By Surbhi Jain
Publication Date: 2026-04-16 01:31:00
The AI trade has been priced like a silicon story. It may be a materials story instead.
“AI uses more minerals than most people realize,” Harvey Kaye, Executive Chairman of U.S. Critical Materials, told Benzinga. Among them are materials like gallium, which have “very few substitutes” if supply tightens.
Often overlooked outside specialist circles, the metal sits at the heart of gallium nitride (GaN)—a technology increasingly tied to high-efficiency power systems in next-generation data centers.
And that’s where Nvidia Corp‘s ecosystem is beginning to intersect with a potential bottleneck.
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Nvidia’s collaboration with Navitas Semiconductor to develop next-generation 800V HVDC infrastructure brings GaN into sharper focus. These systems are designed to improve power delivery efficiency in AI data centers—an area that is becoming just as critical as compute itself.
That matters because AI isn’t just about chips anymore. It’s about moving and managing enormous amounts of power.
GaN, built on gallium, is emerging as a key enabler of that shift.
Gallium supply—and more importantly, processing—is heavily concentrated.
“China controls much of the global processing capacity,” Kaye notes, adding that “even small disruptions push prices up quickly.”
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That’s not theoretical. Beijing has already restricted gallium exports…
