ams OSRAM's pivot to digital photonics could look remarkably cheap in hindsight if micro-photodiodes and AR microLEDs scale as AI hardware shifts to optics. Its micro-photodiode arrays target parallel optics in AI clusters, reusing high-volume microLED packaging. Q2 revenue of €805M and a 16.9% adjusted EBITDA margin hit the top of guidance; core semis grew 13% like-for-like, with €1.6B of design wins. Refinancing cut interest by about €40M, though 2026 remains a transition year. x.com 

MicroLED's poor prospects and growing expert enthusiasm for VCSEL could put ams OSRAM on more investors' radars. An ams OSRAM optical-interconnect executive says a 1.6T active linear cable was demonstrated using the company's micro-emitter engine with Credo's help, and their short-reach micro-optics partnership continues. x.com  x.com  x.com 

ams-OSRAM is a dying company because its core LED lighting business has been annihilated by Chinese competition. It makes both LEDs and VCSELs, but most of its business is still LED. x.com 

Optics and photonics should be among AI's biggest winners as faster GPU networks need optical connections that suppliers cannot expand quickly enough. Lumentum says some components are sold out through early 2029; Sivers is investing $30M to target more than 100M lasers a year, with operations expected in Q4 2027. Potential US restrictions on Chinese transceivers could reshape supply in 2027. Applied Optoelectronics and Sivers are the favorites. x.com  x.com 

Photonics suppliers ride the same curves Marvell just laid out through 2030. Marvell targets $70-90B of fiscal 2031 revenue from $8.2B last year, with a TAM 4x its last investor day and interconnect the biggest segment at about $37.5B. Supply is tight: Lumentum's CEO says it can meet only 30% of customer demand next year, and Coherent is booked through 2027. @AsymmetricBets_ applied Marvell's model to Lumentum, Coherent, Applied Optoelectronics, Ciena, Tower Semiconductor and Astera Labs. x.com 

Aeluma is a speculative small cap with a rare ability to put compound semiconductors on standard 200mm and 300mm silicon, making quantum dot lasers, nonlinear photonics and detectors that feed CPO, VCSELs and quantum photonic ICs. A seed investor is Shuji Nakamura, the Nobel laureate who co-invented the blue LED. Catalysts include $4M+ in government contracts, Tower Semi and Sumitomo partnerships, and DARPA, NASA and Navy customers. Risks are a $50M ATM, heavy insider selling and no revenue yet. … Show more

Lumentum's AI demand is no longer a future story; it is already showing up in the numbers. Cloud and AI revenue more than doubled year over year, with components up 103% and systems up 123%. 200G EML shipments hit a record above 25% of EML revenue, CPO laser shipments are growing toward meaningful revenue by year-end, pump lasers rose 80% under long-term supply deals, initial 1.6T transceivers shipped, and the OCS ramp is on track under a multi-year, multibillion-dollar agreement. x.com 

Lumentum is an essential, bottleneck-constrained supplier to AI clusters as optics replace copper at its physical limit, not a commoditized transceiver vendor, so it remains undervalued with a path well above $1,000 a share. Per CEO Michael Hurlston, capacity is sold out. Gross margins are nearing 48%, backlog stretches through 2028 and Nvidia's $2B partnership runs through it. The shift to scale-up CPO and indium phosphide lasers and a reported US ban on Chinese data center sourcing favor it. … Show more

Lumentum, the largest indium phosphide laser maker and supplier of the ultra-high-power laser in NVIDIA's Spectrum-X CPO switch, has a lot to gain from the silicon photonics roadmap. Its indium phosphide is sold out for years, which explains why its SEMICON Taiwan talk promoted gallium arsenide VCSELs for scale-up, rating them strong on 5 of 7 axes. VCSELs are its only incremental revenue in that period, even though they could displace its InP business. x.com  x.com 

The Tema Photonics & Optical ETF is hard to beat as a way to invest in photonics, whose AI data-movement market Goldman Sachs forecasts will grow about 9x between 2026 and 2028. The actively managed fund is run in research partnership with SemiAnalysis, with top holdings including Lumentum, Aixtron, AXT, Applied Optoelectronics, Furukawa Electric, Zhongji Innolight, Tower Semiconductor, Aehr Test Systems and Sivers Semiconductors. x.com