Wolfspeed — AI supply-chain exposure

Wolfspeed is a vertically integrated maker of silicon carbide — it grows the crystal, slices the substrates, and builds the power devices that ride on them. Silicon carbide switches electricity faster and hotter than ordinary silicon, which is why it shows up in the power-delivery layer of the build-out: the electrical conversion inside data-centre power systems, chargers, and grid gear. The company is one of the few running its own larger-format silicon-carbide wafer line.

Its recent history is the hook and the warning at once. Wolfspeed carried heavy debt into a court-supervised restructuring while keeping that wafer footprint intact, a reminder that owning the whole silicon-carbide stack is capital-punishing even when the end demand is real. The model places it in the power chain as a producer but at a light weight — structurally relevant to electrification, financially fragile, and not yet a settled winner.