Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation Ltd (GMDC) is set to develop India’s first AI-powered rare earth supply chain observatory in collaboration with the University of Cambridge. The project is structured as a phased two-year programme with an investment of £600,000.
GMDC has entered into a strategic collaboration with the University of Cambridge to establish a dedicated Rare Earth Observatory at GMDC’s International Centre of Excellence in Mining, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
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The Observatory will deliver an interactive intelligence platform that tracks the complete Rare Earth Elements (REE) value chain in real time from mine to magnet covering price movements, processing capacity, supply disruptions and geopolitical risk across global REE supply chains.
Deploying AI, the initiative aims to deliver scalable, operationally deployable intelligence tools that position Gujarat and India at the forefront of rare earth supply chain resilience.
The Observatory would unite GMDC’s ground-level mining expertise with the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at Cambridge, which is internationally recognised in critical mineral supply chains, ESG integration and AI-driven industrial analytics.
"With India’s rare earth permanent magnets consumption projected to double by 2030 driven by electric vehicles, renewable energy and defence actionable, real-time supply chain intelligence is now a national strategic priority," GMDC said.
The planned observatory will directly address this gap by providing the evidence base for policy calibration, industrial procurement and strategic stockpiling decisions.
"Rare earth elements are not a commodity story they are a sovereignty story," Roopwant Singh, Managing Director at GMDC said, adding, " The Observatory we are building with the University of Cambridge is GMDC’s contribution to solving that challenge at national level creating an AI-driven intelligence architecture for the REE value chain that India had never before."
