CK Capital
Defense/Space/Tech/Photonics Investor, Co-Owner of CV Research
STMicroelectronics is an early turnaround story because AI infrastructure has given it a new growth engine. On June 2 it doubled its 2026 data center revenue target to about $1B, saying that could double again in 2027 if trends hold, on high-volume silicon photonics anchored by a multi-year AWS partnership. Q1 revenue rose 23% to $3.1B, it holds about $2.8B net cash, and Bank of America upgraded it to Buy, saying the market underestimates its earnings power. x.com
STMicroelectronics offers rare asymmetry for a large cap: a bear case in line with the S&P 500, a slightly better base case and a wildly better bull case. 2026 marked an inflection in its data-center business, with a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar Amazon agreement and guidance raised from $1B before 2030 to well above $2B in 2027. A base case with a modest AI business implies 15% annual growth through 2030; if photonics, power and robotics reach a third of revenue, 30-50%. x.com x.com x.com
STMicroelectronics is one of the top names in power semiconductors and physical AI. Per @wallstengine, it raised its 2026 data-center revenue outlook to about $1B from "nicely above $500M" and expects that to double to about $2B in 2027 based on current customer engagements. About two-thirds is expected from optical components, including MCUs, silicon photonic PICs and BiCMOS EICs, with power chips the rest. x.com
Infineon, STMicroelectronics and NXP have little value upside left from humanoid robotics after rallying hard on the AI datacenter theme. Infineon's CEO said humanoids could eventually rival AI datacenters as a revenue opportunity, about 20% of sales, yet Infineon saw insider sales this week. Humanoids may create few real bottlenecks: about 60% of parts come from the existing auto supply chain, most value will likely accrue in China and OEMs will integrate vertically, leaving heavy competition. … Show more
STMicroelectronics' silicon photonics foundry thesis is developing faster than expected. ST raised 2026 datacenter revenue guidance from nicely above $500M to about $1B, and 2027 could double that. Its PIC100, co-developed with AWS, is the only pure silicon platform at 300mm capable of 200Gbps per lane and is in high-volume production for hyperscalers, while Goldman Sachs sees optical networking TAM growing from $15B to $154B. x.com
STMicroelectronics is a hidden common thread across semiconductors, and the market is waking up to it in 2026. It turns up in silicon carbide and GaN power devices, its STM32 is effectively the MCU standard, and it leads MEMS sensor share. Its chips sit in SpaceX Starlink satellites, AWS data center infrastructure and a humanoid robot shown at NVIDIA's headquarters. A "European semiconductor" label long kept interest lukewarm, but that perception is breaking down fast. x.com
Tower Semiconductor's silicon photonics ramp is running ahead of schedule, per Wedbush, pulling it into a better revenue and margin mix from AI datacenter optics. Q1 revenue beat, gross margin hit 26.8%, and about $290 million of prepayments back $1.3 billion of contracted 2027 SiPh revenue, which management calls a floor. Wedbush sees CPO share shift as a risk from 2028 at the earliest. It raised its target to $300 from $140 but stays Neutral, seeing the good news as increasingly priced in. … Show more
Super Micro should benefit as data centers buy the servers that house Nvidia's AI chips. Its quarterly sales outlook rose from $15B to $19B; the stock is 36% below its high and trades at 8x next year's earnings. It is a double from here. x.com x.com
Soitec holds a near-monopoly on photonics-grade SOI wafers, the irreplaceable base for mass-produced silicon photonics in AI data centers, giving it 5x potential. SOI's oxide layer keeps light in the top silicon waveguide, and Soitec is the only supplier certified by TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Tower, with over 80% share. Revenue fell 22% year over year on customer destocking, and a CEO exit and withdrawn guidance are noise; 1.6T and CPO should drive the ramp over 2-3 years. x.com x.com
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
Nvidia's Q1 FY27 results materially improve demand visibility across the optics, networking and photonics stack. Revenue hit $81.6B, up 85%, with networking at $14.8B, up 199%, and Nvidia named multi-year optics deals with Coherent, Corning and Lumentum plus a Marvell partnership on NVLink Fusion and silicon photonics. AI cloud, industrial and enterprise revenue grew 31% sequentially versus 12% for hyperscale, so the buildout is spreading. Vera Rubin ramps in Q3. x.com
