The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday, Oct. 24, edition that PPG is a $24-billion (U.S.) company that makes paints. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe reports that Steelguard 951, has become one of PPG's flagship products for datacentres. Its sales have boomed. As Microsoft, Google and Amazon have raced to build the computing sites powering the artificial-intelligence frenzy, PPG's business has also soared. PPG expects its paint sales for datacentres to triple this year from last year. That would far outpace the company as a whole, whose total sales grew 7 per cent to $4.5-billion (U.S.) in the most recent quarter. Datacentres are boosting sales of not only paint but also gravel, which goes into the concrete for their foundations and floors, and wires and cables to carry electricity and data to thousands of servers, creating a long tail of unlikely winners. In the paint industry, the datacentre effect has been acute. Sherwin-Williams, PPG's biggest rival, said its paints go into nearly every corner of datacentres, from steel beams to server racks. In July, Sherwin-Williams said sales in its protective and marine business were benefiting from datacentre construction and had risen by a midteens percentage from a year earlier.