Connect the Dots: What PCB Designers Should Know About Materials
Elementary, Mr. Watson: The ‘Baton’ Handoff Makes or Breaks the Design
Designers Notebook: Implementing Strategic Planning Principles for PCB Design
The AI infrastructure boom is creating enormous opportunities for electronics manufacturers, but its effects are spreading well beyond companies building AI servers and data centers. High performance laminates, glass fabric, copper, memory, MLCCs, foundry capacity, and other critical resources are being pulled toward fast-growing AI applications, tightening supplies and pushing up costs elsewhere in the electronics industry.
I-Connect007 has been following these developments from several directions. What initially looked like separate stories about laminate availability, memory prices, component demand, PCB capacity, and data-center growth are demonstrating how AI is changing how the electronics supply chain allocates materials, capacity, and investment.
For the sectors we serve, we’re no longer simply discussing how much opportunity AI will create. We are looking at how the industry's rapid shift toward AI infrastructure will affect the materials they can buy, the prices they pay, the technologies they invest in, and their ability to serve markets that have nothing to do with AI.
We’re beginning a series in our daily newsletter that helps connect these dots to demonstrate how the industry is building for AI and with AI. You’ll see how I-Connect007 and the greater electronics industry are reacting to these developments through articles, interviews, and news items.
The AI Tipping Point: Transforming Global Material Supply Chains
Marcy LaRont’s article identifies the underlying problem: High-end AI applications are consuming a disproportionate share of glass, copper, advanced laminates, manufacturing capability, and supply-chain attention.
PCB East 2026: AI Infrastructure, Advanced PCB Technologies, and the Future of Electronics Manufacturing
AI accelerators are driving demand for HDI, higher layer count boards, advanced laminates, specialty substrates, and more sophisticated thermal structures. Doug Dixon discusses how this puts pressure on both supply and manufacturing capacity.
AI Demand Pushes Japan, Korea MLCC Book-to-Bill to Post-Pandemic Highs
The squeeze isn't limited to PCB materials. AI servers and custom ASICs are driving high-end MLCC demand, with supplier backlogs reaching levels reminiscent of previous component shortages. It shows AI demand working its way into the broader component supply chain.
Memory Prices Soar; DRAM and NAND Flash to Account for 68% of Major CSP CapEx in 2027
Soaring AI infrastructure investment is driving memory prices sharply higher, with DRAM and NAND projected to account for 68% of major cloud providers' capital spending in 2027.
Preparing for a New Laminate Supply Reality
Mark Goodwin of Ventec warns that vertically integrated suppliers are consuming more glass yarn and fabric internally as production shifts toward higher-value AI applications, leaving less material available to independent manufacturers and increasing allocation, pricing, inventory, and working-capital pressures.
