BLOG — Aug. 25, 2026
AI gold rush: Selling shovels, chillers and blades
By Chris Rogers
The supply chains enabling Artificial Intelligence investments go well beyond GPU servers and communications equipment, with the whole ecosystem enabling the supporting physical infrastructure scaling up. The process of regional globalization, where global supply chains focus specific skills in specific regions, is also a driving force.
At the start of the supply chain, a large Japanese mining equipment machinery maker is spending US$80 million to scale up its Arizona equipment maintenance center to support increased copper production. So far the firm’s operations have been been focused in Georgia, while future copper mines are located in the west.
Further down the chain, sourcing the blades needed in gas turbines has become concentrated in a handful of large players where a newly announced acquisition is causing further consolidation. That’s leading a major integrated AI developer to build its own casting facilities in Texas to both diversify and make production available more swiftly. The central challenge for blades is in labor availability. While wages in the fabricated materials sector have only increased by 4.3% in the past year has lagged the 17.2% growth in electrical equipment manufacturing, they could rapidly catch up.
Once the data center is built, cabled and powered it still needs to be cooled. That’s led one of the largest producers of industrial chillers to expand its manufacturing capacity for North America at a new facility in Tijuana Mexico adjacent to two existing air handling plants. Locating in Mexico provides optimal labor costs, and available assembly-trained workforce and access to the USMCA free trade area.
Mexico has already become the third-largest supply center for large-scale chillers, reaching a 18.7% share of global exports in the second quarter of 2026, up from 13.4% in 2025 and 9.5% in 2021. That’s largely come at the expense of European suppliers, which fell to a 34.5% share in the second quarter of 2026 compared with 39.6% in 2021 while mainland Chinese suppliers have modestly increased their share to 23.6% from 21.5% in second quarter 2026 versus 2021.
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This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.
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