Albemarle's CEO Called It "The Big Surprise." Here's What He Saw. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Katusa's Investment Insights Big Mistake: This Wasn’t in the Lithium Models Before By Marin Katusa Get real-time alerts right away. Follow on X: @KatusaResearch and @MarinKatusa One-third. That's how much of Memphis's peak summer electricity a single building will need when it's fully operational. Not a factory. Not a smelter. Not a stadium. A room full of chips learning to think. Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus facility (pictured below) already runs 200,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs and consumes 250 megawatts. That’s enough power for 250,000 homes. And that's phase one. Phase two scales to one million GPUs. That power requirement is over one gigawatt. But one problem… the grid couldn't deliver it fast enough. So, in May 2025, xAI took a different approach and brought in 168 Tesla Megapacks. More than $375 million in lithium-ion batteries. For backup power. For one building. When Elon Musk posted on X that Colossus 2 would be "the first Gigawatt AI training supercluster," he wasn't bragging about artificial intelligence. He was describing a power problem. And six months later, the world's largest lithium producers admitted they hadn't seen it coming. This is the demand signal the lithium market didn't model and it just flipped the lithium market.   "The Big Upside Surprise" The lithium thesis was simple: electric cars. Model the adoption curve. Forecast battery production. Project demand. For three years, that thesis collapsed. Lithium hydroxide prices dropped 89% from their 2022 peak. Oversupply. Slower EV growth than expected. The narrative hardened. Then, in November 2025, came the moment every analyst had to update their decks. Kent Masters, CEO of Albemarle, the world's largest lithium producer, used the word "surprise" on an earnings call. Grid storage had grown 105% year-to-date. "The big upside surprise this year." Grant Donald at Liontown said battery storage systems had "come from nowhere." SQM's leadership then said storage was growing 40-50% annually, and now accounts for 20% of total lithium demand. Every major lithium model missed the fastest-growing demand category on the planet. They modeled cars. They didn't model a single building in Memphis that needs one-third of the city's electricity to train an AI. Three of the world's largest lithium producers... All saying the same thing: Storage demand exceeded their forecasts.   Why AI Companies are Bypassing the Grid Batteries scale in months. Power plants take years. AI companies building gigawatt-scale training clusters can't wait. So they're buying batteries instead of grid connections. S&P Global projects US data center power capacity will reach 134,000 megawatts by 2030, up 168% from 2024. Tesla reported record energy storage deployments of 12.5 GWh in the third quarter of 2025, nearly double the prior year. The demand data confirms it.   The Lithium Demand Curve Nobody Modeled Benchmark Mineral Intelligence released their 2025 figures. Global battery demand grew 28% year-to-date through August. China and Europe both topped 29%. EV sales hit 23% global growth on top of that, with Europe leading at 32%. But here’s the number that matters… Benchmark projects total battery demand will grow 7-fold by 2040. S&P Global forecasts lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity will more than double to 6.5 TWh globally by 2030 And China holds over HALF that market. Sponsored Cumulative global battery storage deployments is projected to climb from 27 GWh in 2021 to nearly 778 GWh by 2030. That's a 28x expansion in nine years. The market caught on and lithium prices responded. Lithium spodumene gained 57% from its 2025 low of $8,259 per metric ton in June to $13,002 by November end. The spot market is repricing in real time. From Surplus to Shortage S&P Global projects the global lithium surplus will shrink from 84,000 metric tons in 2024 to 33,000 metric tons in 2025. When the miners miss it, it means the market hasn’t even started pricing it. That room full of chips in Memphis was the signal and the repricing is the opportunity. In this month’s Katusa’s Resource Opportunities… I detail exactly how to position your portfolio for the “Electro Dollar Age”. Including the specific equities that will benefit most. If you want to be positioned before this market reprices, start here… Learn how to become a member today. Regards, Marin Katusa Copyright © 2025, Katusa Research, All rights reserved.   Details and Disclosures   Investing can have large potential rewards, but it can also have large potential risks. You must be aware of the risks and be willing to accept them in order to invest in financial instruments, including stocks, options, and futures. Katusa Research makes every best effort in adhering to publishing exemptions and securities laws. By reading this, you agree to all of the following: You understand this to be an expression of opinions and NOT professional advice. You are solely responsible for the use of any content and hold Katusa Research, and all partners, members, and affiliates harmless in any event or claim. If you purchase anything through a link in this email, you should assume that we have an affiliate relationship with the company providing the product or service that you purchase, and that we will be paid in some way. We recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing anything.

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