Hello Ambassadors,
We're headed back to Denver for an amazing Trailblazer event. On behalf of the Montana Ambassadors, I'm pleased to invite you to an exclusive evening with a panel of experts discussing critical minerals and their impact in both Montana and Colorado.
CRITICAL MINERALS TRAILBLAZER SERIES
Tuesday, May 20, 2026 | 5:30–7:00 PM
Denver Press Club | 1330 Glenarm Place, Denver, CO 80204
WHY CRITICAL MINERALS — AND WHY NOW
The race for critical minerals has become one of the defining economic and national security challenges of our time. The AI revolution, quantum computing, and the explosive growth of data centers are all mineral-intensive endeavors. From the copper wiring and palladium capacitors inside GPU server farms to the rare earth elements essential to semiconductors and next-generation chips, the digital economy runs on minerals, and global supply chains for those minerals are fragile, heavily concentrated, and increasingly contested.
Data center investment tied to AI infrastructure is expected to approach $580 billion in 2025, surpassing global investment in new oil supplies. The U.S. Geological Survey projects that data centers could consume up to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028, all requiring an enormous and sustained flow of critical minerals, most of which the United States currently imports.
China controls dominant shares of production for many of the most strategic minerals, including over 85% of global antimony supply. The urgency to build domestic and allied supply chains has never been greater.
WHY MONTANA
Montana is not a bystander in this story, it is one of America's most strategically important mineral states. The Stillwater Complex in south-central Montana hosts one of the largest nickel resources in the U.S., alongside substantial inventories of copper, cobalt, palladium, platinum, chromium, and rhodium, nine minerals on the U.S. government's critical list. In southwestern Montana, the Sheep Creek deposit has been independently confirmed to hold the highest-reported grades of rare earth elements of any known deposit in the United States, including gallium, a mineral indispensable to AI chip manufacturing and semiconductor fabrication. In Sanders County, the United States Antimony Corporation recently broke ground on a major facility expansion backed by a $245 million Department of Defense contract, antimony being critical to defense systems, batteries, and semiconductors.
As one former USGS rare earths specialist put it: "The Middle East has oil. Montana has rare earths."
WHY COLORADO
Colorado is home to Colorado School of Mines, one of the world's foremost institutions for critical minerals research and policy. The Payne Institute at Mines recently published its 2025 State of Critical Minerals Report, noting that demand will only intensify as the nation increasingly relies on minerals for AI, data centers, high-tech defense, and clean energy. Colorado's own mining heritage, its research infrastructure, and its role as a Western policy hub make it a natural convener for this conversation.
OUR PANEL (confirmed and in conversation) includes representation from:
• The Canadian Consul and Trade Ambassador
• Colorado School of Mines and Montana Tech
• Western Governors Association (in conversation)
• National Conference of State Legislatures – NCSL (in conversation)
Together, this panel will explore supply chain vulnerabilities, cross-border partnerships with Canada, investment opportunity, state and federal policy, and the West's role in securing America's mineral future.
ABOUT THE VENUE
The Denver Press Club, located at 1330 Glenarm Place in the heart of downtown Denver, is the oldest press club in the United States, founded in 1867, nine years before Colorado was even a state. Its current Tudor Revival building, designed by acclaimed Denver architects Burnham and Merrill Hoyt, has stood since 1925 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. Over more than 150 years, it has hosted presidents, Pulitzer Prize winners, and some of the most consequential conversations in Colorado's history. It is a fitting setting for a discussion of this magnitude.