Indium stands apart from the other critical minerals that China has placed under export controls since 2023. The February 2025 restrictions on indium compounds were explicitly excluded from the November 2025 trade deal that paused controls on gallium, germanium, and antimony. Indium is now the only one of the four export-controlled minor metals still under full restriction.

The exception matters. Every AI data center relies on indium phosphide substrates to send data between its GPUs through fiber optic cables. No other material can do this job at scale. China produces about 70 percent of the world’s refined indium, and prices have reached their highest levels in a decade.

The US Defense Logistics Agency has issued a contract solicitation worth up to $125 million over three years for high-purity indium ingots. It follows an August 2025 request for information seeking 222 tonnes for the National Defense Stockpile. The United States imports all of its indium and has never produced the critical mineral in a domestic capacity.

Background & Context

Indium does not exist in concentrated ore deposits of its own. It is recovered only as a byproduct of zinc smelting. This makes supply slow to respond when prices rise. Smelters set their output based on zinc market conditions, not indium prices. Moreover, a large share of indium-bearing concentrates still goes to smelters that lack the equipment to recover the metal.