Prices across the tantalum complex have surged this year because of rising demand from the capacitor industry and supply disruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda.
Argus most recently assessed tantalum concentrate (tantalite) prices at $149-156/lb cif main port on 19 February, up by 43pc from the start of the year. Prices for the raw material have been on an uptrend since August, but surged in February after a landslide at the Rubaya mine in rebel-held parts of eastern DRC.
This triggered a rise in tantalum metal and scrap prices in Europe and the US as steady downstream demand from the alloy sector came up against upstream disruption. Argus most recently assessed tantalum metal prices in Europe at $560-640/kg du Rotterdam, up by 63pc from the start of the year, and US tantalum scrap at $240-260/lb delivered to customer, up by 38.9pc.
The landslide and mine collapse led to an immediate tightening of supply in Rwanda, where much of the material produced in Rubaya and other rebel held areas of DRC is smuggled and sold internationally. This caused prices for the raw material to spike, quickly lifting the wider tantalum complex.
But demand for tantalum products was already expected to be particularly strong this year because of government stockpiling and increased spending on artificial intelligence (AI).
AI a demand driver
The buildout of data centres to support AI has become a major demand driver for tantalum in 2025-26 — data centres are expected to buy up large amounts of tantalum and tantalum-polymer capacitors.
Capacitors are small electronic components used to regulate the flow of electricity in a circuit and are used widely in consumer electronics as well as the boards that house AI chips at data centres. As many as 25 tantalum and tantalum-polymer capacitors are used on the boards that house Nvidia's H100 cards, which are used in many data centre server racks, Philip Lessner, former chief technology officer at Taiwanese capacitor maker Yageo, told Argus last year.
Since January, tech giants including Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have all committed to ramping up 2026 capital expenditure (capex) to support AI growth. Alphabet, Google's parent company, anticipates 2026 capex of $175bn-185bn, while Meta expects $115bn-135bn and Amazon up to $200bn.
News of increased infrastructure spending has been a catalyst as smelters and traders expect a boost in orders for next-generation capacitors, particularly tantalum-polymer models.
"Less than 1pc of that AI spend could go into capacitors and it would still be significantly more than the market has seen before," a market participant told Argus.
Some have drawn comparisons with the Dotcom boom of the early 2000s, which also triggered heavy investment in tantalum capacitors for data centres and drove tantalite prices to a record high, before Argus began assessments.
Capacitor manufacturers raised prices for many ranges in 2025, including tantalum-polymer models and muliti-layer ceramic capacitors. These increases were partly driven by higher tantalum powder costs amid supply disruption, but increased demand from AI was also a factor.
Yageo, the leading tantalum-polymer capacitor maker, produces around 40pc of global tantalum-polymer capacitors and reported sales of up to NT$96.96bn ($3.07bn) in January-September 2025 across its entire offering. This was up by 8.5pc on the year in dollar terms. Capacitors make up around 23pc of Yageo sales. Sales growth was "primarily driven by strong demand for AI and high-end application products", Yageo said.
