Silver Rises Over 120% YTD 
Published: 09-25-2026, 02:54 pm
Right now, there is gold sitting in your pocket. Not much, and you will never see it, but it is there, soldered into the one part of your phone that is not allowed to fail. Zoom out to every phone, server, and satellite on Earth, and that invisible sliver adds up to something worth watching.
Key Takeaways
- A typical smartphone holds only about 0.03 to 0.034 grams of gold. Even so, the electronics sector used 270.4 tonnes of gold in 2025 [World Gold Council].
- Electronics is gold’s biggest tech use case. But technology overall is still small next to total demand: roughly 6% of the 5,000-plus tonnes of gold demanded worldwide in 2025 [World Gold Council].
- AI infrastructure, not smartphones, is now the main growth driver inside electronics demand. It shows up through bonding wire and interconnects in AI servers [World Gold Council].
- Rising gold prices are pushing makers toward thrifting (less gold per unit) and substitution (swapping gold for cheaper metals). The same pressure is already reshaping silver’s use in solar panels [World Gold Council].
- The world’s e-waste held roughly $15 billion worth of gold in 2022 alone. Circuit boards run far richer in gold than typical mined ore [UNITAR/ITU Global E-waste Monitor 2024].
Open up a smartphone and you will not find much gold. A single device carries somewhere between 7 and 34 milligrams. That is worth a couple of dollars at most. But multiply that sliver by billions of devices. Add servers, sensors, and satellites. Gold’s role in electronics becomes a real line in global demand. It also behaves nothing like jewelry demand or central bank buying.
How Much Gold Is Actually Inside a Smartphone?
Most estimates land close to three or four hundredths of a gram per handset. Most of it sits on the motherboard. It coats the tiny connectors that link the chip, memory, and screen. A SIM card carries a small extra trace. Bigger devices scale up fast. A desktop board can hold about ten times a phone’s gold. A server board built for nonstop, heavy-duty work can hold close to a full gram.
One pattern holds across every device type. The harder a part has to switch, carry current, and resist rust for years, the more likely it uses gold somewhere inside.
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Why Does a Phone Need Gold At All, When It’s So Expensive?
Gold shows up in electronics because nothing cheaper does the same job. It carries current well, and it resists rust for decades. Inside a chip, it also bonds well to the hair-thin wires that carry each signal. Copper carries most of the current in a device. It is cheap and easy to find. But copper rusts over time. At the tiny scale of a bonding wire, that rust becomes a failure point. Gold resists it. That is why engineers still use it exactly where a bad connection cannot be allowed.
This is a choice about lasting longer, not about looking nice. Engineers do not pick gold to look fancy. They pick it because a cheaper swap would mean shorter product life and more failures.
How Much Gold Does the Electronics Industry Use Each Year?
The scale here is tonnes, not milligrams. The World Gold Council’s full-year 2025 report puts electronics demand at 270.4 tonnes. That is almost flat against 270.8 tonnes in 2024 [World Gold Council, January 29, 2026]. That sits inside a wider “technology” group of 322.8 tonnes, which also covers other factory uses and dental work. Together, technology made up roughly 6% of the record 5,000-plus tonnes of gold demand worldwide in 2025 [World Gold Council].
That share has stayed steady for years. Gold use in electronics does not swing with the gold price the way jewelry or coin buying does. A chipmaker cannot just skip the gold plating when prices rise. It can only use less gold. That is exactly what has been happening.
Why Is AI Changing Gold Demand From Electronics?
The mix of electronics demand is shifting, even though the total tonnage barely moved at all. The World Gold Council’s fourth-quarter 2025 report points to AI data centers as the newest growth driver [World Gold Council]. That demand flows through bonding wire and dense connector boards used in AI servers. At the same time, AI-driven memory chip shortages have squeezed everyday consumer devices. Phone sales growth is expected to slow in 2026 as part costs climb [World Gold Council, citing Counterpoint Research].
So the demand floor is holding steady overall. But where that demand comes from is shifting. It is moving away from the phone in your pocket. It is heading toward the server racks behind an AI query.
Are Makers Using Less Gold Because of the Price?
Yes, and the World Gold Council says so directly. Rising gold prices are pushing “increased R&D into thrifting and substitution of gold across all sectors,” per the Council [World Gold Council, January 29, 2026]. Thrifting means using a thinner layer of gold to do the same job. Substitution means dropping gold entirely. Makers swap in palladium, nickel, or another alloy wherever gold’s exact traits are not truly needed. Both moves already show up in circuit board making. This mirrors solar panels, where makers cut silver per cell instead of dropping the metal outright.
Gold’s factory-floor use also runs well beyond circuit boards. It has long served in astronaut visors, satellite mirrors, dental work, and certain medical treatments. That gives gold demand a floor that sits apart from money and jewelry cycles [GoldSilver research].
Can Gold Be Recovered From Old Phones and Computers?
Recovering it is not just doable. It is unusually rich work. The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, from the ITU and UNITAR, found the world made 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022. That waste held metals worth about $91 billion. Roughly $15 billion of that was gold alone [UNITAR/ITU Global E-waste Monitor 2024]. Circuit boards concentrate that gold well beyond what a mine produces: peer-reviewed estimates put it anywhere from roughly 100 to several hundred grams per tonne depending on the grade of board, against just one to ten grams per tonne for typical mined gold ore [Cayumil et al., Waste Management, 2016; e-waste recovery research, ACS Omega, 2025]. Pound for pound, a tossed-out circuit board beats most working gold mines.
The real gap is in collection, not in the chemistry. Less than a quarter of the world’s e-waste got properly collected and recycled in 2022 [UNITAR/ITU Global E-waste Monitor 2024]. Most of that gold still sits in landfills and junk drawers instead of back in use.
What Does Electronics Demand Mean for Gold Investors?
For anyone holding gold as an investment, electronics is a side story, not the headline. Technology demand at roughly 6% of the total is dwarfed by investment demand, central bank buying, and jewelry. That is why a jump in AI server demand does not move the gold price the way a shift in central bank buying does. What electronics demand does give is a real, non-monetary floor. Even in a world with no investors and no central banks, some baseline tonnage of gold would still get used. Modern electronics simply cannot run without it.
That difference matters for reading gold demand data the right way. A rising AI-driven electronics number is a story about chips, not a story about gold’s role as money. Investors tracking gold as a store of value should watch central bank reserves and real yields first, before anything else. Treat the tech sector as the quiet undercurrent beneath the price action, not the driver of it.
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People Also Ask
Independent teardown estimates put the gold content of a typical smartphone, iPhone included, at roughly 0.03 to 0.034 grams. Most of it sits on the motherboard and in the SIM card contacts.
Electronics made up about 5 to 6% of total global gold demand in 2025. The broader technology category, which also includes dentistry and other industrial uses, came to roughly 6% of the year’s 5,000-plus tonnes of demand [World Gold Council].
Gold resists corrosion and oxidation indefinitely while conducting electricity efficiently. That makes it reliable in the fine connectors and bonding wires where a failed connection cannot be tolerated. Copper handles most current-carrying wiring, since it is cheaper, but it corrodes in ways gold does not.
At the single-device level, not really. One phone holds only a couple of dollars’ worth of gold. At scale, yes. The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor put roughly $15 billion in gold inside the world’s 2022 e-waste stream, at concentrations far richer than typical mined ore [UNITAR/ITU Global E-waste Monitor 2024].
AI-related data center hardware is now a growth driver inside electronics demand. It shows up mainly through bonding wire and high-density interconnect boards used in AI servers, even as demand from traditional consumer electronics has softened [World Gold Council].
That is already happening. The World Gold Council reports rising research into thrifting and substitution as gold prices climb. The same cost pressure is already reshaping silver’s use in solar panels [World Gold Council].
SOURCES
1. World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends: Full Year 2025 (Technology)
2. World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025
3. UNITAR / ITU — Global E-waste Monitor 2024
4. Waste Management — Concentration of Precious Metals During Their Recovery From Electronic Waste (Cayumil et al., 2016)
5. ACS Omega — Gold Metal Recovery from Electronic Waste through Laser Generation of Micro and Nanoparticles (Trivedi et al., 2025)
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.
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