“The smartest investors look beyond the obvious choices, like hyper-scalers, and are thinking outside the usual suspects.”
Chamath Palihapitiya is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and former tech executive.
He is best known for his early leadership role at Facebook, founding the investment firm Social Capital, popularizing the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) boom, and co-hosting the popular tech and business broadcast, the All-In Podcast.
Like Chamath Palihapitiya, the smartest investors look beyond the obvious choices and are thinking outside the usual suspects. More specifically, -Palihapitiya is thinking about the nuts and bolts required to build a data center or design a graphics processing unit (GPU) from the ground up.
Palihapitiya’s grand prediction for 2026 is to invest in precious metals — specifically, he calls out copper as his asset of choice.
Why is copper important for AI?
One of the biggest pain points from rising AI investment lies in the power grid. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, data centers consumed 4% of the total electricity in the U.S. in 2024. By 2030, data center electricity consumption is expected to rise by more than 130% from current levels.
As AI workloads grow, training and inferencing protocols become even more mission-critical. Clusters of GPUs inside data centers are only going to continue to push the limits of power loads. This paradigm is what makes copper so valuable.
Copper is a conductive material — manifesting on every chip and server rack through which electricity is moving. As hyperscalers continue to accelerate capital expenditures (capex), expect additional capital to be allocated to both chip procurement and energy infrastructure in the coming years. In fact, it’s already seeing this play out.
Source: Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya Says This Is the Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Investment for 2026 (Hint: It’s Not Even a Stock) | The Motley Fool, https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/01/20/billionaire-chamath-palihapitiya-says-this-is-the/