Southwire, the 76-year-old wire and cable manufacturer headquartered in Carrollton, Georgia, is emerging as one of the clearest industrial beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence build-out, according to a Forbes profile of the family-owned company published July 5. The company, controlled by the Richards family and valued at roughly $13 billion, makes the copper wire and cable that AI data centers consume in enormous quantities.
Every hyperscale data center requires miles of power cable to move electricity from substations to server racks, and the AI construction wave has turned that once-steady product line into a growth engine. Southwire's position as one of North America's largest wire and cable producers puts it in the supply chain of nearly every major data center project in the Southeast, a region that has become a national hotspot for AI infrastructure.
The company's trajectory illustrates how AI demand is reshaping industrial firms far removed from software. Manufacturers of electrical equipment, cooling systems and building materials are booking multi-year backlogs tied to data center construction, and analysts increasingly treat those suppliers as part of the AI economy.
For Georgia, Southwire's growth adds a manufacturing dimension to a state AI footprint that already spans data centers, utility investment and a deep technology talent base anchored by Georgia Tech.
Source: Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonemelvin/2026/07/05/ai-data-centers-are-set-to-electrify-this-13-billion-familys-76-year-old-company/