Tungsten
Interconnect and contact metal with concentrated supply
Tungsten (via WF6 gas and W metallization) is used for contacts, vias and interconnects in chips, and for hard tooling across fab equipment manufacturing. China dominates roughly 80% of global tungsten mining and processing and added tungsten-related items to export-control lists in 2024-2025 amid US-China trade tensions. This makes a workhorse fab metal an emerging strategic chokepoint.
China share
~80% of mining/processing
Uses
Chip contacts/vias (WF6), tooling
Controls
Added to China export-control scope 2024-25
How it fits the stack
Tungsten 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.
Tungsten in the AI stack. Tungsten 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) — 2 entities, 1 relationships
- TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) —supplies→ Tungsten
Context — capital, rivals, policy · · 1