Names like: - $ASX - Sumitomo Electric - $JBL - $VICR - $GFS - $AAOI - AlChip - $TSEM - $FN - Furukawa Electric - $CLS - $NBIS - $NOK - $AMKR - $LITE - $COHR Off the top of my head. So basically, AI exposure trading in the $10-100B range. Likely have compelling ROI right now compared to indexes or $ARM to $MRVL that ran quite a bit? (Just a disclosure, only have financial interest in NBIS/TSEM/AAOI above) I mention a lot of smaller ideas, but that’s just to chase outsized returns. Still feels like many of these have room to go.

$SIVE looks like both a chokepoint and a bottleneck for CPO next year. Keep seeing information published from nontechnical people who miss any nuances. Here’s the reason why: 1. CW lasers are bottlenecked signaled by $LITE earnings. Laser fabs are heavily allocated to EML likely from former $NVDA contracts. -> Sumitomo/Furukawa = bottleneck -> Win Semi = bottleneck $SIVE does fab-lite, so are they a bottleneck? Yes, $SIVE sits in the laser bottleneck since control output supply of CW lasers from Win Semi and other fabs from allocation way early on (CEO stated they working with more capacity from other players as well). Perfect example is Kioxia/Sandisk. $SNDK controls NAND output, so they’re a bottleneck because they control final pricing. Demand exceeding supply from Ayar, Jabil, other pluggable vendors + Nvidia NVLink CPO ecosystem… final laser supply owned by $SIVE makes Sivers a bottleneck. $SIVE is also likely primary/sole source for Jabil, Gen-1 Ayar, $MRVL Celestial, and other hyperscaler asic/merchant CPO routes. So no way to get around it (can’t hot-swap single channel cw lasers with Sivers) 2. $SIVE is a chokepoint over CPO. $NVDA use $COHR, $LITE (which likely sources external cw capacity from Japanese competitors) $AVGO is likely vertically integrated as well. However: the entire ecosystem around it from ASIC programs (Marvell, AlChip, etc) and merchant programs (Ayar, Lightmatter, Lightelligence) Are all likely designed around $SIVE. Ayar for example, likely tried to multi-source with $MTSI / $LITE back in 2022 but their lasers probably couldn’t match the level of Sivers specification with arrays (removed Lumentum / Macom from their supply chain site recently) If there’s no alternative at least for the initial generations (obviously they’re working to multi-source). That makes $SIVE a structural chokepoint to go through for lasers. Even if you look at the 1.6T LRO $JBL designed, they achieved a “drastic moat” with performance built around $SIVE likely sole source. $SIVE is also the foundry level reference laser design for $GFS, which your hyperscalers use like $AMD (likely using Sivers + maybe Ayar for gen1): If every major player, who hasn’t achieved vertical integration (Nvidia/Broadcom) is using Sivers for CPO… That makes them a chokepoint. Just look at the entire CPO $NVDA NVLink ecosystem partners: every single one are all likely using Sivers. And they all use $GFS as well (where Sivers is default reference). So $SIVE is both a chokepoint and bottleneck when CPO really scales up H2 2027, over one of the biggest architectural shifts of all time (near $0 -> $81B or $91B TAM in the next 1 1/2 years from GS research note) This is why I say $SIVE looks like it could be the next $75B $LITE over the next couple years. All of this should play out next year. And it’s still trading less than a company with $50M in purchase agreements that buys Sivers lasers to repackage them.

There's a new $SIVE short seller with 0 clue what they're talking about. 1. $MRVL Celestial is likely buying lasers directly with $SIVE as the laser supplier, not through $POET. As they've been identified as a likely direct customer since 2023. An analogy is if O-Net / Enablence / Sivers, and O-Net worked directly with $SIVE (which they have) but vertically integrated away Enablence. They're still likely buying $SIVE lasers. 2. $SIVE is clearly the likely $AAPL supplier for lasers. I use the term likely, because although markets are 99% sure, the BOM is confidential. The short seller is claiming it's TASC, which I've already identified multiple times as an Apple supplier. But falsely they're conflating two different generations of Apple Watches with photodiodes and lasers for glucose monitoring to say $SIVE is not a supplier. 3. US NASDAQ listing is likely incoming soon after the new board meeting and shareholder vote. Upgrading accounting standards and having immaterial changes doesn't mean anything. 4. Ayar labs hasn't scaled up yet. Ayar specifically listed $SIVE as their primary laser supplier in their website. With their executives going out on statement that they couldn't built their products without $SIVE lasers. Claiming $SIVE isn't shipping volume to Ayar when their CPO products haven't ramped is stupid. 5. There's zero leak around news for listing. Hilarious coincidence and management has always been pursuing NASDAQ listing since last year. Short sellers keep repeating this disinformation to try and profit. 6. I've never seen such hilarious BS around Win Semi volume scaling. High confidence in SpaceX and $AVGO supply chain critical foundry. 7. Using arguments from authority saying they know an engineer and then having them confusing architectural differences between $LITE / $COHR and $SIVE is hilarious. Regardless -distorting financial statements -conflating different gen architectures and timeline NRE - reiterating false accusations to profit off short term sentiment is likely going to see them turn into a long as CPO/Jabil partnerships volume ramp.

Back when $AAOI was ~$20-30 when I went long: I thought $AMZN and $MSFT were qualifying specific optical transceivers for their ASIC programs. Turns out it’s more interchangeable/mass producible. Regardless, glad my thesis on $LITE, $AAOI, Innolight, $COHR, $AXTI played out so well. Keep in mind: everyone on X was saying “scam management” with $AAOI back at $20-30… Or “scam company” with $AXTI at $12. FUD was pretty extreme. Feels like dejavu again… going long on the next CPO architectural shift like $SIVE or Foci? And getting the same comments. We’ll see if my CPO longs play out the same way like Shunsin does with Innolight or $SIVE does with $LITE. Either way all of those are now up hundreds to thousands of percent.

$SIVE is the most compelling CPO exposure stock to me. Despite the volatility. You probably won’t find something like this again until the next architectural shift in photonics years later. Out of the core laser suppliers, they’re all tens of billions? $AAOI = $15B Furukawa = $26B $MTSI = $29B Sumitomo = $59B $COHR = $73B $LITE = $74B Then there’s $SIVE as one of the core CPO laser chokepoints at $2.3B MC. Earnings are usually confirmation of all the little volume ramp hints like Jabil fireside transcripts for 1.6T LRO. And most returns are typically made before, not after official confirmation is just a rule of thumb.

Photonics is nuanced and using ChatGPT/Gemini makes you miss all of it: 1. $SIVE is actually a chokepoint and partially a bottleneck. The reason it's a chokepoint is leading CPO/optical hyperscaler players go through Sivers, likely: Ayar. Celestial. Lightmatter. Lightelligence. Poet. If you take out Sivers, you literally can't make some of their products + delay their roadmap by years. As many are sole/primary source but are heading the direction on multi-source. As for the bottleneck argument: Win Semi is the bottleneck for scaling laser production. But... the nuance is when you have capacity allocated for the next few years. You become part of the bottleneck itself if players fight you for allocation of finished lasers. That's the nuance people miss with capacity allocation dynamics. It's like saying $SNDK is not part of the NAND bottleneck when Kioxia makes all of it. But when Sandisk has the ultimate control of output supply, they become the bottleneck + have all the pricing power. Sivers controls output supply of CW lasers given allocations, and as seen with $LITE earnings, CW laser is currently bottlenecked as everyone seems to be stuck producing EMLs. 2. Like how LLMs always uses em-dashes. You can tell when people use AI when they always use the same "CW is a dumb interchangeable laser" argument or compare "power" specs after conflating different architectures. That's why your "analysts" using AI will get this wrong over and over. There's CW lasers... and then there's a specific architectural design that Sivers achieves with DFB lasers. If you compare power specs with $LITE vs. Sivers, Lumentum wins in isolation. But they're completely different laser architectures. All the leading CPO players like Ayar, chose $SIVE for an architectural reason for high power, low thermal, laser arrays. $JBL 1.6T LRO also made one of the most dramatic moats cited by their fireside chat, using Sivers lasers. If you think CW lasers are interchangeable with Sumitomo/Furukawa, and others. And can be plug-and-play... i don't know what to tell you? Again: $SIVE makes architecturally unique CW lasers for leading CPO players. 3. I'm not sure how many times I need to say this: $SIVE for 2024-2025 has been going through development contracts. People using TTM revenue or former P/S metrics are using completely the wrong metrics, when there's volume ramp in 2027. It's the same with $AAOI which volume ramps in H1 2027. $AEHR which volume ramps after qualification. $LPK that volume ramps after qualification. This is just missing qualification cycles in semiconductors and how to model financials currently. As for the $LITE comparisons (which was also my long last year): $LITE literally started off selling laser dies before acquisition of Cloud Lite and other downstream optical engine components. This is where $SIVE is at today with starting off in the laser chokepoint for CPO: People are modeling laser revenue off very isolated TAM projections. Meanwhile Sivers is targeting M&A to expand revenue for TAM projections. This is not a simple component FAU + ramp valuation modeling over with a Taiwanese company. Since Laser companies like $LITE, $COHR are known to downstream expand to make their lasers more valuable, then vertically integrate (fabs, assembly) afterward. Again, Sivers worked with Ayar and these types of companies before they all became billion dollar companies. I have high conviction knowing they know what to acquire down the ELS/optical engine stack + pluggable transceiver for TAM expansion. It's just annoying when I get people who don't understand the nuances backseat commenting wrong things about my longs. I got the same thing about $AXTI is not a bottleneck! InP isn't needed! China! back at $14. Now it's $140 I got the same thing about $AAOI "is going down 50%!" back at $65. or "AOI management is shady at $30". Now it's $170 I got the "there's nothing new with $SOI" back at $45. Now it's $170. I think I'm one of the few who actually understands the nuances with photonics, since I did call out $LITE, $TSEM, Innolight, $AXTI, $AAOI, $SOI, that outperformed both photonics markets and overall markets over the past year. And now I'm long on $SIVE.

A good looking guy that would mog Clavicular side by side has no impact to any fundamentals. I cut some exposure too in $LITE $COHR like Leopold, last month. But rotated it to a specific optical theme with CPO names like $SIVE / Foci. The entire photonics supply chain is in the start of a massive supercycle and there’s nothing more compelling going long on CPO as an architectural paradigm shift. Markets conflate two companies as the entire theme and sell off anything with it. Great buying opportunity for people who understands the nuance though. I still think there’s upside for Lumentum and $COHR, just less likely to double at current prices as fast if you’re going shares only.

When I see comments like this (and there are a lot) from retail investors: I immediately think they lack the technical depth. I'll walk through each one from $SIVE to $LPK: 1. Photonics TAM goes from $14B -> $154B In just two years time, and it's likely going to keep scaling past 2030 as it's the next generation architecture of choice. It's not going away in 1 year. It's not going away in 3 years, which is why $LITE premiums keep going higher since they're backlogged into 2028. $SIVE supplies CW lasers and is highly tethered to CPO and now pluggable transcivers for 1.6T and 3.2... For expected companies like $JBL, Ayar, Lightmatter, Lightelligence, $POET, $MRVL Celestial, and $AMD. This isn't a "trade", it's the core chokepoint and IP holder for the next generation of photonics. And it's a comfortable hold for the next few years as they scale to become the next $LITE. The risk I personally see (since they're already qualified with so many players), it's mainly how much TAM they can capture of the overall optical supercycle. (And potential risks with Win Semi volume ramp, but Win is massive so I can sleep tightly there). As just supplying lasers isn't enough to justify valuation. It's TAM expansion downward into making the entire ELS or entire pluggable transceiver that makes these laser companies so valuable. Then afterward, they can vertically integrating upward for gross margin expansion upward like $COHR into doing the laser fabs or even substrate level. And that in my view is a very asymmetric risk/reward ratio as we've already seen this done with $LITE as they went from $2B to $80B. 2. $LPK - Is the purest exposure, without the messy financials of SKC Absolics, as the next advanced packaging shift for glass substrates. Almost every single major semi company from $INTC to Samsung are adopting glass substrates. $LPK is basically $ASML of this chokepoint, since they supply to ~80% of the global players currently. Yes, there's "trade cycles" for equipment suppliers like $ASML, where if there's more foundry capex, ASML scales up. But if there's downturns, these tend to perform poorly, and don't capture all the volume ramp that happens after. However, if the MC is $650m and they're making $100-200M, revenue per costumer volume ramped, the amount they make from the glass substrate cycle will likely exceed current valuations. And they'll have baseline fundamentals (as more companies adopt the packaging shift), that keeps their valuation up. It's just a waiting game for volume ramp at this point. 3. $AAOI - This is literally $INTC but for America + Photonics. It's like saying Intel is not a long term investment. Guess where all your optical transcivers are made? China. Thailand. Malaysia. If you look at Innolight, Eoptolink, $FN, and others. AOI is building the largest Made in America supply chains for both CW laser fab, as well as 800g, 1.6T assembly. Yes, there are pluggable cycle ups and downs to this as well. There's going to be a wave for 1.6T next year, then CPO cannibalizes pluggables down the road. But since they make the entire supply chain in house, they have extreme optionality for other segments. And like $NVDA older gen-GPUs, there's going to be sovereign DC requirements for older gen pluggables from names like $AAOI. It's likely going to keep rising as it hits that $400m+/month revenue target H2 2026. There's just a lot of different short term volatility along the way like the $600m dilution. 4. $IQE - ??? It's one of the most important players in the Western word for epiwafers. $MTSI went out of their way to pay off IQE's debt because they can't have them going under. $IQE is also supplying to $LITE. The world is currently bottlenecked both on the epiwafer level from Landmark comments and InP substrate levels. Their financials were track but the raw book value, and value they hold to the entire Western supply chain... completely justifies their valuation. And other optical companies will not let their core upstream supply chain go under. As these tens of millions worth of materials would screw up tens of billions worth of downstream products. Again photonics is the next generation architecture required to scale AI. It's not Quantum where it's just "In development". It's literally here and the architecture of choice by $NVDA. I would not be surprised if all of these are a lot higher in 3-4 years time. People who think it's one and done in 3 months time "only because I mentioned it" don't know what they're talking about. Institutions would have bought up the name eventually (like Point 72 on $IQE) and retail would only find out after their valuations are 600% higher. Should really do the research before adding comments like these: These are all forward growth companies that require in-depth supply chain knowledge.

People wonder why I'm focusing on non-US markets recently. Why? CPO is my #1 thematic long. Markets don't know yet, the sudden paradigm shift in photonics... I was one of the only to frontrun the current supercycle in 2025 w/ $AAOI @ ~$30, $LITE ~$300s, and $AXTI at ~$13 on X.... With the actual receipts and thesis that others can't show. CPO goes from ~$0. To $91 Billion TAM opportunity. In the next 1 1/2 years from GS research. While overall optical market reaches $154B. Many players that had little exposure to the current photonics cycle at all: -> In Europe with high-end lasers design like $SIVE or $SOI with substrates. -> In Taiwan with Foci (3363), Nextronics (8147), Shunsin (6451) and others for optical components and foundries. -> In Japan with laser mass production, substrates, and chemicals. Are suddenly the new dominant players for CPO. As for US players, there's not much exposure. But the existing ones like $LITE, $COHR still get upside from CPO as that's their new growth vector. My contrarian thought process on current players: Is that most of their valuation is priced in huge legacy pluggable revenue that will inevitably face cannibalization over time, so re-rating potential is less unless someone uses leverage. A lot of these new purer play CPO names go from 0 to 100 extremely quickly one mass production starts H2 2026 for scale out (as a revenue bridge) into H2 2027 for scale up (massive growth driver). Markets usually price things in 8-12 months ahead of time too... I have high conviction thematically in my supply chain research despite any market volatility leading up until then.

Random CPO related names I like: - $SIVE - Foci (3363) - $TSEM - Browave (3163) - PCL (4977) - $AXTI - Msscorps (6830) - $IQE - Shunsin (6451) - Furukawa Electric (5801) - $MTSI - Nextronics (8417) - $LITE - $COHR - FitTech (6706) - $GFS - $ASX - LandMark (3081) - $SOI Disclosure: I own most, not all though.

Every day it's like this on repeat with $SIVE, it's like dejavu lol. Makes sense why Sivers is getting listed on Nasdaq soon instead of staying in local markets. New local hit piece on their own frontier company happens every market open, stock drops 10%: -> "CPO and the CW lasers is nothing new" -> "Sivers is going up against well funded $LITE and $COHR and will lose because of capital" -> "They had to dilute 2.5% to get listed on Nasdaq" -> "Delayed annual report is sketchy" (to get listed on Nasdaq) -> $SIVE is not big enough to capitalize on $JBL relationship and scale. Local Swedish folks end up selling. Western investors/funds end up acquiring the float. Better for the West to own the company before CPO ramp starts. Creating a frontier company purely from Sweden seems hopeless given local culture.

I'm still laughing how much Swedish hate their own frontier companies so much. That they write hit pieces every day on $SIVE. This one was entertaining: Local journalists show up to an empty $SIVE administrative building uninvited. Because they can't fathom the CEO is in Silicon Valley or design team is working on US Gov CHIPS act dev in the US. And because there weren't many cars parked outside + CFO wouldn't take questions about secretive hyperscaler deal financials. They wrote a random negative hit piece. By repeating "There are several who make lasers like these and Sivers are far from alone". Several like $LITE, $COHR, $60B+ companies. and reported earlier that "CPO is nothing special, it's been around for years." While GS projects CPO going from $1B -> $91B TAM over the next two years. Even put "Plans" in quotation marks because they didn't think Sivers is supplying lasers to $JBL 1.6T LRO. IMO, $SIVE ends up as a $10B+ company next year, especially if they follow what $LITE / $COHR did with downstream IP integration to capture more of CPO module BOM. Just don't think Swedish people understand hyperscaler supply chains, concept of forward growth, or the fact that employee count doesn't equate to revenue. Transfer of control from local Swedish -> West is always appreciated, as this was a majority owned local retail company before.

$COHR earnings note: Coherent's CEO basically reaffirmed GS research note about CPO being a massive revenue driver: Transcript: “One of the most important long-term growth opportunities for Coherent” In terms of timeline implications on $SIVE, $LITE, and other CPO adjacent names, just confirms timelines: "Initial scale-out CPO revenue is expected to begin in the second half of calendar 2026, with scale-up CPO revenue following in the second half of calendar 2027" "Coherent is working with multiple other customers and expects CPO solutions to be widely adopted." - This also reaffirmed adoption level. Scale-up CPO is the biggest value driver across the board that happens start of H2 next year. We're still in H1 2026 entering H2 2026. So this is the ideal time to frontrun CPO names before anything hits the balance sheet. This is known as "alpha"... pricing in things market fully don't know yet by looking at financials. Markets are typically forward looking 8-12 months... So if massive volume ramp happens July 2027 (might get pushed forward again)... And it's May 2026, a lot of that gets priced in between July 2026 and July 2027... between volume agreements H2 2026, and pre-production ramp H1 2027. 2 months before markets price in the largest volume drivers is what I call "frontrunning" the next CPO Supercycle. We know it's coming. Just a matter of waiting.

A Guide by Serenity: How to Cripple the Western Hyperscaler buildout with just $170m. Just take over Nippon Chemical (4092) with $169m! For InP substrates, you need: Indium and High Purity Phosphorus. Thought $AXTI was a bottleneck? NCI is the bottleneck of the bottleneck. NCI is actually the leader of the high purity red phosphorus chokepoint holding 26-27% of the market share (Rasa has less share, then the rest is China). And they export to $AXTI, Sumitomo, JX that need it to make InP substrates. 
So… if you have $160m to spend to acquire NCI (plus Rasa as smaller capacity), you can remove the leading Western world’s production of 6N/7N red phosphorus needed to make InP substrates! And without InP substrates: no photonics. Fun fact: China’s tech companies would get pretty disrupted with it too by NCI. For $AXTI, the mapping/reliance is actually pretty interesting: - AXT's Tongmei outlined its structural reliance on importing high-purity precursor materials from Japan on their STAR Market listing 
- WITS data showing ~$460/kg high-purity phosphorus flowing from Japan into China So they secretly do depend on NCI. 
China does have capacity like Wylton Chemical, Qin Xi New Materials, Jinding Electronics, and Chuxiong Chuanzhi, Guizhou Wylton Jinglin Electronic Materials as well. However, they’re all smaller players so can’t make up for high purity red phosphorus capacity provided by NCI for InP substrate production at scale. $LITE CEO already said inp substrates keeps him up at night. So now with NCI, you can give the guy permanent insomnia? For just $169M. So here's what the supply chain looks like: -> DGC phosphate rock mine and ships it to NCI -> NCI refines Yellow Phosphorus into High Purity Red Phosphorus -> Sumitomo / JX / AXT melt the Red Phosphorus with Indium to grow InP Substrates -> $COHR / $LITE fab InP substrates into Lasers -> Innolight/Fabrinet package them into 800G/1.6T transceivers -> $NVDA / $GOOGL use them for ASIC/GPU clusters. 
And basically, the entire West depends on NCI to make InP substrates for photonics. I hold some very small positions, just for fun. However, Japan is not well known for price hiking. So you’d probably run into regulatory problems eg. FEFTA if you bought the company and hiked prices 15000% (like government seizing back the company once they realize)… Maybe 30-50% hikes is possible to compress fwd p/e? But very likely wont end up like $AXTI. 
 Regardless, this company is a massive, massive national security risk priced at ~$160m. As for fundamentals, they’re trading at .54 book value and a forward P/E of 11.4 so it’s probably undervalued anyway. TLDR: -> Is it the next $AXTI? No. -> Is it an unknown structural bottleneck + critical vulnerability of the Western hyperscaler buildout with photonics? Yes. -> Is there still room for re-rating? Just reverting to Book Value of 1 is immediate 80-85% upside. Maybe more if you give it multiples past 11 fwd p/e. Regardless, it’s fun to find a major point of failure in the hyperscaler supply chains for $169m.

Here's a bunch of random 30 US-available random stocks I like today and why: 1. $INTC - America's hope for foundry, national security 2. $MRVL - scales rev from future maia asics and add ons like cpo, they do everything lost count 3. $TSM - backbone of semis/ai 4. $COHR - They do everything vertically integrated + captures optical cycle 5. $RKLB - the final frontier of space will be around 5 years from now and 20 years from now. 6. $DRAM - memory exposure for samsung/sk hynix 7. $AVGO - hyperscalers dont like nvidia gpu tax 8. $AMZN - nobody can compete against the overnight shipping of toilet paper. robotics will lower opex over time 9. $ARM - AGI CPUs scale revenue quite a bit over the next decade 10. $TSEM - you're going to need a foundry for light based stuff 11. $IBIT - bitcoin, we all know by now 12. $NBIS - i think it's the next AWS. Also they do self-driving cars with uber, own scaling DB companies, data labeling. It's almost like a mini Google. 13. $GOOGL - youtube is not going away, gemini is great. they're vertically integrated with TPUs and fund buildout with operating income so i like it. 14. $AMKR - super facilities coming online in late 2027-2028. benefits from made in america 15. $HOOD - i dont like short term, but long term i'm a fan of Robinhood since they captured retail + have more products like banking, etc that they're scaling up. product innovation is wild. 16. $CRCL - I happen to really like stablecoins and see them as the future for both payments/holding (depends on clarity act) 17. $META - people aren't going to stop using instagram or whatsapp, or others anytime soon. 18. $LITE - $GOOGL TPU exposure decently high part of BOM. As long as Google's AI program keeps running I think $LITE will do well. 19. $LPTH - Germanium and China export controls will always be an issue so US made engineered alternatives will always be important 20. $FN - Someone needs to assemble optical stuff 21. $JBL - same as above, but added with ip from Intel's SiPh acqusition so might end up like innolight? 22. $MP - American rare earths program is extremely important, similar to $INTC national security risks 23. $HIMS - Okay here me out they just acquired a ton of companies, and at $19 they have global DTC channel. short sellers really hate this company, but I think it's actually promising as a contrarian long 24. $SMTC - LRO/LPO transition 25. $POWL - US alternative to hammond for switchgear DC type bottleneck 26. $VPG - Humanoids will be a thing down the road maybe 2027-2028, this makes the sensors. 27. $MOG.A - Feels like i see them everywhere in robotics, to spacex supply chains 28. $MSFT - At $375, one day we'll look back and see this as a buying opportunity. 29. $CVX - oil might crash after war but these oil companies are going to be extremely important, especially when Venezulea is a goldmine. 30. $XLU - i think rate cuts might be back online, we need power/grid for AI so these names will always be improtant from $CEG to $NEE Just throwing out other thoughts aside from $AAOI and $AEHR.

$AAOI looks very undervalued at $6.49B. If we model ASP and their newest capacity projections today: Revenue from Capacity: Q2 2026: ~$312.1M Q4 2026: ~$1.41B Q2-2027: ~$1.53B Q4-2027: ~$1.97B This is absurd ramp (off ~34-40% est. gross margins). ASP modeled off (LightCounting, Dell'Oro Group & Yole, pricing for ELSFP modules is the most speculative). And some sell-side models (from firms like Raymond James, B. Riley, Northland Capital, and Goldman Sachs). Exact contract pricing for massive volume orders is not known, so this is speculative. But the Q2 volume * ASP estimates actually align with their $378M/month target Q2-2027. Again, you might be wondering? This is capacity, doesn't translate into revenue right? Hyperscalers from $AMZN to $MSFT are buying any capacity any of these companies from $LITE to $COHR can make, years out. This includes $AAOI from their former earnings call.

Warning: The entire AI industry will likely be bottlenecked by two companies: 1. $AXTI ($700M) 2. $SMTOY ($31.7B) Which both control 60–70%+ of the world's InP substrates. Future $NVDA, $GOOGL TPU v7 pods, $META, $MSFT, $AMZN hyperscaler clusters require InP-based lasers and receivers. $AVGO, $LITE, $COHR use for EMLs for 800G/1.6T transceivers, DFB lasers, and other optical infra. Without InP substrates, the supply chain falters. After looking at TPU BOM to Maia BOM, it looks like future ASICs + GPUs + hyperscaler deployments are heavily reliant on photonics. And two vendors could freeze the global InP substrate market covering nearly all of: - Hyperscaler optics (TPU pods, etc) - Optical transceivers (5g, data) - LiDAR (robotaxis, drones, military) -Optical Modules (interconnect clusters) - Silicon photonics laser dies (Nvidia’s future co-packaged optics and Intel/Broadcom SiPh engines use InP CW laser arrays.) Since these companies make up majority of the market supply: -AXTI (est. ~30–35%) -Sumitomo (est.~30%) - JX Nippon (est. 10-15%) That’s it. (eg. 2021 industry note from Yole states that "Sumitomo Electric + AXT together had “more than 75%” of the InP substrate market") Hyperscalers/AI are moving toward photonics but the entire AI industry is fragile. If either $AXTI or $SMTOY stop supplying materials, the entire future AI buidlout gets crippled. It's even crazier that a $700m company could become the the center of it all. InP substrate will likely one of the biggest bottlenecks alongside HMB as the AI industry shifts to photonics.

$AAOI is up 24% and $LITE is 5% since my thesis today. From BOM analysis, LITE ($27B) is levered toward TPU Ironwood due to OCS but benefits from NVDA + all ASICs. AAOI ($2.5B), is levered toward MSFT MAIA ramp and Amazon Trainium. InP like HBM, will be a bottleneck for 2026 as they’re the foundational materials used for lasers in these deployments. Similar to memory bottlenecks with Micron and SK Hynix, we’ll likely see attention drawn to InP fabs, such as $AAOI, which happens to be one of the sole ones in America (COHR,Macom) But compared to $LITE that is up 362% YTD due to the success of Google’s TPU (from Meta and Anthropic purchase orders), $AAOI is only up 7% YTD. We’re largely seeing this because there’s a lack of retail or media attention on the $AMZN Trainium or $MSFT Maia deployments, which are largely expected to ramp up in 2026-2027. However they’re all likely to succeed due to each hyperscaler wanting to lower costs of inference for their own cloud platform. If we see other hyperscalers adopt OCS for optimized performance that the TPU achieved, expect $LITE to re-rate more than they have now given their monopoly in that specific segment. However, if we see $MSFT Maia ramp up (given $AAOI is likely developing a new architecture for them), and $AMZN Trainium ramp up ($4B warrant + purchase orders), expect $AAOI to rerate. Photonics and InP will be the new bottleneck like memory. We’ll likely see investments pour down stream to players like $COHR, Innolight, $LITE, and hidden levered plays on specific hyperscaler ASICs like $AAOI as a theme in 2026. The market is currently rewarding the Google TPU supply chain but might be missing other hyperscaler ASIC ramps.

The $LITE thesis: The hidden monopoly in the AI. Lumentum is up 316% YTD, but might be 1000%+ by 2027. Micron ($300B) or TSM ($1.5T) sit in the center of every TPU/GPU deployed. But same with $LITE, but it's a $26B MC. In Every, Single, TPU from Google, $LITE makes unbelievable amounts of profit for their marketcap. That's because it's the standard for Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) + optical networking. It's also in - $NVDA Blackwell -$AMZN Trainium - and other hyperscaler ASICs. Lumentum sits in the holy trinity of every single chip deployment for photonics. And for every TPU capex spent, $LITE takes 8-12%. For every Nvidia GPU, $LITE takes ~2-3% (split between Innolight and some others, so the math gets a bit complex). But some napkin math on NVDA GPU deployments alone for BOM: NVIDIA Blackwell (GB200): HBM memory: ~50–55% (SK Hynix (Lead), Micron, Samsung) Logic (GPU Die): ~25-30% ( $TSM 4NP) CoWoS Packaging: ~13-18% $TSM Optics/Network: ~3–5% (Innolight, Lumentum, Coherent) PCB/Power: 5% For Google TPIU "Ironwood" TPU v7: HBM Memory: 38-42% Samsung / SK Hynix Logic Die: TSM ~28-33% Design/I.O: 8-10% MediaTek Optical Network: 10-14% ( $LITE (primary), $COHR secondary) Optical Switch: 2-4% $LITE $LITE est. total cluster share: ~8–12% Just an FYI, Google's "Optical" BOM share (8–12%) is an anomaly due to their unique Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) monopoly. Just for some napkin math: $40B Google TPU spend by 2027. $LITE captures 10% (30-40% margins), $1.5B+ FCF from Google alone, 17x earnings from just their primary customer. (analysts are probably extremely off with projecting TPU spend scaling). Not even including their split from $AMZN Trainium, $NVDA Blackwell, $MSFT Maia, and other chip deployments. $LITE is in the center of every single TPU/GPU future chip deployment for now and takes a cut. The only downside is they're the clear market leader now, but $AVGO and $COHR are likely set up to compete by 2027-2028. However... People say "$26B, ATH, why are you buying now". This is the reason. They're involved in every future single TPU/GPU/ASIC deployed. $LITE could end up easily over $60B+ if Google TPUs, and other chip spend ramps up and LITE takes a 2-3% (from $NVDA, $AMZN, $MSFT) or 8-12% cut (from $GOOGL) for every single dollar spent.