The price of silver continued its rapid climb Tuesday, extending its gain to 60% this month alone, drawing attention from both investors seeking returns and the companies that rely on the metal for manufacturing.

Silver has been on a breakneck rally for much of the past year, more than doubling in price in 2025 before accelerating in the first few weeks of this year. Prices crossed $100 an ounce for the first time last week, and have set fresh records in the days since.

The metal’s rise has been remarkable even in relation to other precious metals, which have also been setting records. The price of gold has nearly doubled over the past year, rising above $5,000 an ounce in recent sessions.

Some of the momentum is explained by investors seeking safe places to park their money during trade tensions, geopolitical conflicts, and worries about inflation and rising debt. Gold is generally a go-to haven asset in times of turmoil, but silver’s outsized gains have made it more prominent than usual.

“Silver is behaving like ‘gold squared’ or ‘gold on steroids,’ ” Citi analysts wrote in a note Tuesday. They recently raised their silver price forecast to $150 an ounce in the next three months.

Silver Has a Smaller Market Than Gold

Silver is a smaller market than gold, with a broader variety of players, which can make it prone to bigger swings. And it has a wider range of industrial uses than gold. Silver is a key material in solar panels, data centers, electric vehicles, electronics and defense equipment. That reliance means that volatility in silver prices can reverberate across the economy. Higher silver costs could weigh on profit margins or force companies to raise prices. Over time, that could add to inflation pressures.

Another factor moving silver markets is China, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of refined silver, which began enforcing new restrictions on exports of the metal this year. Some market analysts said that China could be trying to protect its domestic economy from rising costs.

“This is not good. Silver is needed in many industrial processes,” Elon Musk wrote on his social platform X in late December in reaction to the news of China’s export limitations.

Silver is also important to artificial intelligence technology. Its ability to conduct electricity has made the metal “much more valuable” to AI infrastructure spending as the technology evolves, said Anna Rathbun, founder and CEO of Grenadilla Advisory, a wealth management firm. Soaring copper prices have also been linked to the metal’s utility for data centers and other AI infrastructure, surpassing $13,000 per metric ton for the first time this month.

Some forecasters have warned that the rally in silver is running ahead of itself. Silver ranked highest for “bubblelike asset dynamics” in a recent ranking of stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies by Bank of America, just ahead of gold.

“We remain cautious about how much further the rally can extend and see the potential for a sharp, rapid reversal if sentiment shifts decisively,” analysts at Sucden Financial wrote in a note this week.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Kailyn Rhone/Katarina Premfors
c. 2026 The New York Times Company