It's been fun to read these US Gov fact sheets (few a week) recently. Earlier this week was "Golden Age of Space Transportation", with $SPCX hard carrying the launch sector like Faker. And $RKLB + other rocket companies as beneficiaries of the 1K launch/reentry goal by 2030. This month we also had: - Drone component tariffs - American Mining / Critical Mineral deals - Polysilicon supply chains tariffs and a lot more... So helpful to see what sectors US policy is focusing on.

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.

Uhh Citadel? > Say emergency rate hike. More crashes/liquidations follow > No rate hike > Reaches out to buy liquidated hedge fund portfolios > buys billions of Situational Awareness holdings. > Says AI bull case is intact >markets rally > Sells AI stocks into the buying pressure I’m just stating the timeline here…

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.

There’s a lot of viral fabricated screenshots of me going around recently. Some are annoying jokes for engagement, like text-edited posts from me citing bible verses. But some like “Innolight secures Nvidia NPO orders” or off platform promotional content are maliciously fabricated. Unfortunately I don’t have the power to prevent false images from circulating. So please make sure to double check primary sources.

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.

$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.

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.

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.

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.

Uhh I mainly just increased MLCC positions rather than NAND exposure personally. Since MLCC prices/tightening resembles the early NAND hike cycle… if your passive component players want to tag along $SNDK path. Just saying it shows resemblance, but I’m not sure we’ll get something as extreme. Will need to wait a quarter or two.

Just some more demand imbalance visibility for $SNDK, $SKHY, $MU, Kioxia, and your NAND players. Phison CEO: "2027 capacity constraints will be even more severe than in 2026." "Upstream suppliers need up to 4 years from plant construction and equipment investment to actual production. With demand growing explosively and supply expansion limited, the NAND shortage is likely to last for years." Don't quite think I agree with the people claiming it's all over for memory, esp. NAND bottlenecks in 2026...