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Tuesday, October 20, 2026

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Vicor Update, Part Three

Vicor’s $66.6 million in AI power-delivery royalties generated about $50 million of operating profit, eclipsing its module business as revenue reached $197.1 million.

VICR $10B
CV's Substack 26 clicks

From X

@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Everyone is asking "Where is Serenity" or "Who is Serenity". But nobody is asking... "How is Serenity"? I do read things from $AMD $8.2B acquisition of World Labs... but feeling pretty sick right now, so taking a little break. I remember saying physical AI + world models would major shift way back when, so maybe I should have invested in private companies at the time... Apart from that... other interesting news: - Some channel checks from ECOC was that $NVDA apparently secured 50% of $LITE Greensboro UHP laser capacity? And possibly contracts that allow them to secure the remaining capacity per Barclays. That's $5B in lasers (annual capacity)... so it's hilarious to see Nvidia go out and bottleneck the rest of the industry by doing this. But this just puts more strategic value on other merchant laser suppliers + more visibility for Lumentum. It's kinda game theory over allocation, since if you secure all the HBM, lasers, and others it inadvertently makes it much harder for competitors to scale their programs. - Then there's your massive $150B Nvidia authorized buybacks (just look at $AAPL when they did buybacks..) They're printing too much. - What's also interesting is that Samsung Electro-Mechanics is expanding their FC-BGA substrate capacity today... but customers are the one funding this. I also remembered $MRVL in SEC filings cited large body substrates as one of the core bottlenecks of their program (alongside $TSM sole source dependencies). So they also went out and did some other expansion agreements with related companies like AT&S recently. - OpenAI delaying Astra-6.1 October release over safety concerns just now. Nvidia also happened to launch an AI safety platform. I don't think this is meaningfully bearish that the models are just getting 2 good.
@convequity

Convequity on X

The $PLTR and $NVDA work on Nemotron, NVIDIA's open model family, is still under the radar, unlike partnerships that promise more than they deliver. In our view it could be industry-transforming, because each side needs the other: Nemotron is the Western open model that fits, and Palantir is the only vendor that can put a model into an enterprise securely, safely and privacy-first, and limit it to what each person may see and change, which is why AIP, Palantir's AI platform, took hold and why NVIDIA needs Palantir. Palantir has no proprietary model and leans on closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Chinese open models are almost certainly off the table for a U.S. government contractor. On August 26 Jensen Huang said every major company needs its own proprietary AI, and open models make that possible. On June 29 Palantir launched an engine that runs custom Nemotron models for U.S. agencies and critical industries on networks cut off from the outside. The customer can train this American open model further on its own data and keep the weights, the trained model. On September 10 they announced a supply-chain stack, first on NVIDIA's own supply chain. On July 14 NVIDIA said other companies already specialize Nemotron for their own domains. The test is whether that stack moves from NVIDIA to named customers in manufacturing, energy, healthcare, automotive or aerospace.

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Heico Corporation

HEICO sells FAA-approved aircraft replacement parts at 30% to 50% discounts to OEMs, gaining customers as restrictive aftermarket contracts…

HEI $43B
D Invests 13 clicks

Copper Fox Metals: Research Flash

Copper Fox’s C$9.1 million Schaft Creek program advances metallurgical, tailings, water and road studies toward a pre-feasibility study,…

TECK $31B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 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 ad…

APP $92BU $18B
Speedwell Memos 66 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 $13B
CV's Substack 13 clicks

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