Copper just beat iron ore inside BHP's own books, and the reason behind that shift is the same one pushing the metal toward record prices this month: AI data centers need wiring, and there isn't enough copper to go around.
BHP's copper business, including gold and uranium byproducts, generated $18.19 billion in underlying EBITDA for the fiscal year just reported. Iron ore brought in $14.53 billion. For a company that built its name and its market cap on Pilbara iron ore for two decades, that's a genuine changing of the guard.
Brandon Craig, who took over from Mike Henry as BHP chief executive on July 1, is starting with copper already doing the work investors used to expect from iron ore. BHP's results showed copper contributed 54% of group underlying EBITDA. The company posted a 30% jump in underlying attributable profit to $13.2 billion and a 15% rise in revenue to $58.8 billion. Its annual dividend rose to $1.72 a share, the highest in four years. Those aren't side numbers. They're the new center of the business.
The timing isn't a coincidence.
Copper is being pulled from both ends #
Copper has been trading close to record levels as warehouses empty and buyers pay up for metal they can get quickly. MarketWatch reported on August 17 that LME copper traded near $14,543 a metric ton, just below the all-time high it said was set the previous Friday. According to Bloomberg, the spot price also traded as much as $545 a tonne above the three-month contract on August 17, the widest backwardation since the 2021 squeeze that forced the London Metal Exchange to impose emergency curbs. LME warehouse stocks fell for 42 straight sessions. They're down almost half since mid-May, Bloomberg reported.
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Some of that squeeze is about tariffs and trade flows, not AI. Shipments have been rushing into the US ahead of possible tariff action, and China has been pulling in cargoes of its own. Both moves drain the exchange warehouse network. But the demand story that doesn't disappear with one policy decision is data centers and the grids built to feed them.
A server rack doesn't use much wire on its own. The real draw is everything around it: transformers, substations, transmission lines, backup power and the miles of cable that turn a building full of chips into something that can actually run. CRU Group has warned that power distribution and grid infrastructure can offset the decline in some copper data-cable uses as data centers move toward more optical networking. BloombergNEF has put a harder number on the pressure, estimating that AI-powered facilities will average about 400,000 tonnes of copper demand a year over the next decade and peak near 572,000 tonnes in 2028.
That's a new structural buyer showing up in a market that was already tight. Frankly, it's the kind of demand mining companies used to only dream about: not tied to one country's apartment towers or a single stimulus cycle, but layered on top of electrification that was already stretching supply before anyone typed a prompt into a chatbot.
Aluminum and nickel are next in line #
Copper isn't the only metal getting repriced. The World Bank said in June that its base metals index is projected to reach an all-time high in 2026, led by aluminum, copper and tin, before easing in 2027. It also forecast aluminum and tin climbing right alongside copper - about 20% each this year - while nickel added 12% and zinc about 5%. Iron ore is the odd one out: the World Bank expects its price to fall in both 2026 and 2027 because supply is ample and demand is weaker.
Aluminum still has a real data-center story, just a different one. Discovery Alert, drawing on recent industry research, said internal aluminum demand from data centers could peak somewhere between 600,000 and 900,000 tonnes a year before falling back late in the 2030s as designs become more efficient. That metal goes into cooling systems and racks, with structural parts thrown in too, more than the electrical backbone itself. Useful, yes. But it doesn't have copper's direct line into wiring, transformers and grid reinforcement.
Nickel hasn't broken out the way copper has. The World Bank grouped it among the metals likely to rise this year, but it doesn't carry the same clean AI infrastructure link. You can see the market making that distinction. Copper is being priced like a bottleneck. Nickel is still being priced like a metal waiting for a clearer buyer.
For miners, the message in BHP's results is hard to miss. Capital that used to chase iron ore expansions in Western Australia is now chasing copper growth in South Australia - and in Chile and Argentina too - because at these prices copper can fund its own growth and throw off the cash iron ore used to. BHP says global copper demand could rise from about 34 million tonnes a year today to more than 50 million tonnes by 2050, with digitalisation and the AI buildout sitting alongside energy transition demand.
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Rivals reading BHP's earnings will draw the obvious conclusion. The metal that matters most right now isn't the one inside a smartphone chip. It's the one carrying electricity to run it.
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