Nvidia has quietly revised a technical paper to correct what it acknowledged were erroneous statements about copper demand in data centres, sharply lowering previously cited estimates after the figures were questioned by media reports.
The U.S. chipmaker amended the paper to state that a conventional one-gigawatt data centre rack would require about 200 tonnes of copper for busbars, a drastic reduction from the previously stated figure of 500,000 tonnes. The revised number represents just 0.04% of the original estimate.
The correction implies that earlier projections of copper demand driven by data centre construction—particularly amid the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure—may have been significantly overstated.
Nvidia did not issue a public announcement alongside the revision, and the change was made quietly within the technical documentation. The company has not publicly commented on how the error occurred or whether it expects the correction to affect broader market assumptions around metals demand linked to AI-related data centre growth.
Copper demand forecasts tied to data centres have attracted growing attention from investors and commodity markets, as hyperscalers and AI developers race to build power-hungry computing infrastructure worldwide. The revised figures suggest the material intensity of such facilities may be far lower than some earlier estimates implied.
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