AI Power Chain

Six essays on the physical infrastructure of AI compute, walking from the medium-voltage utility bus at the site fence down to the 0.8-volt transistor gate. Each essay has an optional technical companion for the underlying physics and process flows.

The essays

The Capacitor Stack: How Energy Storage Became Core Compute Infrastructure

The Wide-Bandgap Stack: Boom, Bust, and the Rebuild of AI's Power Semiconductor Chain

The Thermal Stack: How Heat Became the Binding Constraint on AI Compute

The Interconnect Stack: Transformers, Switchgear and the Grid Equipment That Gates the AI Buildout

The On-Package Delivery Stack: How 48V Becomes 0.8V at 2,250 Amperes

The Modular Datacenter Stack: How the Building Gets Built (When There Aren't Enough Electricians)

The AI Power Chain: Vendor Screen

Pricing Under Scarcity

The Services Inversion

Grid-to-Chip P1 · Electrons: firm generation for the AI campus

Grid-to-Chip P2 · Grid Access: connection rights, regulatory regimes and the transmission side

Grid-to-Chip P3 · Campus Power: MV distribution, SSTs and the power-transformer bottleneck

Grid-to-Chip Hall Power: the relocation of the power-conversion boundary

Grid-to-Chip P5 · Rack to Gate: SiC, GaN, POL and the last conversion cascade

Behind-the-meter gas microgrids: a firm-power route around the interconnection queue

Wolfspeed's Second Act: rising from Chapter 11 on the medium-voltage side of the AI data centre

The 800V DC Power Sidecar: Anatomy, Conversion Boundary, and Value Migration

The technical companions

The Wide-Bandgap Stack: Technical Companion

The Thermal Stack: Technical Companion

The Capacitor Stack: Technical Companion

The Interconnect Stack: Technical Companion

The On-Package Delivery Stack: Technical Companion

The Modular Datacenter Stack Technical Companion

Supplements

The AI Power Chain: Vendor Screen

Pricing Under Scarcity

The Services Inversion