{
  "id": 9799551,
  "title": "AI boom fails to lift gold demand, WGC says",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/ai-boom-fails-to-lift-gold-demand-wgc-says",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-09-25T16:59:07.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mining.com",
    "slug": "mining-com",
    "url": "https://www.mining.com/ai-boom-fails-to-lift-gold-demand-wgc-says/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has not boosted overall technology-sector demand for gold, according to the World Gold Council (WGC). Despite the AI surge, manufacturers' efforts to cut gold usage, even as prices remain high, have counterbalanced the growth in AI applications last year, the council reports. While demand for AI chips skyrocketed, gold usage in technology remained stagnant at 323 tonnes in 2025, largely due to miniaturization and manufacturers' attempts to minimize or eliminate gold from certain components. In 2024, technology demand for gold rose by 7% to 326 tonnes, with a modest contribution from AI-related use, the WGC noted in February 2025. However, the wider emergence of co-packaged optics (CPO) could potentially provide a new source of gold demand in the AI sector. The WGC describes the current demand situation in the electronics sector as a \"tug-of-war\" between competing factors, with the two sides appearing evenly matched. While gold's limited role in AI so far dampens expectations of a significant short-term boost to demand for the yellow metal, the council sees potential for long-term growth from CPO and other advanced components where gold remains hard to replace. Currently, gold is trading at $4,270.30 per ounce, up nearly 14% from a year ago. Co-packaged optics (CPO) is a semiconductor packaging method integrating optical transmitter and receiver components with circuits like computing chips, enabling AI systems to process data faster and enhance bandwidth. Since gold's durability and electrical conductivity make it useful in certain optical and photonic parts of CPOs, such as lasers and high-frequency electrodes in chips, it is used in these areas. Although early days for CPO adoption, major players in the AI industry like US chipmaker Nvidia are heavily investing in its development. If CPO becomes widely adopted in hyperscale AI infrastructure, new demand for gold in the technology sector could become significant. Electronics manufacturing accounts for approximately 80% of gold usage in industrial applications, with the remainder coming from other industrial uses and dentistry.",
  "summary": "Demand for AI chips has exploded while gold use in technology remained essentially flat.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}