ADI closed the Empower acquisition for $1.5B on July 7, 2026. Ferric is the standalone integrated voltage regulator play left. Canonical map of the last stage of AI accelerator power delivery: physics, architecture, players, scenarios, and falsifiers.
Semiconductor intensity per MW of AI compute, decomposed across compute, storage, networking, and power layers. Reference case: 1 MW Blackwell/GB200 NVL72 ≈ $34M of semiconductor-bearing equipment value. Vendor exposure map by basket.
Copper loses metres each generation as per-link bandwidth scales from 400G to 1.6T. Silicon photonics fabs (GF Fotonix, TSMC), CPO specialists (Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, Ranovus, Celestial AI) and pluggable optical OEMs capture the migrating value.
The AI-DC battery is migrating through six economic roles (backup, ride-through, power smoothing, peak management, grid services, grid-forming). Each role carries a different vendor cohort, revenue mechanism and regulatory gate. Screen for role-stage exposure before chemistry.
Bottom-up build of the five-layer, five-source capital stack financing AI infrastructure 2026-28. Three headline measurements ($0.65T financing · $0.95T formation+procurement · $0.16T refi) plus the framework for a quarterly Ledger.
Wide-bandgap power semiconductors compete across three end markets with different physics: AI power supply, EV traction inverter, and industrial. Primary spotlight on Navitas (NVTS), Wolfspeed (post-Chapter-11), Innoscience (Nvidia Rubin Ultra 800V design win), and EPC. Extended field: Infineon, ST
Meta's OCP Mount Diablo spec commoditises the AI rack integration layer. Nvidia Kyber holds it proprietary. The contest allocates rack-integration margin across four vendor content planes.
The final workstream. 100-day validation testing the DD thesis against operating reality. Six-month retrospective feeding the next transaction's scoping.
How the deal gets paid for, what covenants the financing carries, and what stops closing after signing. Debt sizing, MAC clauses, and refinance stress.
CIM decks describe AI-DC targets by MW nameplate and rack counts. Diligence lawyers find the deal-killers in the workstreams CIMs skip: regulatory approval risk, FDI screening exposure, environmental legacy liability, cyber posture at Day 1 integration.
An investment framework for the reclassification premium between firm AI capacity and firm-plus-flexible AI capacity. Five control models, three monetisation channels, and how time-to-power NPV can outweigh grid-services revenue in queue-constrained regions.