Optical Computing
A near-death epiwafer monopolist just got bought out of bankruptcy by its own customer — own the InP photonics call, not the company; the AI-optical TAM is real but the float is a recovery option on a chronically capex-starved, margin-thin foundry whose two largest customers now sit on its board.
A $2.5B market cap on $682K of FY25 revenue — QUBT is a $1.5B treasury wrapped in a photonics R&D lab, sold as a quantum-computing story; the balance sheet is real, the revenue is not, and a securities-fraud class action over the exact gap between the two is unresolved.
A re-rated telecom-equipment turnaround wearing an AI-infrastructure mask — the optical/AI-RAN engine is real and accelerating, but the stock already prices the re-rating (P/E ~90, +109% in 12m) while ~92% of revenue is still slow-growth telecom/IP/patents. Right business, wrong entry.
The arms-dealer of the AI optics build-out — Lumentum owns ~50-60% of the 200G/lane EML laser chip that every 1.6T transceiver needs, NVIDIA just bought $2B of preferred to lock its capacity, and revenue is compounding ~90% YoY off a real telecom trough; but at ~52x forward earnings with two customers = ~40% of revenue and a $3.8B convertible stack now in-the-money, the price already discounts flawless execution.