Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
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Monday, October 19, 2026

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Fajasy on X

AI labs and data labeling companies (firms that turn experts’ knowledge into training data for the labs) could make my $12-19M sale range for Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) look conservative. My previous write-up’s sale comps were five cybersecurity companies buying small startups that detect, stop, or recover from ransomware, and I valued a Nubeva sale at $12-19M, the low end of those deals. AI labs and data labeling companies would widen the set of buyers beyond cybersecurity companies, but I found none that has bought a ransomware recovery company like Nubeva. The closest deals were for a stake in a ransomware recovery company, malware data, and specialist teams: → Microsoft $MSFT: Made an equity investment in Veeam, a data protection and ransomware recovery company, in February 2025, as part of a partnership to build AI-based threat detection and other Microsoft AI services into Veeam’s products. → Google $GOOGL: Owns VirusTotal, a malware-scanning site it bought in 2012, and Mandiant, the incident-response firm it bought for $5.4B in 2022. Its experimental Sec-Gemini model, introduced in April 2025, draws on Mandiant’s threat intelligence data. → OpenAI: Agreed to buy Promptfoo in March 2026 for an undisclosed price. Promptfoo, which tests AI systems for security holes, was valued at $86M after its July 2025 funding round, per PitchBook. → Mercor (a data labeling company): Agreed to buy Deeptune, which builds practice environments for AI agents, in July 2026, months after Andreessen Horowitz led Deeptune’s $43M Series A. The two 2026 deals didn’t disclose prices, and Mandiant and Veeam are far larger businesses than Nubeva, so I can’t put a new number on a sale. Still, my $12-19M range is probably conservative now, since it only counted cybersecurity companies as buyers, and an AI lab or data labeling company would be paying for Nubeva’s engineers and model rather than its ~$500K of FY2026 revenue. But an AI buyer wouldn’t get patents on what it’s paying for. Nubeva’s patents would cover how it recovers files and how it detects hidden encryption, but it won’t patent its binary analysis (figuring out what malware programs do) at all, and CEO Randy Chou explained why: “Anything you patent, that means you have to show how you did it. If you show how you did it, well, somebody can train an LLM to go do it.” So the model is only worth what Nubeva can prove it does, through a signed contract, a named partner, or test results.
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Convequity on X

3D chips could create more room for specialist EDA startups. We are not convinced that more difficult chip design automatically translates into a large revenue windfall for $SNPS, $CDNS and Siemens. Fine-pitch stacking changes decisions that used to be made within one die. Put a circuit upstairs and its wires may get shorter, but its heat affects the circuit below. Placement, signal timing and power delivery have to be optimized together across the stack. That creates a reason for $AVGO and $NVDA to build custom tools around their architectures. Broadcom already describes a proprietary design flow built on industry-standard tools. Nvidia publishes its own research on assigning connections across tiers in 3D chips. Our inference is that the chip designers will keep some of the most differentiating optimization work in-house. A startup that solves a costly gap in cross-die planning or optimization could also win business without replacing an entire EDA suite. The incumbents still supply implementation, verification and manufacturing sign-off tools, and they are developing 3D capabilities themselves. Internal tooling is evidence that customers need more than the standard flow; it does not establish that incumbent spending falls. We see a more interesting startup opportunity where a tool can shorten repeated design iterations or improve the resulting chip enough to earn a separate budget. That is the part of the 3D transition we would investigate before assuming the largest EDA vendors capture most of the upside.

Investor Letters

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LXS.DE: a 2028 sale it can force

Lanxess can force Advent to buy at least half its Envalior stake in April 2028, potentially raising about €745 million to reduce net debt.

LPTH $525M
Trade Ideas Flow 18 clicks

Build-A-Bear: A Narrower Path

Build-A-Bear's push into prestuffed toys and broader retail distribution tests brand stretchability, but recent results warrant caution.

BBW $317M
TSOH Investment Research 15 clicks
SKIN · long

Skinhealth Systems INC

SkinHealth Systems owns a dominant professional skincare consumables franchise but trades at roughly $115 million market cap and $255…

SKIN $73M
Value Investors Club 1 click

Do You Trust Apple?

Apple’s HomeView strategy ties Siri, privacy and smart-home control to consumer trust in its vision for the home.

AAPL $5T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 3 clicks

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…

SMTC $16B
CV's Substack 13 clicks

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