A new report from Soochow Securities identifies tin, indium, and hafnium as three rare metals facing a historic demand inflection point driven by AI hardware upgrades in PCBs, optical communications, and advanced manufacturing processes. Calculations show incremental tin consumption from PCBs will reach 49,000 tonnes between 2026 and 2030, indium demand driven by indium phosphide will surge 22-fold within five years, and hafnium demand will climb to 142 tonnes. Supply for all three metals is constrained by resource depletion, by-product mining limitations, geopolitical factors, and technological bottlenecks. Arizton research indicates global data center construction investment will reach $323.72 billion by 2031. The four major cloud giants—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta—target a combined capital expenditure of $725 billion in 2026. Analyst Liu Yiting stated in a June 20 report that this "brings a demand dividend to upstream basic raw materials."