# Copper (busbars, cable, cold plates, transformer windings)

Part ID: 10.01 · Layer 10 (Materials & upstream inputs)

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.

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).
AI 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.

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Confidence tags: disclosed = company/filing statement; reported = trade press or partner list; inferred = taxonomy lead.