{
 "id": "10.01",
 "slug": "copper-busbars-cable",
 "url": "/parts/materials-and-upstream-inputs/copper-busbars-cable",
 "name": "Copper",
 "qualifiers": "busbars, cable, cold plates, transformer windings",
 "layer": {
  "id": 10,
  "name": "Materials & upstream inputs"
 },
 "parent_id": null,
 "children": [
  "10.01a",
  "10.01b"
 ],
 "summary": "Refined copper metal and copper products — wire, cable, sheet and strip — used as the primary electrical conductor and a thermal-transfer material throughout the data center.",
 "description_md": "Copper carries current from the utility interconnect down to the chip, and carries heat away from it. It is the conductor in busbars and switchgear (Layers 6, 7), in low-voltage rack power distribution (Layer 4), in the windings inside every transformer (Layer 6), and — as engineered cold plates — the material in direct contact with GPUs and CPUs in liquid-cooled racks (Layer 5). The chain runs from mined ore through smelting and refining to finished wire, cable, sheet and machined parts, so data-center demand sits downstream of mining output, smelter capacity and scrap availability that are set mostly by other industries (grid buildout, electric vehicles, construction).\nAI racks pull far more power through a much smaller footprint than legacy enterprise IT, which means more copper cross-section per rack for busbars and windings, and cold plates add a use of copper that air-cooled racks never needed. For investors, the relevant questions are less about data centers specifically and more about global refined-copper supply and price: mine output growth, smelter bottlenecks, and how much of a given producer's book is copper products versus other metals. Companies further down the chain — magnet wire, cable, cold-plate fabrication — are the ones with more direct, visible data-center exposure.",
 "ai_delta": "Denser racks carry more current at lower voltage and add direct-contact liquid cooling, both of which increase the amount of copper needed per rack and per megawatt of IT load.",
 "bottleneck_status": null,
 "scale_tiers": [
  "edge",
  "enterprise",
  "hyperscale_building",
  "ai_campus",
  "gw_class"
 ],
 "density_modes": [
  "any"
 ],
 "scale_notes": "Present at every scale as wire and busbar; the cold-plate use is limited to liquid and hybrid deployments, while busbars, cable and transformer windings apply regardless of cooling approach.",
 "flow": [
  "supply"
 ],
 "companies": []
}