Gallium
Compound-semiconductor metal under Chinese export control
Gallium (as GaN and GaAs) is critical for power electronics, RF/5G, and increasingly for datacenter power delivery and high-efficiency switching used in AI infrastructure. China dominates roughly 90%+ of primary gallium production, and in 2023-2024 it imposed export licensing controls, then in December 2024 banned exports of gallium (and germanium, antimony) to the United States. This makes gallium a textbook geopolitical chokepoint with Western supply-diversification efforts still nascent in 2025-2026.
China share
~90%+ of primary gallium
Uses
GaN power electronics, GaAs RF, LEDs
Controls
2023 licensing; Dec 2024 US export ban
2025-26 status
Western supply diversification early-stage
How it fits the stack
Gallium with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
Gallium in the AI stack. Gallium with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 4 entities, 3 relationships
- Coherent —sources→ Gallium
- Lumentum —sources→ Gallium
- TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) —supplies→ Gallium