Success stories in the age of artificial intelligence are not only written in Silicon Valleys. 85-year-old Lin Tsung-chi, founder of Taiwan's King Slide Works, has become the island's richest man, and his fortune grew not from chip manufacturing, but from seemingly mundane mechanisms for server racks. Since the start of the year, the company's market capitalization has soared by nearly 280%, a striking marker of tectonic shifts in global AI infrastructure.
King Slide, historically known for producing furniture hinges and drawer slides, has carved out a unique niche—rail mechanisms for server cabinets. These components are critical: they hold the heaviest computing equipment and allow engineers to slide it out for maintenance without disrupting the delicate cooling system. Based on my estimates, drawn from industry data, the company controls about 80% of the global market for high-performance server slides.
Margins That Giants Dream Of
King Slide's financial metrics look sensational. In the latest quarter, gross margin reached 87%, compared to about 50% a few years ago. For context: Nvidia's figure hovers around ~75%, while TSMC's is ~68%. This gap is explained not so much by cost of goods as by product value. When an AI server rack costs millions of dollars, clients are willing to pay a premium for mechanical reliability rather than skimp on it. The company's executive vice president rightly attributes such profitability to two decades of engineering development in a highly specialized segment.
Lin's fortune, estimated by Forbes at roughly $20.3 billion, has allowed him to surpass Foxconn founder Terry Gou. Notably, both tycoons owe their wealth to the same driver—the boom in data center construction.
New Architectures—New Requirements
An even more interesting phase lies ahead. Cloud giants are actively transitioning to their own AI accelerators, increasing equipment density, and adopting liquid cooling. Each new chip differs in dimensions and heat dissipation, requiring a complete redesign of rack structures and, consequently, new slides. This creates structural demand that will only intensify.
Significantly, the declared capacity of U.S. gas power plants to feed data centers has grown from 97 GW at the end of 2025 to more than 189 GW by mid-2026. These figures reflect the scale of investment transforming the entire supply chain—from energy to mechanics.
However, risks should also be noted. Competition is intensifying: according to Daiwa Securities estimates, King Slide's share in supplying kits for Nvidia systems could drop to 75% as early as next year due to an expanding pool of suppliers. This is an inevitable process, but it does not negate the main trend: the business's dependence on AI infrastructure investment will only strengthen.
My view: King Slide's story is a brilliant example of how, in the AI industry, not only algorithm creators win, but also manufacturers of "invisible" infrastructure. Investors should take a closer look at companies ensuring the physical reliability of data centers—this could prove a more stable bet than volatile semiconductor startup stocks.