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.

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

$SITM supplies timing devices used in optical modules in NVIDIA-based AI data centers. In an AI data center, a clock exists to keep parts synchronized. Training and inference run across thousands of chips in parallel, and each step depends on data arriving at the right moment. When timing slips, GPUs wait, networks stall, and expensive compute goes unused. The move from 800G to 1.6T optical modules shows how this becomes demand for timing parts. Bandwidth does not simply double. The link is split into more lanes running at higher baud rates. Each lane has a tighter jitter budget, and it often adds clock domains for the DSPs, SerDes groups and laser drivers. So each module carries more timing components, and each component has to meet a higher performance requirement. That pushes average selling prices up alongside unit volumes. The same pattern appears in the switches inside that cluster. A high-radix switch multiplies SerDes lanes as bandwidth scales. When the switch increases radix and speed at the same time, it drives more clock domains across the fabric, the ports, and the control logic. Timing content in the switch therefore multiplies rather than rising in step with the size of the cluster. This is why we see continued hypergrowth for SiTime. In NVIDIA-based data centers, SiTime's parts are discrete devices, separate from the GPU and switch ASICs, allowing timing performance to improve independently as system requirements change, and demand for them rises in several places in the rack at once.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

I tracked the production targets Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) has set for its AI decryptor builder since 2023, and it missed all four! Nubeva’s agent copies the encryption keys ransomware generates during an attack, but a victim can’t use the keys until someone writes a decryptor (a program that reverses the encryption) for the strain behind the attack. Building every decryptor by hand is the capacity issue behind the 2023 exit of Kroll, Nubeva’s biggest customer. Nubeva’s FY2025 and FY2026 MD&As frame the same issue as cost, saying the company’s “current support structure carries costs that are not sustainable at scale.” Nubeva’s fix is to have AI write the decryptors instead. It announced a patent application for an AI decryptor builder in August 2023 and has pitched the builder ever since. Per the FY2026 MD&A, “a private, cryptographically trained AI engine” uses the captured keys to analyze encrypted samples, identifies the decryption method, and writes “the decryptor software, test kits, and documentation.” The goal is “a custom decryptor within an hour” of a customer getting hit by a new strain. Both MD&As also lay out two outcomes: → If automation works: Nubeva “will be positioned to re-expand its commercial footprint” through end users, managed security providers, incident-response firms, security integrations, and cyber insurers. → If automation falls short: Nubeva “will continue to advance and complete its IP portfolio, positioning the Company for strategic partnerships or potential M&A transactions.” Three years on, the AI decryptor builder still isn’t in production. The August 2023 release expected production “later this year,” the FY2024 and FY2025 MD&As said “later this year” again, and the December 2025 interim MD&A said “later this fiscal year.” Then the FY2026 MD&A, filed August 28, 2026, quietly dropped the date altogether. After four missed targets, dropping the date suggests Nubeva’s own builder isn’t close. CEO Randy Chou hinted at the delay in October 2025, saying Nubeva was “still waiting for an automated way to scale support,” which he said was true of “everybody else in the industry.” But the wait may finally be ending. On September 3, 2026 (six days after dropping the date), Nubeva said it had been approved for access to “a frontier artificial intelligence model made available to vetted organizations for authorized defensive cybersecurity work.” Nubeva doesn’t name the model’s provider, but the release came out the same day OpenAI committed $1B of subsidized access to its Daybreak cyber models. If the model is Daybreak, the access isn’t particularly rare. OpenAI said on September 3 that “thousands of defenders across 2,000 approved organizations and workspaces already use Daybreak.” Either way, decryption is where a frontier model could matter most, since writing a decryptor for an unfamiliar strain is the step Nubeva’s engineers still do by hand.

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