Technology
AI Capex Technology Deep Dives
Engineer-grade primers on the six technology layers driving the AI infrastructure supercycle. Each deep dive covers the fundamentals, the supply chain, key tickers, and metrics to watch.
Advanced Packaging
CoWoS · SoIC · HBM integration · 2.5D/3D stacking
The hidden bottleneck of the AI buildout. CoWoS-L capacity at TSMC determines how many B200 GPUs NVIDIA can ship. Every AI accelerator requires advanced packaging — and capacity is sold out through 2027.
Optical Networking
800G/1.6T transceivers · coherent · silicon photonics · DCI
AI clusters demand inter-GPU bandwidth orders of magnitude beyond traditional data center networking. The shift from 400G to 800G to 1.6T is reshaping the entire optical supply chain — and creating multi-year winners.
Custom Silicon / XPUs
TPU · Trainium · Maia · AVGO XPU · MRVL custom ASIC
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are all building custom AI chips to reduce NVIDIA dependency and optimize cost-per-inference. The XPU wave is the biggest structural shift in semiconductor demand in 20 years.
Memory & HBM
HBM3e · HBM4 · CXL · DDR5 · DRAM scaling
Every AI GPU needs HBM. The B200 carries 192GB at 8 TB/s — a 10× bandwidth improvement over standard DRAM. HBM supply, yield, and ASP dynamics are the most direct leverage point into the AI compute buildout.
AI Power & Cooling
Liquid cooling · PDUs · power semis · UPS · SiC/GaN
A single GB200 NVL72 rack draws 120 kW — more than a typical suburban home. Data center power infrastructure is the least-discussed but most critical bottleneck in the AI buildout, creating a decade-long capex wave.
Wafer Fabrication Equipment
EUV · etch · deposition · process control · WFE supercycle
The $130B+ WFE market is the most direct exposure to the semiconductor supercycle. ASML, AMAT, Lam, and KLA collectively control the tools without which no advanced chip can be manufactured — at any price.
Deep dives are evergreen reference documents updated as the technology evolves. For time-sensitive earnings analysis, see Capex Signal on the homepage.