Devin Wills

So I went down a rabbit hole this week and came out the other side looking at the AI boom completely differently.

I want to try to explain it, because I don't think enough people are looking at this.

Everybody is watching the chips. Nvidia this, hyperscaler capex that, another trillion-dollar number on another slide.

Fine.

But I kept getting stuck on a dumb little question.

Where does the power actually come from?

Not conceptually. Physically.

What's the path an electron takes from a gas turbine somewhere in West Texas all the way to a GPU melting itself in a data hall?

Because here's the thing nobody says out loud.

This year about sixteen gigawatts of new US data center capacity got announced.

Only around five actually went into the ground.

Not because the money dried up. The money is absolutely there.

Not because the chips weren't available. The chips were sitting there.

The whole thing stalled on transformers and switchgear.

Boxes of copper and steel. That's it.

That's the bottleneck on the most-hyped buildout in modern history.

And anybody who's ever run a job site already understands this in their bones.

You've got the crew, the material, the money, the customer screaming at you to start.

And the entire schedule hangs on one boring part nobody thought about until it was the only thing left.

That's what's happening right now.

Except the boring part costs three years instead of three weeks.

Which is really the whole story if you zoom out.

You've got two clocks bolted together and they don't match.

Software runs on a fast clock. You ship a model in an afternoon.

Steel runs on a slow clock.

A big transformer gets wound, cured, tested, shipped — and it takes years.

You cannot buy your way out of it.

Money doesn't make copper cooperate. Urgency doesn't shorten a cure time.

We're trying to run a Formula 1 engine through a garden hose and acting surprised that the hose is the problem.

The numbers are genuinely nuts.

Generator step-up transformers: 100 to 150 weeks.

Substation transformers: 75 to 110.

Medium-voltage switchgear: 52 to 80 weeks. That used to be 24.

Some of the big high-capacity units are quoting three to four YEARS.

And here's the line that reframed the whole thing for me.

The electrical equipment is under 10% of what a data center costs.

And basically 100% of whether it opens on time.

Ten percent of the budget. All of the risk.

The tail isn't wagging the dog. The tail IS the dog.

So naturally I went looking at who actually makes this stuff.

And this is where it got interesting, because the research told me I was wrong. Twice.

First — not every transformer is *the* transformer.

The three-to-four-year nightmare is one specific slice of the market. Other slices are already loosening up.

Same demand wave. Completely different pricing power.

And if you don't know which one you're looking at, you're just buying a headline.

Second, and this one made me sit back.

I found a company that booked the biggest order in its 79-year history. North of $400 million.

Everyone read it as proof of grid demand.

It isn't.

Read the fine print and it's a *behind-the-meter* on-site generation build.

Which is a polite way of saying the customer stopped waiting on the grid and decided to make their own electricity.

That company isn't riding the grid.

It's getting paid because the grid failed.

Those are completely different bets, and the market looks like it's pricing the wrong one.

Third thing, and I hate it.

I wanted these to be undiscovered little industrial gems. They mostly aren't.

One's up almost 190% in a year with JPMorgan and RBC already covering it.

The demand might be early. The price is not.

That's not the same sentence — and pretending it is, is how people get hurt in industrials.

Anyway.

I wrote the whole thing up properly.

The full path from turbine to GPU. The actual lead time data. Who sits in which bottleneck.

And the reasons this entire thesis could be dead wrong — that part matters most to me.

It's free. No paywall, no email gate, no funnel.

I'd honestly rather you check my work than trust me.

Red Cardinal Research. Link below. 👇

Redcardinalresearch.io

*Not investment advice. Not your financial advisor. Just a guy who followed the electricity.*

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22 years of friendship and somehow Zach still voluntarily gets on a plane to come hang out with me. 😂

He flew down to Florida this weekend, so naturally we ended up in Miami smoking ci**rs and attempting to take money from casinos.

But I also wanted to give my boy a shoutout because he’s built a hell of a business in the watch world.

If you’re looking to buy or sell a watch, Zach is your guy.

And I’m not just talking about crazy expensive pieces.

Small, medium, large — whatever your budget is. Rolex, AP, Patek, Cartier, Omega, Tudor… pretty much anything you can think of.

He helps clients find the right piece, buy it at the right price, and sell or trade watches when they’re ready for something new.

I’ve known this dude for 22 years. I trust him completely.

So if you’ve been thinking about buying your first nice watch, adding another one to the collection, or selling something you already own, go follow Zach and shoot him a message.

Tell him Devin sent you.

Now back to taking the casino’s money. 😂🎰