Not one clock but many
Bound together by the single word "AI," the hand on each chain points to an entirely different hour. Some chains are already past noon; others are still at dawn. Lay the eight chains this wiki tracks on one map and the information that vanishes under a single average comes back into view: which clocks are still standing unturned.
The entrance for the money was a single point, hyperscaler capex (its structure is covered in Where AI capex begins), and that demand reached the battery chain outside AI (ESS revived the battery cycle). The same capital flows along the chain, but it arrives at each layer at a different hour. There are many clocks.
The chains that ran first are past noon
AI compute ran first. NVIDIA surged +239% and +171% in 2023-24, then cooled to +38.9% and +5.1% in 2025-26. The layer that took in demand earliest was the first to pass its peak. The propagation this wiki traced went from the chip to memory and then to the substrate, one layer at a time.
Yet within the same chain, memory ran to the greatest extreme and the latest: Kioxia +1,082% in 2025. As logic slowed, the bottleneck migrated to memory and printed its jump late (the memory supercycle). Read a chain as one clock and you miss this layer lag.
Wherever the bottleneck moves, a new hand turns
Logic and memory gave way to the substrate. AI package substrate exploded in 2026: Ibiden +261% in 2025 and +192% in 2026, AT&S (HBM substrate) +399% in 2026, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics (FC-BGA and MLCC) +614% in 2026 (the move from silicon to package).
Next in line is power. Vertiv, in datacenter power and cooling, rose +252% in 2023 and reattached at +101% in 2026, while Caterpillar, in generation, rose late at +60% in 2025 and +85% in 2026 (the power bottleneck). Power runs on the clock of plants, transformers and cooling, a longer cycle with harder physical limits than the semiconductor. On that reading the bottleneck appears to be leaving the semiconductor for the physical world.
Space rose from operators to primes in order
The space chain runs on a different clock, one of budgets and sovereignty. The order within it is the same. Satellite operators re-rated first (Rocket Lab +361% in 2024, Iridium +197% in 2026), and components and propulsion followed. At the apex the primes moved on the budget cycle rather than on space, and that structure, where the re-rating stops at the prime layer, is traced separately in where the re-rating stops at the primes. Like Palantir, which ran +341% in 2024 and pulled back −24% in 2026, this chain runs a beat ahead and then rests.
Battery and humanoid: clocks only now turning
Battery is turning off the bottom on ESS demand, though not yet evenly: LG Energy Solution managed only +13.1% in 2025, then −19.3% in 2026. Panasonic Energy, by contrast, leapt +107% in 2026, so even inside the battery chain the hand split company by company. Humanoid is earlier still. Reducer and motor component stocks, pressed down for years by the industrial-robot downturn, only rebounded in 2026 (Harmonic Drive −23.8% in 2025 to +131% in 2026). Both chains sit at an earlier hour than compute.
Clocks outside the chain
As the map widened into consumption and capital, three clocks outside the chain came into focus. First, capital runs on rates: JPMorgan, the largest arranger of data-center debt, rose +44% in 2024 and +37% in 2025 on deposit margins rather than lending, while BlackRock, which supplies AI capital directly, lagged at +6.6% (Capital that funds the boom). Second, consumption runs on its own clock: Coca-Cola rose +22% in 2026 as AI cooled while Nike fell -32% (Consumption does not run on one clock). Third, clocks can be switched: IREN, which turned mining power and sites into a GPU cloud, re-rated +285% in 2025, and SK Telecom, moving from carrier to AI infrastructure, +37.5% (Turn your assets and your clock changes). Position outside the chain does not set the clock. What you earn with does.
The map keeps growing
The question this wiki first asked, which parts rose first and which have not, now reads across eight chains and the layers within them. The map does not prophesy, but it does show which clocks are still standing unturned.
And the map is not finished. The space prime graph is still growing as the European and Korean layer (Thales, Leonardo, Hanwha Aerospace, KAI) attaches as nodes, and the battery chain has further nodes to come. This synthesis closes here, but the chain is alive, and the map keeps growing.