Scrutica
14 CoWoS Packaging entities are classified, but none have a recorded ownership-change event yet. Card auto-populates on the next substrate refresh.
Chiplet-specific design IP, die-to-die interconnect technology (UCIe, BoW, AIB), multi-die platform tooling, and chiplet-assembly automation — the architecture pattern replacing monolithic die scaling beyond 3nm.
Electronic Design Automation: place-and-route, timing closure, DRC/LVS verification, RTL synthesis, hardware emulation, simulation, and IP-management software for advanced-node chip design.
1 Advanced Substrates entity is classified, but none have a recorded ownership-change event yet. Card auto-populates on the next substrate refresh.
No Photoresists entities are yet in the governance-scoped universe. Coverage broadens with each substrate refresh and as new layer rules land.
Direct-to-chip liquid cooling, single-phase and two-phase immersion cooling, rear-door heat exchangers (RDHX), coolant distribution units (CDUs), cold plates, and dielectric cooling fluids — the thermal infrastructure required for >40 kW per rack AI workloads.
Wide-bandgap (GaN, SiC) power semiconductors, high-density power supplies, datacenter UPS and PDU systems, HVDC distribution — the power-conversion stack upstream of AI accelerators.
The Early Warning feed is a research-grade indicator surface, not a news feed. Its inputs are PitchBook ownership-change events filtered to the AI-compute-relevant universe (only Buyout, Corporate Divestiture, Asset Sale, Public-to-Private, Secondary Buyout, Spin-Off, Merger/Acquisition deal types — not seed rounds, growth equity, or private placements). Each event is mapped to one of the seven chokepoint layers via the rules in src/lib/data/chokepoint_layer_definitions.json. Inclusion rules are deliberately conservative: an organization is classified into a layer only when its PitchBook industry hierarchy plus a chokepoint-specific keyword (or a canonical-name match) co-occur with semiconductor or datacenter context. A second deal-target-only fallback widens coverage on the 129 PitchBook-linked deal targets to cases where industry-axis evidence is unambiguous but explicit chokepoint keywords are absent — those are tagged MEDIUM confidence and clearly distinguishable in the substrate.
Anomaly threshold: a quarter fires when its event count exceeds the trailing-eight-quarter mean by more than two standard deviations andby at least two events in absolute terms. The secondary gate prevents singleton-quarter firings against a near-zero trailing baseline (the mathematical pathology of z-scores on small counts). Threshold z > 2 is calibrated so roughly 2.5% of normal upper-tail quarterly variation crosses it.
Consolidation cluster: the same canonical acquirer makes ≥3 deals in the same chokepoint layer within any 12-month rolling window. Cross-layer actor: the same canonical acquirer appears in ≥2 chokepoint layers within 12 months. Both are computed against mv_chokepoint_layer_acquirers, which joins pe_deal_investors filtered to party_role = 'ACQUIRER'. Acquirer jurisdiction is drawn from organizations.country_hq and tagged "jurisdictional consolidation" when the headquarters country sits outside the coordinated allied posture (the same allied-tier set used by the concentration monitor's Governance Leverage Score). This annotation is descriptive, not editorial — Scrutica does not infer acquirer motive from structural position.
Disclosure-rate caveat: deal counts are complete; dollar aggregates reflect the ~46% of PitchBook deals that disclose size. Dollar-weighted comparisons across layers should be read with this asymmetry in mind. For consolidation clusters, the per-cluster disclosed sum is approximate (we redistribute the per-quarter disclosed sum across deals within the quarter; see src/lib/chokepoint/anomaly-engine.ts).
Substrate freshness: this snapshot uses the PitchBook universe extracted on 2026-04-24 from the WRDS-PitchBook source; PitchBook's own lastupdated MAX in that snapshot was 2026-04-08. Data lag is structurally one to three weeks: WRDS refreshes weekly, PitchBook ingests vary per record class. The chokepoint-early-warning cron runs Mondays 07:00 UTC and rewrites this surface from the latest substrate.
Known limitations:
pe_deal_investors rows currently have a canonical party id. Deals without an identifiable acquirer can't contribute to cluster or cross-layer detection. This will improve as substrate resolution coverage grows.chokepoint_layer_definitions.json — the audit report at data/processed/wrds/pitchbook/v3/chokepoint_classification_report.md lists known-entity hits and misses per layer.| Layer | Display name | PitchBook industry signals | Sample primary keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| cowos_packaging | CoWoS Packaging | group:Semiconductors · code:Semiconductor Capital Equipment · code:Application Specific Semiconductors · code:General Purpose Semiconductors · code:Electronic Equipment and Instruments | cowos, co-wos, info packaging, fcbga packaging, advanced packaging, +18 more |
| chiplets | Chiplets | group:Semiconductors · group:Software · code:Application Specific Semiconductors · code:General Purpose Semiconductors · code:Semiconductor Capital Equipment · code:Systems and Information Management | chiplet, chiplets, die-to-die, die to die, ucie, +12 more |
| eda_tools | EDA Tools | group:Software · group:Semiconductors · code:Systems and Information Management · code:Business/Productivity Software · code:Application Software · code:Application Specific Semiconductors | eda, electronic design automation, place and route, place-and-route, circuit design software, +12 more |
| advanced_substrates | Advanced Substrates | group:Specialty Materials · code:Specialty Chemicals · code:Diversified Chemicals · code:Containers and Packaging · code:Electronic Equipment and Instruments | abf substrate, abf film, ajinomoto build-up, ajinomoto buildup, fcbga substrate, +9 more |
| specialty_photoresists | Photoresists | group:Specialty Materials · group:Diversified Chemicals · code:Specialty Chemicals · code:Diversified Chemicals | photoresist, photo resist, photo-resist, euv resist, duv resist, +13 more |
| liquid_cooling | Liquid Cooling | group:Computer Hardware · group:Industrial Manufacturing · code:Electronic Equipment and Instruments · code:Computer Networking Equipment · code:Industrial Machinery and Equipment · code:Building Products | liquid cooling, liquid cooled, immersion cooling, single-phase immersion, two-phase immersion, +18 more |
| power_electronics | Power Electronics | group:Semiconductors · group:Computer Hardware · group:Industrial Manufacturing · code:General Purpose Semiconductors · code:Application Specific Semiconductors · code:Electronic Equipment and Instruments · code:Industrial Machinery and Equipment | gallium nitride, silicon carbide, gan power, sic power, wide bandgap, +17 more |
Substrate snapshot: 27 pe_investments rows · 98 classified orgs · 25 (layer, quarter) cells with activity · 1 active anomalies · 1 archived anomalies. Anomaly engine last ran: 2026-04-27 07:00:16 UTC. Classification last ran: 2026-04-25 21:32:04 UTC.