The $WEN meme traders made it to Global Media from Japan to US!
The burger fast food chain is now up ~50%, which is pretty impressive.
Feels bad to be sidelined and see my AI memory/optical portfolio perform worse than a $RDDT memestock tho.
Did anyone take positions?
Global markets in a nutshell:
Japanese Company: Active monopoly over random chokepoints in the hyperscaler AI buildout.
Valuation: $150m-$350M
Silicon Valley: Here's a $200m for a "Seed Round".
Think so. But in the meantime, I call my strategy: Diversified Losses.
With $AXTI, $SOI, $AAOI, and many others.
Had a massive drawdown recently,
CPO exposure was hit the hardest (Foci, Msscorp, etc) and adjacent names, feels bad.
Probably lesson personally, I had too much concentration in photonics vs. memory/other sectors without weighting/hedging properly.
With Soitec, there's been a few negative institutional reports that I'd disagree with.
Think AXT was hit harder in specific just because of float expansion/dilution concerns. AAOI, probably just brought down with the theme.
I can't give advice on buying, so completely up to you to make for cost averaging or entering positions.
But I do think we're still early in the Supercycle with photonics, there's bound to be corrections/crashes along the way up.
If my personal thesis is correct though, many of these names will have a major inflection point in midway through 2027 scaling up to 2028.
Markets don't typically wait to price things in advance, but some ideas might be a tad early or in the buildout given it's H2 2026 now.
Which is why it's important to build your own conviction.
Today, Anthropic has directly accused the $BABA Qwen AI lab of distilling its frontier AI models.
By creating thousands of fake accounts and over 28.8 million exchanges.
Feels like this is kind of known by now... but there's been no real penalties enforced yet.
We'll see what happens.
Always amazing looking at $MU earnings:
Revenue: $41.46B vs. $35.8B est.
EPS: $25.11 vs. $20.78 est.
Forecasts:
Revenue: $49B to $51B, vs $43.24B est
EPS: $30.00 to $32.00, vs. $25.31.
“Micron said on Wednesday that it has signed 16 long-term agreements”
"When completed, we expect approximately half or more of our company revenue to be under these"
Looks like memory demand has become structural…
But great earnings to show up the AI trade is continuing to ramp up.
Nancy Pelosi just disclosed:
- $1 million - $5 million of $INTC March 2027 calls
- 200 $UBER March 19, 2027 call option contracts with a $50 strike price
This was done last month May 29th. (her husband is the active trader executing this). Just for the people who like following along Pelosi family trades.
Fun new information discovery from Poet OSINT community:
Seems likely that $POET / $SIVE are going to power a Top-3 hyperscaler (either Amazon, Microsoft, Google).
Given a Linkedin update from Ankur Singla (CEO of Lumilens).
Who stated their customer is one of the top 3 hyperscalers with their post focusing on CPO/NPO.
With that clue, seems more likely the Sivers CW DFB light source path over other EML suppliers given it's CPO Scale Out/NPO.
If you don't remember, Sivers is the laser supplier to Poet. And Poet has purchase agreements with Lumilens.
Always fun to find major potential breadcrumbs in the wild before they're officially confirmed. (Disclosure, long Sive)
OpenLight (private) seems to get bigger and bigger every time I look at it.
If you’re curious about their public ecosystem outside of Advantest:
$JBL ( $SIVE partner ) for scaling PICs
$MRVL and $MXL for DSPs
$TSEM for the foundry.
$300394.SZ / TFC Optical (OSAT/subassembly)
Can often get exposure into private growth through public equities if you’re not an accredited investor.
Since optical players look very interconnected.
Don’t quite think “siphoned off” is the correct term.
It’s capex for massive revenue increase or margin increase down the line.
$AMZN is probably my favorite hyperscaler right now and example to give.
Amazon’s headcount is absurd, like ~1.57M. If the capex goes into automating their workforce with LLMs.
Then transitioning into physical AI:
- things from self driving (deliveries)
- robotics (Amazon warehouses, shipping automation).
+ revenue increase from building out AWS compute with Trainium and possibly selling chips too with the Neocloud strat.
It’s probably the clearest path forward compared to every hyperscaler out there.
$TSLA optimus use case targets is extremely broad as a pitch, but Amazon already has a specific reason to scale robotics for internal opex optimization.
As for $GOOGL, probably 2nd right now, AI capex was necessary for defending its Google Search moat Gemini from ChatGPT
They also have Google Cloud revenue with efficient TPUs + can sell TPUs like Nvidia GPUs.
Gemini user volumes keep going up (despite the lack of contention in frontier benchmarks); and AI strategy to be working for ad optimization too.
But there’s less clear paths with physical AI stuff ig?
Microsoft and Meta are still trying to convince the market why capex is necessary, (we’re kinda seeing that in effect with Meta’s 30%+ Y/Y revenue growth), but doesn’t look like they’re convinced.
As for market narratives, Microsoft Maia seems to be behind, their AI development was stunted from OpenAi investments, so sentiment is kinda in the ground.
But think that will change down the road like the 180 with Google.
I’m sure all the hyperscalers are seeing the leader effect right now:
If you have the leading LLM, people will keep using it. That LLM gets smarter from all the training data; and that gap might be structural.
Which is why everyone is kinda rushing the buildout right now, but for some the immediate incentives seem obvious.
I find it interesting that the degens on $RDDT are starting a viral campaign to save Wendy’s ( $WEN ).
The US fast food burger chain.
And the stock price is now up 20% overnight.
Just for background: Wendy’s is a popular community meme, where people work behind the dumpsters after their portfolios go to 0 from 0DTE options.
(No positions, just found it amusing)
I wonder if it’s going to work?
Today, $XFAB (1.23B MC) receives €127.4 million from CHIPS ACT for their MEMS Foundry.
"The «Fab4Micro» in Erfurt is a key project for the technological sovereignty of Germany and Europe, explained Thuringia’s head of government."
The production start is planned in 2028 (finanzen).
With Europe's new CHIPS ACT 2 as a concurrent fundamental tailwind.
Nothing is more stupid than Bloomberg copying BofA playbook with KOSPI back in March.
And framing Taiwan’s $TSM ~23.6x forward p/e and $NVDA upstream supply chain as a “bubble”.
Then using the words going into “debt” instead of “margin” + comparing Taiwan’s market to the .com bubble.
Crap like this is why retail trust in media has dropped off a cliff in the past few years.
$SIVE + Aeva likely coded from the new PR today and SIVE + Apple.
For Sivers lasers powering robotics / physical AI.
-> Sivers lasers powering Boston Dynamics Atlas via. LG Innotek for robotics
-> Nvidia Hyperion ecosystem w/ Sivers lasers for physical AI.
Are possible paths with Aeva.
Apple likely using Sivers also reiterated from the newer webpage:
“Optical sensing modules for wearables” from biometric and health monitoring.
They just can’t namedrop partners due to confidentiality, but consumer sensing is probably the biggest tell.
Physical AI and mass consumer production with Apple would be very material to revenue.
I actually think OE Solutions ($138080.KQ
) makes the most sense as an acquisition target by a large downstream player.
Since it’s now trading at a stupid ~$215M MC for scarce EML/CW laser IP.
A Source Photonics / Suzhou Dongshan Precision type acquisition might add a lot more value to another company that wants to vertically integrate.
Given there’s a lot of expensive R&D and capex required to scale their fabs and buildout ahead + it’s a small optical player. (Disclosure: I do own positions)
Just floating the idea out there to other companies.
IMO photonics theme + CW laser chokepoint is goated.
It's legit like markets have short term memory loss and forgot how $LITE went from $3B -> $65B+ from 2024 to now.
Because $NVDA caused EML bottlenecks, and forced architectural changes.
We're literally seeing the same thing today with CW lasers + 1.6T/CPO shifts with Nvidia signing LTAs everywhere.
Now, $AMD + other CSPs are hunting for remaining scraps with large LTAs for CW lasers + optical components.
GS Research's ~9-10x $154B optical TAM in 2028 and near $0 -> $91B CPO TAM in just 2 1/2 years.
Don't just magically disappear from a month of trading volatility.
$AAOI sitting at ~$13B, $SIVE sitting at ~$3B, and other CW laser players look strategically very valuable.
And next year I think we'll look back and say "Why didn't I learn my lesson the first time with EML from Nvidia and pick up CW laser adjacent names!"
Then there's likely gonna be some new mini trend 1-2 years from now like microled or quantum dot and we're gonna see the same thing repeat.
Think Sumitomo's projections with CW laser share + silicon photonics being majority / dominant architecture should be correct.
I'm personally just focusing on that bottleneck as you've seen with $SOI, $TSEM, $SIVE, and others.
$XFAB upgraded to outperform with a PT of €12.8 by Bernstein, up from €5.
Okay I forgive you Bernstein for Kioxia and Intel.
I still think that’s just reactive PTs off automotive recovery, SiC/power semi ramp up.
And undershooting potential a lot… If markets price in the possibility of xfab moving to HVM.
On their silicon photonics foundry w/ photonixfab / Nvidia + LIGENTEC for TFLN on SOI.
Regardless I’m bullish too on XFAB and curious where it heads.
Anyone got a list or ideas of the biggest NAV discounts. But independently has AI growth?
Stuff more extreme end like $ACMR and WUS (2316) compared to SK Square.
Have exposure to the ones above, just wanted to research more opportunities.
Seems to be getting noticed recently