Serenity @aleabitoreddit

It's getting much harder to support $AAOI when they keep dropping $500m or $600M ATMs left and right. At a certain point, the operating outlook could be positive. But the share structure/financing becomes increasingly shareholder unfriendly. Really, really, dislike ATMs and incessant capital raises, even if they're building up capacity.

No, EML, CW, microLEDs are all parallel tracks, with silicon phonetics + CW being the main commercial focus for 2027-2028, especially for CPO. If anything, having memory/optical links adds another material TAM increase across laser suppliers including CW DFBs. Which are already in short supply. So we'll likely see another memory style shortage when 2027-2028 comes about... Given your top 3 are already sold out for next 2 years, and independent laser capacity coming online like $AAOI are now being used internally for transceivers rather than being sold.

$POET is supplying Lumilens, which is another top-2 hyperscaler supplier (with billions in customer agreements). Lite-On is another major player. I'm just saying they got likely designed out $MRVL Celestial since Marvell has their own packagig/intergration IP in the same layer that Poet is offering.

Since people are having fun speculating on $SKHY CPO roadmap supply chains. I'm gonna do my own guess and say SK Hynix is evaluating Celestial/Ayar. Then doing heavy evaluation into microLEDs past first-gen deployments. Both have been kinda working on it for awhile. - Ayar shown up in SK hynix's own website in the context of optical <-> memory links. - Marvell is actively working with SK Hynix in custom memory solutions (and guess who owns Celestial now). Celestial/Ayar are both also cited in SK Hynix's linked Nature Paper, which helps a bit with technical relevance: (121): Stojanovic, V. A UCIe optical I/O retimer chiplet for AI scale-up. In 2025 IEEE Hot Chips 37 Symposium (HCS) 1–22 (IEEE, 2025) - This is Ayar reference (Ayar’s teraphy optical I/O chiplet), Stojanovic is Ayar Lab's co-founder btw. (123): Winterbottom, P. Photonic interconnect for accelerated computing celestial AI photonic fabric module (cough cough Celestial) There's more breadcrumbs out there, but wanted to keep this relatively short-form. For more upstream beneficaries: -> I still think $SIVE is the cleanest read through since they're likely supplying to both Celestial/Ayar. The interposer/packaging IP layer... People were speculating $POET, but Marvell probably vertically integrated players them out this year after the announcement. Given they've had their own SiPH interposer tech/integration IP before Celestials acquisition (eg. presented a silicon-photonics interposer back in 2023) -> AMS Osram (which I don't own), seems like they're co-developing in this area given they randomly went out of their way this year to say HBM <-> optics was a TAM increase for them. TLDR: I see Ayar/Celestial as candidates for SK Hynix's CPO roadmap, then microLEDs being commercialized past gen-1 maybe 2029. (this is all speculation) Just to throw a bone to quantum dot bros, this got cited like 5 times.

After seeing how the robotics and space sectors reacted to Unitree and $SPCX IPOs I’m not quite sure I want Anthropic to go public…

Very positive. My opinion is that the optical sector underperformance recently from $AAOI to $SIVE has been absurd. The demand visibility... is just way too stupidly high. AOI: “Even combined AOI, Coherent program altogether, is still very tough to meet the customer demand in the next 3 years” (2029) Elazr GM: "entire optical supply chain was facing major shortages." "The shortage will continue to the next few years" Sivers CEO said the same thing about InP laser demand imbalances expected for the next 3-5 years. Can go on and on about $LITE, $MTSI and other comments. We haven't even hit the inflection point with 1.6T, NPO, CPO scale out/up, and optics with memory (as seen with SK Hynix). Yet the industry is already bottlenecked by EML/CW and all your other upstream components from PDs/TIA/DSPs, transceivers, and soon FAU + others when CPO scales… I'm personally extremely comfortable watching this all play out, but just a little confused that markets don't know how to math a year or two ahead.

@EnamelEquity Nope, all my thematic baskets were picked earlier this year with memory like $EWY and CPO like $SIVE. Only recent was kinda humanoids with $CCXI, but that's one-off. I'm just waiting for everything to play out, not a fan of jumping ship to ship.

I'm glad the leverage bros moved from AI stocks back to Hyerliquid and biotech like $MRNA, so maybe we'll see a faster recovery. Aside from that just some TLDR stuff: - $EWY up, primarily from SK Hynix buybacks (they're just too profitable), and Samsung Foundry roughly ~10-15% price hikes. - $SKHY unveils CPO roadmap?? Apparently they're doing something with photonic interposer that links to memory, so I gotta look a bit deeper into this Probably going to be more TAM expansion, more supply chain beneficiaries (eg. lasers, PICs, packaging) off this. - $YMTC pursuing IPO next quarter following CMXT's successful IPO. The Chinese IPO market is just going brrr from Unitree to memory makers. US needs to do something similar rather than IPOing companies at trillion dollar valuations already. - Tyntek limit up there's now order visibility through 2028, given photodiode demand imbalance for photonics. Elazr GM did say the entire optical supply chain was facing major shortages... I'll probably look more at high-end PD bottlenecks next. - MS forecasts a 50% Q/Q price increase for DDR4 for Q3, and 10%+ increase for Q4 2026. (Nanya/2408, Windbond/2344, should be happy). - China reportedly delays clearance from germanium, quartz-based materials, and neodymium magnets To taiwan. So I'll probably have some fun looking into supply chains disruptions there over cup noodles. - High-end PCB drill shortage (still ongoing), Kawei (5498) said AI DCs, servers and optical communications are driving demand for PCBs, HDI and package substrates, while tungsten prices are rising. Though the world's five largest drill manufacturers are aggressively expanding capacity, supply remains far below overall market demand Just stuff I found interesting recently, obviously $MRNA stuff is too.

@200pipss Is there something wrong with $GOOGL and $MRVL?

$MRVL gives $GOOGL options to buy $12.2B of the company. "The Marvell-Google deal covers a broad range of technologies used ​with TPUs, including processors that run AI models, manage data storage ​and move information ⁠across networks." Which could translate into ~$120 billion ​in revenue through 2033. Marvell also has separate warrants with $AMZN after their Celestial acquisition (for purchases of photonic fabric). Remember the good times when Jensen said Marvell would be the next $1T+ company? Seems Nvidia knew Marvell was "networking" its way into all the hyperscalers with warrants.

Yeah, $SIVE is my favorite high-beta optical long. You have a small company supplying lasers for: - Hyperscaler suppliers like $JBL with pluggables. - ELS + optical engines with $POET / O-Net. - Scale up with optical I/O with Ayar and others. - Photonic Foundries like $GFS across all architectures like NPO/pluggables/CPO. with independent CW capacity coming online with Win Semi during a structural bottleneck... NASDAQ listing likely in the next few quarters. And the CEO actually knows what he's doing + aligned with shareholders (in terms of buying stock on the open market), with low dilution to get all of this done. And they hinted at M&A, which is ideal for TAM expansion (look at what happened with Lumentum after Cloud Light H2 2023 M&A). Then you have $MTSI, $AAOI likely no meaningful participating in first-gen CPO deployments (smaller pool of players)... Industry CW shortages currently before volume ramp. Regulation tailwinds targeting Chinese competition. I'm not sure if it's just me but they have the ideal setup, main downside is that it's just listed on some small Swedish exchange and that harms valuations.

We got $LITE, $MTSI, $AAOI all pointing to extreme demand imbalances with lasers/TIA/DSP/etc from earnings... And now Elazr GM at their investor conference stated: Optical supply is still far behind the market demand, the expected AI optical supply chain are likely to continue for years. - "the entire supply chain is out of stock" - "the supply is still far behind the market demand" - "the shortage will continue to the next few years" "Whether it is PCB, carrier board, laser chip, or even related packaging capacity, as long as the AI supply chain link, almost all are in short supply." When demand visibility extends for years with the supply chain bottlenecked: It's getting difficult not to see photonics echoing the memory supercycle entering 2027.

Unitree (688836) is now public. And is valued at ~$53.3B, after rising +492.18% We finally have a major public company benchmark for humanoids. For reference, Agility (backed by $NVDA, $AMZN) via $CCXI is expected to go public at $2.5B premoney valuation Q4. $TSLA is $1T+, but Optimus is wrapped inside a much larger company. But I think Unitree showed that the demand for pure play humanoid players is much larger… than people expected in public markets.

My $AAOI TLDR notes at Rosenblatt summit: - Expected to get paid premiums for US production of 800g/1.6T (very positive for ASP/margins). - Several LTAs on the table, but doesn't want to sign to get capacity blocked by other customers (cough cough $NVDA). - Sold out at least through second half of next year and beyond. (High demand visibility like $LITE) - Has 300-400 mW lasers already. - Expects margins to be above 40%+ once CPO comes about (probably most material for rerating). I can't see how anyone can be bearish on this company...

I still have positions in both companies? What I hold shouldn't affect your own decisions. Transformer bottlenecks are stalling the US AI buildout now and lead times are very long for both dry and liquid (which is more extreme). Backlog is +96.9% Y/Y for $HPS.A and given their market share... I don't they're going anywhere. Pretty sure I shared this idea at ~170, it did 2x, but corrected back to 240 now, but cost average is different per person I guess. The Belgian company is primarily H1 2028 as a CPO/photonics volume ramp beneficary. And the work they're doing with MTP with IMEC for $NVDA as an end user in evaluation stage should be very interesting. Their CHIP act facility for MEMS/photonics also comes online H2 2028 too, and 800V transitions should bring them material revenue growth for anything SiC adjacent next year. I'm down -31%, since my cost average is a lot higher. But they're approaching levels where replacement book value is a lot higher than MC.

Harmonic/LeaderDrive/Schaeffler seem to be in pretty much everywhere. There's some more niche component suppliers like $VPG for maybe Optimus/Figure. But I think the scale is vastly different since Schaeffler claimed they were wokring with ~45 humanoid players. Chinese suppliers to Agibot/Unitree probably hit revenue first though, I can do more research into that area soon.

$CCXI is targeting commercialization first, since they're in places like $AMZN and $MELI warehouses for human automation. I don't think Agility's Robots need to do backflips to do deliveries or packaging. Same with Amazon warehouse workers. Two different use cases, think Boston Dynamics is the closest peer in terms of breaking limits on what robotics can do. $TSLA is also targeting general purpose, but I don't quite think they can pull that off yet. Regardless, seeing if the US can catch up and leapfrog China will be very interesting.

@abbysuyuyan $AAOI is actually the one stock I'm hoping goes back to $80 so I can acquire more. The demand visibility is pretty insane for laser names throughout 2027... Same can be said with neoclouds like $NBIS or memory names like $SNDK.

The AI semi theme is down if you look at $AVGO to $TSM. Higher beta names seem to have been hit the hardest. From trends I've seen with optical names, $LITE / $COHR recovered fastest, then larger still high beta names like $AAOI / $AXTI (halfway). Then your $SIVE / $POET type names have taken the longest. But I do see a sharper recovery when markets are more risk-on or when earnings forces re-ratings.

@RancicYaro4064 Japanese companies try to match industry rates, but they don't go out of their way to hike aggressively like 70% Q/Q... There just needs to be a $SNDK in the industry to lead the way imo, maybe Samsung can be more aggresive here

I’m not sure how to tell people this… but the NAND/MLCCs/InP bottleneck doesnt disappear if $SNDK or Murata or $AXTI drops in price. Same group of folks who only look at price volatility on earnings release to see if it’s good or not. Probably better to look at the actual earnings report or what’s actually happening…

So just tracking the MLCC cycle: ComponentNews classified server MLCCs as “severe” shortage stage, with ETNews reporting: - Samsung has reached ~40 week lead times for some high capacitance MLCCs per DigiKey’s shipment data. Earlier this year, broader reports were ~20 weeks, so the AI server MLCC bottleneck keeps growing. - Murata was ~24 weeks in June. July was ~30 weeks. And now some at ~36 weeks. This was interesting: “The expansion of new production capacity is being postponed from Q4 2026 to 2027” Doesn’t say which expansion… maybe Murata? But if capacity expansion reportedly gets stalled, the bottleneck should tighten short term. Lead times are a good way to track demand imbalances.

I've decided to name my next two pets Applied Optoelectronics and Sivers Semiconductors

@tRbW6qAUT717891 I can't buy A-Shares, so I'm sticking with US markets. Agility via $CCXI( $NVDA, $AMZN, Softbank backed) is my personal exposure to humanoids. But I'm cheering on everyone who won the lottery for Unitree shares.

@AZAAC6 $CCXI name changes into Agility sometime in October at the earliest. So maybe 2 months from now. Officially it's Q4.