For the citizens of Carrollton–a small city in west Georgia covered in lush trees and flanked by the Little Tallapoosa River–the name Richards, or at least Southwire, is instantly recognizable. Many of its 28,000 residents work for the company, which has been headquartered here for more than half a century. Southwire’s founder Roy Richards (d. 1985) was deeply involved in his hometown, serving as chairman of the Carroll City-County Hospital Authority; chairman of Peoples Bank of Carrollton; a past president of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce; and a former director of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. The University of West Georgia’s Richards College of Business in town is named after him, thanks to a gift to the school by his son Roy Richards, Jr., who set up a family foundation in 1990 to continue supporting the city and surrounding areas.

Southwire is also known for its highly celebrated 12 for Life program, a nearly two-decade partnership between the company and local schools that combines traditional classroom instruction with jobs inside a modified manufacturing environment and has boosted graduation rates at the city’s high schools to over 90%, up from 64% when the program kicked off in 2007.

Outside of Carrollton, Southwire is hardly a household name but it manufactures half of the wire and cable used to distribute electricity in the U.S., and its electrical wiring is in roughly half of American homes, per the company. It employs more than 9,000 in at least 40 U.S. cities and in several other countries around the world. And thanks in part to rising copper prices, post-pandemic demand for electrical infrastructure and now data centers, Southwire’s revenue hit a record $9.7 billion in 2025, which Forbes estimates is up more than 50% since 2021. It’s also made a bundle for the Richards family, who still owns 100% of the business and is worth approximately $13.1 billion, Forbes estimates.

That fortune will likely continue to grow due to the explosion of AI data centers. Already between 2021 and 2025, investment in them has quadrupled, according to the Federal Reserve Board, and another 1,500 new data centers are currently being developed in the U.S. These new AI data centers run on ultra-powerful GPU chips that require 2-4 times more watts of energy than traditional chips.

Good news for the Richards family, which tripled the size of one of its plants in North Carolina that produces heavy-duty cables necessary to scale AI data centers among other items in November 2024. Southwire has also poured $1.8 billion into modernizing its facilities to better position it for the boom. “[Southwire] is trying to stay on........

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