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American reliance on China for key components used to power data centers is coming under increasing scrutiny as Washington and Beijing battle for AI supremacy, raising the prospect of higher costs and worsening supply chain shortages for the AI buildout. U.S. hyperscalers are racing to build multibillion-dollar data centers for AI, and Chinese firms supply large portions of the parts needed to develop these facilities. These include transformers, switchgear, batteries and optical tech, analysts told CNBC. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week declaring a national emergency around the "extraordinary foreign threat" to the U.S. involving bulk-power system equipment produced abroad. The order authorized the Energy Department to prohibit or impose conditions on certain transactions involving some components used in the grid and data centers. Tensions between the U.S. and China over AI have ratcheted up as Chinese AI models become more advanced and their adoption grows across the globe. While American companies produce the most advanced chips and hardware used for AI, Chinese influence on the tech used to power data centers is considered a strategic vulnerability for the U.S. "Scrutiny over China's presence in the U.S. data centre power stack has only risen over the past eight months or so, this is a shift from the previous focus that centred solely on the compute stack," Laveena Iyer, senior analyst at The Economist Group, told CNBC.
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The power stack in a data center is critical to keeping the facility running with minimal downtime. It includes transformers, which change high-voltage electricity from the grid to lower levels needed for servers and cooling equipment. Switchgear are centralized systems that feature switches, fuses and circuit breakers and batteries are needed for backup power. "There are a few key areas that the AI infrastructure buildout is increasingly dependent on Chinese imports," Ben Boucher, senior analyst, supply chain for Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC. "The most notable ones include substation transformers, which hyperscalers typically have on site to step transmission voltage down." "The mid-term exposure is concentrated in grid connectors: transformers, switchgear, and batteries," Yury Dvorkin, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC. "China's share of certain transformer and switchgear categories runs near 30%, and it accounts for over 40% of U.S. battery imports," he added. "Our analysis shows that there is also a deeper exposure upstream: copper, electrical steel, and battery cathode materials." Optical technology, which uses light through fiber-optic cables instead of electrical signals through copper wires to transmit huge quantities of data, is also an area where China dominates.
Companies including Zhongji Innolight and Eoptolink lead global data center optical transceiver revenue, with Chinese firms collectively accounting for roughly two-thirds of global unit supply, according to research firm Counterpoint. Trump said that "transformers, transmission lines and conductors, substations, high-voltage circuit breakers, power control electronics" were "essential to the national defense" in April as part of a Presidential Determination.
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