The collateral is in a rack
By Viktor Yoshimura – 23th October 2026 Billions are lent against GPUs on the assumption they hold their value. Few have priced what it takes to get them back. The AI build has a credit problem, and most of the argument is about one number: how long a GPU keeps its value. That’s the starting […]
Two trades, one tape
By Viktor Yoshimura – 14th October 2026 Asian buyers in North American e-scrap are usually read as one strategy. There are two, and they’re bidding for the same hardware. Over the past five years, Japanese and Korean industrial groups have taken ownership positions in North American e-scrap and ITAD businesses. Read together, the deals are […]
The magnets in the machine
By Viktor Yoshimura – 8th of October 2026 Recovering rare earths from hard drives mostly doesn’t pay. Data-centre drives through ITAD are the one stream where it might, because someone else has already paid for the expensive steps. Rare-earth recycling usually breaks before the chemistry starts: getting the magnet out of the device costs more […]
The Itochu play: a stake across Japan’s IT lifecycle
By Viktor Yoshimura – 3rd of September 2026 The Circularity Brief — independent intelligence on IT asset disposition and the circular economy, Asia-Pacific & Japan. Two Itochu announcements in one month mostly got read as two separate deals. Read together, they’re something else, and the interesting part isn’t the deals. It’s the structure. Here’s what […]
From tonnes to value density: what AI racks do to ITAD economics
By Viktor Yoshimura – 26th of August 2026 The Circularity Brief — independent intelligence on IT asset disposition and the circular economy, Asia-Pacific & Japan. For most of its history, the ITAD business has been measured in tonnes. Trucks, dock space, shredder throughput, weight processed — the whole operation was scaled on mass. AI is […]