Kurita Water Industries Ltd. — AI supply-chain exposure

Kurita Water Industries is a Japanese water-treatment leader that supplies the ultrapure-water production and wastewater-reclaim systems fabs depend on. Ultrapure water — stripped of essentially every ion, particle and microbe — is among the largest consumable inputs in chipmaking, used to rinse wafers between hundreds of process steps. The model ties Kurita to water availability, an input easy to overlook until a fab faces siting or drought constraints; as leading-edge capacity expands, the systems that produce and recycle that water become a real gating factor rather than a utility afterthought.