Blue Origin put $ASTS BlueBird 7 into a lower-than-planned orbit on New Glenn’s first commercial mission while SpaceX crossed 600 Falcon booster landings & $RKLB finished 2025 with 21 Electron launches at 100% mission success.
President Trump said U.S. forces intercepted the Iranian-flagged cargo ship TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman after it tried to breach the U.S. naval blockade.
He said U.S. Marines now have full custody of the vessel which he described as being under U.S. Treasury sanctions.
$ASTS just issued an official update after BlueBird 7 was placed into an orbit too low to sustain operations following Blue Origin’s New Glenn 3 launch.The satellite powered on after separation but will be deorbited while insurance should cover the loss and the next batch remains
SpaceX just completed its 600th successful Falcon landing.
That kind of execution consistency is a big reason the market is willing to entertain a ~$2T IPO valuation.
THE OPTICAL PHOTONICS BOTTLENECK
As AI clusters scale past copper’s physical limits, the bottleneck shifts to optical & these are the companies building that layer across the stack:
1. $AAOI building the transceiver layer of the AI network through vertically integrated U.S.-based InP laser manufacturing. It has already secured over $200M in its first volume 1.6T order from one hyperscale customer followed by another $124M in 800G orders from a second.
2. $AEHR building the reliability layer for the optical & AI hardware stack through burn-in & test systems. It just received a record $41M follow-on order from its lead hyperscale customer reinforcing the idea that Sonoma is becoming a key production burn-in platform for high-power AI ASICs.
3. $CRDO building the connectivity layer that helps AI clusters move data faster through active electrical cables, retimers & high-speed interconnect silicon. The DustPhotonics acquisition also extends that platform into silicon photonics before copper becomes a real constraint.
4. $LITE building the laser layer of the AI optical stack through EMLs, optical components & optical switching exposure. The setup is backed by a $2B $NVDA strategic investment & optical circuit switch backlog above $400M with orders reportedly extending through 2028.
5. $VIAV building the testing & validation layer of the optical stack through network instrumentation & photonics measurement tools. It is the picks-and-shovels layer of the transition because every high-speed optical buildout still needs to be tested regardless of which transceiver vendor wins.
6. $COHR building one of the core photonics bottlenecks through indium phosphide lasers, optical engines & communications components tied to next-gen AI networking. It also has a $2B $NVDA strategic investment behind it & is doubling InP device capacity into the 1.6T ramp.
7. $MRVL building the DSP & optical infrastructure layer through electro-optics, PAM DSPs, interconnect silicon & custom networking chips. The Celestial AI deal & NVLink Fusion exposure both strengthen its position as photonics becomes more central to AI cluster design.
$ASTS BlueBird 7 has successfully been deployed & AST confirmed the satellite has powered on but the payload was inserted into an off-nominal orbit that is now being assessed.
The good news is the satellite is alive & the bigger picture is that New Glenn reuse could still materially improve AST’s launch cadence.