Why Is Gold Used in Technology Despite Its High Price?

Elton John’s Pacemaker Reveals Gold’s Less Visible Value

Elton John’s most obvious connections to gold are easy to picture: gold records, stage costumes, jewelry and the visual extravagance that became part of his public identity. The World Gold Council’s Touched by Gold documentary turns that familiar image in an unexpected direction. After being fitted with a pacemaker in 1999, John also came to depend on technology in which gold can perform a critical function. The film uses that connection, along with gold in microphones and recording equipment, to reveal a side of the metal rarely encountered in discussions of bullion.

That raises a more interesting question than simply cataloging industrial uses. Gold is expensive, and manufacturers have every incentive to avoid unnecessary material costs. Why, then, does it remain inside electronics, advanced computing, medical devices and spacecraft? The answer lies in situations where a very small amount of gold can provide reliability that is difficult to reproduce cheaply.

Engineers Pay for a Combination of Properties

Gold is an excellent electrical conductor, but silver and copper conduct electricity too. Its advantage comes from combining conductivity with exceptional resistance to oxidation and corrosion. It can also be drawn into extremely fine wire, formed into thin coatings and maintain stable electrical contact over long periods.

Those qualities become particularly valuable at connection points. A contact may contain very little gold, yet its failure can disable equipment worth vastly more than the metal deposited on it. The U.S. Geological Survey identifies gold as performing critical functions in computers, communications equipment, spacecraft and jet aircraft engines because of this unusual combination of physical and chemical properties.

That changes the cost calculation. Engineers are rarely choosing whether to manufacture an entire component from solid gold. They are deciding whether a microscopic wire, plating layer or contact surface justifies a small additional expense. Where corrosion, signal degradation or an inaccessible failure carries a much larger cost, the answer can still be yes.

Electronics Have Spent Decades Using Less Gold

High prices have not given gold a free pass. Electronics manufacturers have steadily reduced gold content and substituted copper, silver and other materials where performance permits. World Gold Council data show electronics demand falling from 328 metric tons in 2010 to 249 tons in 2023, reflecting years of thrifting and substitution.

That history makes gold’s persistence more revealing. Manufacturers have already had strong financial incentives to remove it, leaving increasingly selective applications where its properties justify the expense.

Advanced computing has recently pushed against the longer decline. Electronics gold demand recovered to about 271 tons in 2024 and remained near that level in 2025 as AI-related hardware supported semiconductor and high-performance computing demand. In the first quarter of 2026, electronics demand rose 3% year over year to 69.3 tons, its highest quarterly level since late 2021. The World Gold Council attributed much of the increase to AI infrastructure, where demanding specifications in high-performance chips can outweigh raw-material cost considerations.

The numbers still need perspective. Technology accounted for about 323 tons of gold demand in 2025, compared with more than 2,175 tons from investment. AI is not suddenly becoming the main driver of gold consumption. Its significance is that some of the world’s newest hardware continues to require a metal manufacturers have spent decades trying to use more efficiently.

Medicine Makes the Reliability Question Personal

Touched by Gold becomes more striking when it moves from recording studios to healthcare. The documentary highlights gold’s connection to pacemakers—the technology Elton John has relied on since 1999—and explores the metal’s broader role in medicine.

Implantable medical electronics illustrate why material selection cannot be reduced to commodity price. Devices designed to operate reliably for years inside the body place a premium on stable electrical performance and resistance to degradation. Gold’s chemical stability and biocompatibility have also supported specialized diagnostic and biomedical applications.

At a much smaller scale, gold nanoparticles can be engineered for diagnostic tests, imaging and medical research. These uses do not consume bullion-sized quantities of metal, nor are they major drivers of the gold price. They instead expose the unusual economics of industrial gold: as the quantity required becomes microscopic and the performance requirement becomes more demanding, price per ounce becomes a less useful measure of whether gold is too expensive.

Space Is Where Failure Can Cost More Than Gold

Few environments make that calculation clearer than space. Satellites and spacecraft cannot be casually serviced when a contact corrodes or a thermal component degrades. Gold appears in high-reliability electronics and specialized coatings because it remains stable in environments where maintenance is difficult or impossible.

Its optical properties provide another advantage. Very thin gold coatings can help manage infrared radiation and heat, giving the metal applications in spacecraft, satellites and protective equipment. The quantities involved can be remarkably small compared with the cost of a mission.

Bullion Exchanges has explored those uses more closely in its coverage of gold in satellites, visors and aerospace technology. The important economic measure in these applications is not how much gold an aerospace project can consume. It is how much reliability a small quantity can provide.

High Prices Keep Testing Where Gold Is Necessary

Record gold prices have intensified the incentive to reduce industrial consumption. Manufacturers can use thinner plating, redesign components and substitute other metals, and some applications will disappear as technology evolves. The process continually separates situations where gold is merely useful from those where its performance is difficult to replace.

Yet technology demand has remained surprisingly resilient. It totaled roughly 323 tons in 2025 and increased modestly in early 2026 as AI infrastructure offset weakness elsewhere. That resilience should not be confused with a major investment-market catalyst. Investment, central-bank purchases and jewelry account for much more gold demand, and movements in the gold price are influenced far more heavily by monetary conditions, investor flows and geopolitical developments than by changes in pacemaker or semiconductor production.

Industrial use tells us something different about the metal. Gold’s resistance to chemical change allows tiny contacts and coatings to remain stable in demanding equipment. That same stability is part of what makes physical gold bullion capable of surviving for generations without rusting or tarnishing. Technology and investment value are not the same thing, but both exploit properties inherent to the element.

Gold Survives Where Failure Costs More

The answer to why technology still uses expensive gold is partly contained in the price itself. Engineers have spent decades reducing it wherever cheaper alternatives can do the job. Gold remains where the consequences of degradation or failure make a small amount of an expensive material economically reasonable.

That makes Touched by Gold an effective lens through which to see the metal. Elton John’s gold records represent cultural recognition; his stage wardrobe turns gold into spectacle; his pacemaker points toward an entirely different kind of value. The material is prized in each case for different reasons.

Technology does not explain gold’s monetary history or replace the investment case for bullion. What it demonstrates is more elemental. Even after decades of cost cutting and substitution, engineers continue choosing gold for certain demanding jobs because replacing an expensive metal is not a bargain when failure costs more.