The Hunt for Ruthenium: How AI Turned a Rare Metal into the New Gold

Ruthenium (chemical symbol Ru) is a silver-white member of the platinum-group metals. For decades it lived on the margins of the periodic table’s celebrity circuit: small industrial uses, tiny market, scant press. That anonymity has vanished. As hyperscalers expand cloud and AI infrastructure, ruthenium has moved from obscure byproduct to strategic input, with prices surging and buyers racing to secure supply.

Why this metal, and why now? In modern hard-disk drives used by data centers, an ultrathin layer of ruthenium—measured in fractions of a nanometer—helps pack more bits onto each platter while stabilizing magnetic performance. In plain terms: more data per disk, at lower cost per terabyte. As generative AI multiplies training sets and inference workloads, that cost-per-terabyte math matters. Industry shipments of high-capacity, “AI-ready” HDDs are climbing, and with them, consumption of ruthenium.

The AI effect doesn’t stop at storage. Chip researchers are testing ruthenium as a candidate for next-generation interconnects, where traditional copper faces scaling and reliability limits. If even a sliver of advanced semiconductor production migrates toward ruthenium, technology’s pull on this tiny market would intensify.

A market that outpaced the headlines. Over the past year, ruthenium’s price has nearly doubled, revisiting peaks last seen more than a decade ago and outpacing the gains in marquee precious metals. The rally is striking because the underlying market is minuscule by commodity standards—measured in tens of tons per year and hundreds of millions of dollars, not the multi-billion-dollar scale of copper, nickel, or gold. Price discovery is opaque: there’s no major futures exchange, and most trades occur directly between refiners, fabricators, and end-users. That illiquidity magnifies every shift in demand.

Supply is tight by design. There are no dedicated ruthenium mines. Virtually all supply is a byproduct of platinum-group mining, especially in South Africa, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of primary output. When platinum producers throttle back investment or battle power disruptions and labor issues, ruthenium volumes move in tandem. Recycling helps at the margins—recovery from spent catalysts and electronics—but flows are small relative to the new demand coming from data infrastructure.

Analysts who track platinum-group metals describe a classic squeeze: structurally inelastic supply meets a sudden, secular source of demand. Several expect the market to drift into, or remain in, deficit absent a step-change in byproduct recovery or a broader upswing in platinum mining. Some also see psychological spillovers: as buyers worry about access, precautionary stockpiling can tighten the spot market further.

Expert view, in brief. Critical-minerals specialists point to three dynamics likely to define the next leg:
• Cost advantage of HDDs vs. flash keeps nearline disks central to data-center storage tiers, anchoring ruthenium demand even as SSDs gain elsewhere.
• Materials efficiency—thinner coatings, tighter process control—will curb growth in grams-per-device, but won’t fully offset the scale effect of new deployments.
• R&D optionality in chips and energy storage (from interconnects to catalysts and supercapacitors) is a wild card; commercial adoption would be incremental at first, but cumulative.

The unintended rivalry: AI vs. clean energy. Ruthenium’s electrochemistry makes it attractive for high-performance catalysts and experimental battery systems, including prototypes for lithium-oxygen cells and advanced supercapacitors. Those projects now contend with a price environment shaped by AI. When the world’s deepest pockets are buying to store data, emerging climate technologies that rely on ruthenium face tougher bill-of-materials math. Unless prices ease or substitutes mature, some energy-storage concepts may be delayed or redesigned around more abundant materials.

Geopolitics and concentration risk. With supply heavily concentrated in one country and refining dominated by a handful of firms, ruthenium sits squarely in the conversation about critical minerals. There is no quick lever to pull: boosting output requires capital cycles in platinum mining, not a switch labeled “more ruthenium.” Policymakers focused on resilience will look to three levers—recycling, process thrift, and substitution—to de-risk supply without choking innovation.

What to watch next.
• Data-center capex and storage mix. If hyperscaler spending remains robust and HDDs retain the nearline tier, ruthenium demand stays supported.
• Platinum-group production guidance. Any sustained uplift (or disruption) in South African volumes will ripple directly into ruthenium availability.
• Materials breakthroughs. Demonstrations that reduce ruthenium loadings—or viable alternatives in HDD coatings, chip interconnects, or catalysts—could bend the demand curve.
• Recycling scale-up. Improved recovery from spent catalysts and e-waste would add a second, steadier leg to supply, smoothing volatility over time.

Bottom line: Ruthenium has become a case study in how a single technological wave can reprice a niche material overnight. As AI infrastructure scales, the metal’s role in cost-efficient data storage gives it staying power. Until supply catches up—or engineering makes ruthenium do more with less—this once-obscure element will remain a strategically significant, tightly balanced market where small changes carry outsized consequences.