said, is between locking in long-term offtake directly or taking equity to secure a share of future supply. At the same summit, BHP CFO Vandita Pant said BHP is talking to hyperscale cloud providers and working with Amazon on lower-carbon copper, while calling equity investment 'a different issue'.

The approaches come as Anglo waits on China's final clearance of its merger with Teck, which would create a top-five copper producer with about 1.2 million tonnes of annual output.

Our take

This is talk, not a transaction, and we would not price in a deal yet. But the direction matters. Until now, tech companies have bought copper exposure through supply agreements, such as Rio Tinto supplying AWS from its Johnson Camp mine in Arizona. Asking about equity means buyers are worried about access, not just price.

Equity is also harder than it sounds. Mining is cyclical and capital-hungry, and a large Anglo–Teck deal already needs Chinese approval. Expect structured prepayments or project-level stakes before any hyperscaler buys into a whole listed miner.

Why it matters for AI infrastructure

Data centres need copper for power distribution, busbars, cabling and grid connections. BHP estimates that every extra US$200 billion a year of data-centre investment needs copper equal to a new 150,000-tonne-a-year mine, according to mining.com.au.

If AI builders start owning upstream supply, the copper available to everyone else gets tighter. That would be a structural support for prices and a new source of capital for new mines.