Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
Copper and the Electrification Supercycle: Why 2026 Breaks the Bear Case
Codelco below 1.4 million tonnes, Cobre Panama still cold, AI grid copper at 3 to 4 kg per kW, and Chinese smelter TC/RC at zero. The supply side is losing its argument.
The copper market enters 2026 with a supply book structurally short of the demand it has signed up to serve. Codelco is guiding sub 1.4 million tonnes of mined output, the lowest since 1998, while Freeport's Grasberg is past peak grade, BHP's Escondida is grinding through head grade decay, and Glencore's Collahuasi expansion remains stall...
The Custom Silicon Insurgency Against Nvidia in 2026
AWS Trainium 2, Google TPU v5p and Trillium, Microsoft Maia, Meta MTIA, and a possible OpenAI ASIC are reshaping where AI compute margin lives, but the binding constraint sits one layer down at HBM and CoWoS-L.
The hyperscalers spent 2024 and 2025 telling investors that custom silicon would relieve their dependence on Nvidia, and 2026 is the year those claims start meeting empirical scrutiny. AWS has stood up Project Rainier for Anthropic at a publicly disclosed scale of more than one million Trainium 2 chips. Google has placed its TPU v5p gener...
The 2026 Grid Capex Supercycle: Wires, Transformers, and the Cost of Connection
US transmission and distribution capex has tripled in a decade, EU TYNDP commits EUR 600 billion through 2034, and the binding constraint has moved from generation siting to transformers, conductor steel, and an interconnection queue measured in years.
Investor-owned utilities in the United States will spend more than USD 170 billion on transmission and distribution in 2026, up from a roughly USD 50 billion average across the early 2010s, according to the EEI Annual Capex Survey tracker. The drivers are a measurable step change in data center load, slow but real industrial reshoring, we...
Korea's Memory Cycle 2026: HBM Lead, Logic Gap, Cluster Risk
SK hynix runs the HBM3e 12-Hi book at Nvidia, Samsung Memory chases qualification while its foundry yield gap widens, and the Yongin cluster meets a hard power and water ceiling.
Korea's memory complex enters 2026 with the cleanest revenue setup in a decade and the messiest strategic position in twenty years. SK hynix is the lead supplier of HBM3e 12-Hi to Nvidia for Blackwell Ultra and the Rubin ramp, holds roughly half of HBM revenue, and has a credible HBM4 roadmap pegged to 2026 risk production. Samsung Memory...
Johor's Data Center Boom: Singapore's Spillover and Malaysia's Grid Bet
Singapore's moratorium pushed roughly 1.6 GW of latent demand across the causeway, and Johor is now Southeast Asia's most concentrated hyperscaler buildout. The binding constraints are grid, water, and sovereign data law.
Between Singapore's 2019 moratorium and the partial 2022 reopening under the Pilot Call for Application, roughly 1 to 2 GW of regional hyperscaler demand had no clean home. Johor absorbed most of it. Sedenak Tech Park, Iskandar Puteri, Kulai, and Pengerang now host announced commitments from Microsoft, AWS, Google, ByteDance, Equinix, GDS...
Small Modular Reactors in 2026: Order Books, AI Off-take, and the Capex Curve
The first wave of SMR designs has moved from licensing slides to concrete pours and signed power purchase agreements, but the NuScale UAMPS cancellation still anchors investor memory and the load is now hyperscaler, not municipal.
Advanced nuclear is no longer a slide deck category. TerraPower has broken non-nuclear ground at Kemmerer, X-energy has signed a definitive engineering contract with Dow Seadrift, Holtec is preparing the SMR-300 around the Palisades restart, Kairos has the first Hermes test reactor under construction with a Google off-take for 500 megawat...
Texas, ERCOT, and the AI Siting Reset
Senate Bill 6, the ERCOT large-load study, and a 30 to 40 GW interconnection queue are forcing hyperscalers to rethink West Texas, behind-the-meter gas, and the price of speed.
Texas became the default home for marginal United States AI compute through 2024 and 2025 because ERCOT offered the only grid in North America that could absorb gigawatt-scale loads on a multi-year horizon rather than a multi-decade one. That window is closing on its own terms. The ERCOT December 2025 long-term load forecast now carries r...