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Saturday, October 17, 2026

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Semtech Analyst Day Review

Semtech raised Q3 guidance and targets $3.2 billion of fiscal 2030 revenue, excluding upside from its AI data-center optical and copper interconnect businesses.

SMTC $16B
CV's Substack 8 clicks

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

We think $MNDY needs to make its platform verifiable to lead work management. MNDY has not disclosed its AI ARR in dollars. Our recent SaaS Survival Scorecard report estimates it at about $20 to $30 million as of the end of Q2 2026. Leading AI-native startups in other fields are far larger. In coding, Cognition reported crossing $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate on 25 September 2026, company-wide across Devin and Windsurf. In legal work, Harvey reported on 1 October 2026 that it crossed $400 million in ARR during Q3 2026. We think MNDY has long been highly adaptive, with great leadership and a strong recent cadence of features and products. But revenue growth has slowed, and in our view it has gained little from AI so far, because work management is a hard area for AI. In our view, coding agents suddenly became highly effective around early 2026, and work management has not yet had its own coding moment. Verifiability is the key difference: code can be tested, while most work management outcomes are hard to check. Rather than wait for that moment, how can MNDY make work management more verifiable? It could track and measure the actions taken on its platform and their outcomes, so that everything that happens there is verifiable. MNDY can learn from Palantir. Palantir launched AIP in 2023, its AI platform built on its ontology, and we think that ontology helped Palantir succeed with models much weaker than today's. Could MNDY build a similar substrate or ontology for work management in order to make the work done on its platform more verifiable? We do not claim to have the answer. Our view is that to thrive, and not only survive, MNDY needs to lead work management by making its platform verifiable, however it chooses to do that.
@kevin__mak

Kevin Mak on X

$ASTS So many questions about ASTS (please don't reply to unrelated threads to get my attention, just DM me). I have no position in the company. My comments from 3+ quarters ago is that I wanted to see "more metal in space". My concern from 5+ quarters ago was "how do they go from producing 1 satellite in 6 months, to 6 satellites per month, that's a really hard scaling problem". I think Starlink screwed up with their Swarm acquisition and trying to force that tech to work, it put a 18+ month delay on them. My hope was that ASTS would capitalize on that, and it generally appears that they've had scaling issues that prevented that from happening. That isn't really their fault, "space is hard" and "mass production is different from prototypes". I think money isn't a problem for them, they have so much cash (they were smart to take advantage of their high stock price). The problem is execution is hard even if you have lots of cash. Strategically they're in a good place, the MNO's definitely want/need them to work to compete w/ Starlink. But the MNO's are powerless, they're awful at execution (they're only good at increasing your monthly bill!). The BO failure was a really big problem. SpaceX (Starlink) had very little leverage on ASTS before. If they slowroll/deny F9 launches, they just push ASTS towards their competitor (BO). Two competitors (BO and ASTS) become stronger. But since BO was offline, it makes SpaceX the de facto monopolist to ASTS' launch. That gives them a ton of power in this situation and I imagine (but have no way to prove it), they would flex that competitive pressure on the company. That's not illegal anti-competitive behavior, that's just "pressure". It's a tricky set of problems that face the company and the stock price reflects that. I don't have a strong view in either direction of whether things get better or worse from here. But my initial hopes/thesis were steadily eroded by the execution issues (and valuation), hence my eventual exit from my long position. I don't think I'm saying anything thoughtful or what people don't already know/experience. But worth putting it out there because I've received _a lot_ of questions. Disclosure: No position in ASTS.

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2026.42: Home At Last

Stratechery’s weekly bundle covers Apple HomeView and SpaceX’s cellular ambitions.

AAPL $5T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 4 clicks
SMWB · long

Similarweb LTD

Similarweb (SMWB) is presented as a long, revisiting the company’s digital-intelligence business after two prior VIC write-ups.

SMWB $748M
Value Investors Club 8 clicks

Is The Market Turning The Page?

CoreWeave’s debt and equity price action is framed as a wake-up call for investors amid a broader market discussion.

CRWV $34B
WHAT ARE WE DOING? “Contrarians At The Gate” 51 clicks

PesoRama: Research Flash

PesoRama will reach 54 JOi Dollar Plus stores by November after raising C$28.4 million, funding more than 50 additional Mexican store…

TBBB $6.8B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 clicks

Modine Deep Dive

Modine, soon Modexus Solutions, has a $4 billion hyperscaler cooling contract but must ramp factory output and restore margins as data…

MOD $9.2B
CV's Substack 18 clicks

AppLovin Deep Dive

AppLovin rebuilt its ad model with AXON 2.0, lifting LTM revenue to about $7 billion and margins to 77% as Unity competition threatens…

APP $88B
Speedwell Research 25 clicks

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