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.

It's official, Unitree the 8000x+ retail oversubscribed humanoid company in China. Is expected to go public in 2 days! So the 19th. Opening is implied to be around ~$41.66B MC per derivatives, around +363.3% above its ~$9B IPO valuation. Fun times for humanoids this week.

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...

I think we're seeing AI server MLCC demand cause an interesting effect... with tightening capacity for consumer/general-purpose MLCCs. If you get Vietnam flashbacks like I do to $MU / Samsung / SK Hynix -> Legacy DRAM: My thesis is we'll see the same thing here maybe late H2, early 2027 with consumer/broad MLCCs. From July 6th: "the crowding-out effect from AI-oriented high-end MLCC production has begun spilling over into both the automotive and consumer markets." July 28th: "AI Demand Pushes Japanese and Korean MLCC Suppliers to Record Monthly Shipments; Consumer-Grade Order Spillovers Continue to Surge" Aug 12: As [MLCC] capacity shifts from consumer grades to AI-oriented products... (Trendforce) Aug 12: China's electronics market channel checks found 22µF and 47µF MLCCs (used more broadly) out of stock. Then found and said certain manufacturers had stopped taking orders. (for reference: Walsin said high-volume smartphone/PC products such as... 22µF, so it's broader MLCCs) Obviously Samsung Electro-Mechanics/Murata are main beneficiaries of AI server MLCC ramp. But companies with large market share of overall MLCCs like Taiyo Yuden (6976, disclosure: I have positions) with less AI server share, would be a major beneficiary of this. Fun part is, we're only in H2 2026, so the next major bottleneck should be fun!

"Severe InP Shortage Triggers Largest Price Hike Ever" - $AXTI. Suppliers have bluntly stated that "even if you have the money, you still may not be able to get the material" (lol). - Industry sources revealed that InP substrate prices began rising in Q4 last year and was the fourth consecutive substrate price hike. - The latest Q4 hike is expected to be >10%, - Meanwhile, prices for epitaxial wafers made from those substrates have already been raised two times, and the market is moving toward a 3rd consecutive increase in Q4. (I also wrote a thesis on $IQE, which benefits here too). Article states VPEC, Landmark, IET benefits (Taiwan centric reporting). I did predict this last year... The bottleneck is real, but I do have higher expectations for price hikes that comes next. Glad it's starting to play out.

Stripe reportedly buys OpenRouter for $7 Billion. I think their orchestration is easy to replicate and switch from. And there's very little moat. But atm, OpenRouter has the userbase, valuable dataset, + momentum. What's your take... Yay or Nay for the payments firm?

I think @elonmusk said it best: “Robots don’t all need to be humanoid. But a general-purpose robot intended to replace human labor should fit the world humans already built. Roger, roger.” Personally, I expect $TSLA Optimus form factor to converge to the right image.

I feel like AI investing is simpler than what people expect. Because $NVDA + Jensen literally tells everyone what's coming. But somehow. Almost every. single. time. Markets dismiss it until it actually happens? Be Nvidia in 2025: Buys up EML and laser capacity. Markets dismissing it: "Photonics is a bubble and like quantum! ____ company is a scam with shady management" 1 year later: $LITE +678%, $AAOI +475.12%, $COHR +260.7%, $AXTI +3,843.9%. _ Nvidia in 2026: Buys up CW/EML capacity with LTAs. 800V shift. Extraordinary explicit about CPO shift. States Physical AI as the next theme. Markets now: "CW players are meme stocks! 800v, CPO is not coming anytime soon, Humanoids are not profitable!" Yeah... We'll see what happens in 2027. I think I'm putting my money on Jensen/Nvidia as the leading indicator.

Just some TLDRs of stuff I found interesting: - $SNDK 80% adjusted gross margins projections through 2030, ~75% operating margins and ~50% adjusted FCF margins from investor day. LTAs already 2/3rd of 2028 output. Minimum contracted revenue reaches $93B (MC is currently ~$239B)... Hard to be a cyclical stock when your revenue/targets are expected to continue 4Y later into 2030. - $CRWV signs contracts for 6Y old $NVDA A100 GPUs through 2029. For Neoclouds like Nebius/Iren, this is positive, since it's a counterargument for eg. Burry depreciation short thesis - conventional DRAM gross margins eg. Micron is estimated to reach an unprecedented 95% by 2027, surpassing HBM GMs per UBS read through for legacy/standard dram players like Nanya/Winbond should go brrrr if projections are correct. - Anthropic reportedly achieved 14x+ YoY growth and roughly 2.4x sequential revenue growth q2 to >$11.5B,. estimating growth to $190–200B in 2028r evenue numbers. Your frontier labs keep growing at stupidly fast paces, it would be worrisome if they didnt. - $NVDA reportedly in talks to invest $3B in SB Energy (Softbank subsidiary), creates a >$500B compute financing push with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman, and others. $NVDA Feynman reportedly moves to TSMC A16 + SoIC + custom HBM + CPO in H2 2028 Just more nvidia news every day - $MSFT Maia 300 discussed $TSM capacity for >300k units in 2027, with expansion to 1m+. Unveils as soon as September. Likely $MRVL should be more happy from this news. For what's happening right now: - maybe GUC for Microsoft current ASIC ramp. - For the Amazon party, stuff like Alchip (I do own shares), likely is ramping now with $AMZN ASIC program H2 2026... So might be a good idea to look at hyperscaler ASIC ramp timelines + their beneficiaries. - $TSM VP of Advanced Packaging stated "the industry is likely to face not only memory shortages but also tight ABF substrate supply over the next few years"... Emphasis on few years for memory + ABF substrates for bottlenecks. Even upstream abf substrate equipment providers are happy, eg. Eternal Precision which uses vacuum lamination equipment stated orders surged, their plants have been running at full capacity, and 20%+ price hikes. - $AMAT expects advanced packaging revenue to grow >70% in 2026, versus prior >50%, and said customer discussions now extend all the way to 2030 (not too familiar with this company, but found their growth rate from 2025 Q4 $6.8B ->$7.01B -> 7.91B -> $9.12B -> $10.25B Q4 2026 projections pretty interesting) - Google said at OCP APAC said conventional 48V is running out of headroom. $NVDA detailed an 800VDC MGX-compatible rack H2 2026 (timeline, Delta / Lite-On beneficaries) - Aside from $SNDK, Nanya LTAs cover 50% of capacity. CXMT signed multi-year DRAM agreements last month, so entire memory industry seems to be following same playbook as ur big 3. - Probe cards remain a bottleneck, MPI(6223) said their probe card capacity remains fully utilized because demand exceeds supply. Already covered the CW laser bottleneck with $AAOI, $SIVE, and $LITE earlier this week, but that's another fun one. - some MLCC/component lead times have hit 36 weeks per Nichidenbo. Your Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Taiyo Yuden, Murata, players should be very happy to hear this. TLDR: AI supply chains go brrr.

My weekend X feed is getting pretty sad. The main things I've seen were: - Harvard endowment going degen with $SPCX, and + $AMD, $NVDA disclosing billions - AI agent microcosm implications on RuneScape - Hormuz getting renamed to Straight of America - Jane Street getting wiped $15B by Citadel - ____ who's hedge fund is up 30% every year buys a .00005% position my favorite stock _____! - Bunch of noisy motivational quotes or bad takes on trading

US Government urges $AAPL not to buy Chinese memory chips. $MU, $SKHY, and Samsung are happy to hear this... Hilariously enough, CXMT/YMTC is price hiking too, so it's not exactly "cheap Chinese memory that floods the market". Apple once upon a time actually had extreme supplier leverage before the AI boom.

Donald Trump signs a proclamation to strengthen US supply chains for drones. Benefiting U.S. drone component suppliers like $UMAC to UAS manufacturers like $ONDS + $RCAT. TLDR, 100% tariffs on: - UAS docking stations + certain critical components - certain parts for >25 kg drones - Drones >25 kg 25% tariffs on: - broader components UAS = Unmanned Aircraft System (don't have any positions in any above)

Feels like glass substrate timelines got pushed back at least another quarter. - "Samsung Electro-Mechanics Delays Semiconductor Glass Substrate Investment" due to a bottleneck in customer reliability evaluations of prototypes. At its recent second-quarter earnings presentation, less than a month later, the company revised the start of operations to 2028. - "SKC Reportedly Pushes Glass Substrate Mass Production to 2027, Targets Final Validation by Year-end" (Trendforce), earlier last month. TLDR: - SKC Absolics H2 2026 -> H1 2027 - Samsung H2 2027 -> H1 2028 Not everything is always good news with timeline shifts, but glass core substrate shifts do feel imminent. Volume ramp for some players eg. $LPK / Philoptics (161580) / E&R (8027) likely track these mass production timelines.

In another world, $SMCI would look more like $DELL? If they didn't try smuggling $NVDA GPUs using hairdryers... Regardless, SMCI guiding $65-72B FY 2027 revenue off a ~$25B MC is pretty crazy the more I look at it.

In IPO news… Vantage Data Centers is exploring going public at an enormous $100B valuation. If you’re not familiar, $ORCL is their anchor tenant for Stargate (OpenAI end user), and Vantage develops/operates hyperscaler DCs. Anthropic IPO is also expected, with investors expecting $2T valuation, eclipsing $SPCX per FT. Yeah… idk about Anthropic valuations. Jim Cramer defending that valuation is never a good sign. On a side note, Opus 5 is probably the worst consumer LLM I’ve used to date, it’s like a 5 IQ LLM operating off terrible data retrieval. With a Fable-like God complex on top. Enterprise is probably having a better time though. Unitree IPO is also expected this month and priced it at a $9B valuation. Which is a positive tailwind for Unitree for the humanoid sectors. Not really an AI name but SHEIN is going public as soon as the 19th this month. Go ask any girl you know and they’re probably familiar with this platform.

Okay here's my take on $POET, since apparently people are celebrating on the subreddit that I took small positions. - I have 0 idea. ZERO. How they convinced shareholders to allow them dilute SO MUCH to the point: They have an absurd ~$830m cash on hand now. And my guess is that they're close to done, since I would be in disbelief if they needed more. So now... they have ~$830m to grow their business like M&A, and EV actually dropped really low recently (eg. $1.25B MC vs. $830m cash on hand), that I thought it was compelling to take a risk. - Annualized production capacity target is 12M optical engines/year for 2027, which is pretty absurd ramp. Need to do more research into ASP for Poet's products, but maybe $125-$200? So at ~$150 ASP, $1.8B revenue ceiling. But they're like inverse AAOI right now: no visible demand to fill all that capacity. Aside from Lumilens, which is now a highly valued hyperscaler supplier (probably Amazon or Microsoft), with billions in customer agreements. The interesting thing is if Poet signed prepayment EML agreements with players like Mitsubishi, or CW agreements with Sivers behind the scenes with that balance sheet. And given the current bottleneck, players might use Poet as a workaround for supply procurement. But basically, you have a super cash-rich company with a ton of capacity coming online. And they're not really disappearing anytime soon with their financials. I don't quite think it's as technically defensible compared to upstream laser chokepoints with something like $SIVE around the same valuation in terms of technical moat for CW lasers vs. OE packaging side. As you've seen recently with Celestial and Poet. But maybe... there's a chance some hyperscaler or downstream company announces a volume agreement sometime in the future. and $POET takes off. And they do have the supply chain setup for ramp with that. That's the risk I ended up taking, but it's not exactly a clear as day long for me like $AAOI.

Feels like my $IQE thesis Feb this year got validated alongside $AXTI and others. (I still long on both) So I stopped covering them as much. But TLDR on updates: Early this year, IQE was a distressed but critical chokepoint in the optical supply chain with links to $LITE and others when I published my thesis on it. Since then: - $MTSI signed long term epiwafer supply agreements, took a stake in the company, now IQE is bank debt free (Macom has convertibles, but that's positive) - $TSEM signed agreements for InP epiwafers. - Management explicitly said its IQE agreement was signed to secure the "strategic III-V epiwafer supply required for that roadmap" - IQE signed another ~$14M mysterious AI DC contract. The only part that's still playing out with my earlier thesis is IQE converting their latent/underutilized capacity toward AI DC segment, to match peers like Landmark in the space (which takes time, like slightly over a year if I remember correctly). There's some national security implications that I'll avoid talking about that makes them more important. But basically: FY2025 revenue: £97.3m FY2026 guidance: over £126.5m They're rapidly growing again in the optical sector, out of bank debt/distressed liquidation state, and remains a critical chokepoint in Western optical supply chains. Now... with new agreements with your leading photonics companies for revenue growth, and players like Macom serving as a soft backstop. After a thesis gets validated, typically I just sit back and enjoy growth of a business.

$SIVE announces a $3.4M development program with SemiNex! For CPO, DFB laser arrays, and optical amplifiers. Early production is targeted H2 2027 (in line with early scale up CPO timelines) Seemed weird to me at first given product overlap, since SemiNex is a much smaller Series B company... But then I got reminded of a less explicit version of $SPCX + Cursor relationship (derisking by working together first). There's probably something interesting Sivers found in this company.