Nornickel taps AI to seek new demand for its palladium

Bloomberg News | March 24, 2026 | 8:56 am Markets Suppliers & Equipment Top Companies Russia and Central Asia Copper Nickel Palladium 

Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC is betting on artificial intelligence as part of a $100 million push to find additional uses for palladium as electric vehicles erode the metal’s main source of demand.

Nornickel, the world’s biggest palladium producer, aims to create 1.7 million ounces of new annual consumption for the metal. That’s equivalent to almost a fifth of existing demand.

“We are trying to diversify industrially,” Dmitry Izotov, director of Nornickel’s Palladium Center, said in an interview last week in Johannesburg. Around 80% of palladium ends up in autocatalysts used to curb harmful emissions from diesel and gasoline vehicles. EVs don’t currently use the metal whereas hybrids do.

The center – established in 2023 with a $100 million budget for its first phase – is working on 30 projects, according to Izotov. The company is collaborating with universities to develop an AI model capable of predicting the characteristics of various palladium composites to discover applications for the metal that haven’t yet been thought of, he said.

Nornickel produces about 40% of the world’s primary palladium from mines in Siberia, where its extracted from a polymetallic ore that also contains copper, nickel, gold, cobalt and some other metals. Palladium is also extracted alongside other so-called platinum-group metals in southern Africa and North America.

Among the most promising initiatives already under way, Izotov said, are projects over the next decade to replace some of the gold in microelectronics with lower-cost palladium, and use the metal to make solar cells more efficient and thinner.

Although EVs remain the biggest long-term threat to PGM demand, miners of the metals say forecasters have persistently overestimated how quickly their market share will grow. “We think that EV introduction will be slower than expected,” Izotov said.

Still, the palladium market is likely to shift into surplus – perhaps as soon as this year – as “long-term demand softens,” analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence wrote in December.

Nonetheless, the Palladium Center’s “most challenging project” – according to Izotov – is an initiative using the metal to extend the life cycles of next-generation lithium-sulfur rechargeable batteries.

“If this technology enters the transport market, it’ll be millions of ounces,” he said.

(By William Clowes)

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