Tungsten up 622%: the AI buildout's chokepoint is an 8,800-ton gas market

Start with the capacity arithmetic the report leaves implicit. If Kanto Denka and Central Glass together made roughly 2,200 tons of tungsten hexafluoride a year, and that was about a quarter of world capacity ^[8], then the entire global business for the gas that deposits tungsten inside a chip runs on the order of 8,800 tons a year ^[14]. A quarter of that went offline on a single date ^[3]. There is no version of a data centre buildout where the input at the narrowest point is measured in low thousands of tons and nobody notices.

The demand curve does not explain the price. Global tungsten demand is projected to go from about 143,000 tons in 2025 to 210,000 tons in 2035 ^[16], which is roughly 47% over ten years, or about 3.9% a year compounded ^[19]. A 622% move ^[1] means prices multiplied by something like 7.2 ^[13]. Single-digit annual tonnage growth does not do that. What moved was access: China holds about 80% of supply ^[7], began restricting which firms could ship abroad in 2025 ^[6], and by 2026-2027 the authorised exporter list stood at 15 companies ^[2]. Defence demand tied to the Ukraine and Iran conflicts is pulling from the same pool ^[18].

The instructive detail is where the failure actually landed. Not a Chinese mine and not a fab, but two converters in Japan, which stopped because they had run out of metal to process ^[3]. That is the step buyers tend to model as a service rather than a supply chain. Samsung and SK Hynix have tungsten embedded in their process flows with no quick substitute, and are reported to be under pressure to diversify into alternatives that are limited and slow ^[15].

Which is where the equity story deserves a cold reading. Almonty Industries brought its Sangdong mine in South Korea to full production in July 2026 ^[4], and the same report notes that one mine does not close a global deficit, with Sangdong's output small against what the restrictions removed and non-Chinese project lead times measured in years ^[10]. On 17 August 2026 the company announced a share buyback, citing its own view that the stock was undervalued given the supply environment ^[9]. A producer buying its shares during a declared structural shortage is making a statement about its share price, not about tonnage.

Provenance matters here too. This is one account, carried by Crypto Briefing via Mining News North ^[11], and its framing that the binding constraint is neither chips nor electricity ^[5] is the argument of the mining trade press. The part that stands on its own is narrower and harder: deficits are expected through at least 2028 ^[17], and the practical question for anyone signing wafer contracts is whether their gas supplier can get metal at all.