Flooding caused by Hurricane Helene has shut down two essential mines in western North Carolina, and could lead to a major disruption in the supply of AI chips.
The two mines, owned by Sibelco and the Quartz Corp., are the only places in the world where a large concentration of high-purity quartz can be extracted, Ed Conway, a journalist and author of the book Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization, told Business Insider. The quartz is used to create silicon wafers, which are the main elements of semiconductors that power AI, as well as smartphones and solar panels.
