Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Back to today

From X

@StableBread 1 click

Fajasy on X

Even if the AI model Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) is training to read malware binaries (compiled programs) works, six risks could keep it from paying off: → Labs closing the gap: OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra nearly doubled GPT-5.6-sol’s score on SRE-Bench, a Columbia University-led test of AI models on reading binaries, within a month of SRE-Bench’s release, and Anthropic says its Claude Mythos Preview model can already reconstruct plausible source code from stripped binaries. The better the labs’ own models get at reading hard binaries, the less they need to pay for outside labels. → Big tech building in-house: Microsoft’s $MSFT Project Ire reverse engineers software files on its own to decide whether they’re malicious. Ire caught only about a quarter of the malware among nearly 4,000 hard-to-classify files in a test Microsoft described in August 2025. But in June 2026, Microsoft said Ire flagged a new malware sample that most major security products, including CrowdStrike’s $CRWD and SentinelOne’s $S, still missed. Google $GOOGL already owns VirusTotal and Mandiant, so the likelier customers are labs that don’t own a malware-scanning site or an incident-response firm already, like OpenAI and Anthropic. → Paid like a contractor: Data labeling companies (firms that turn experts’ knowledge into training data for AI labs) pay 60-70% of what they bill to their contractors, and Scale AI is already recruiting its own malware analysts. So a data labeling company could pay Nubeva by the hour or task, or hire analysts itself, instead of licensing the model or buying the company. → Selling labels teaches the buyer: Every binary Nubeva labels helps the buyer’s model learn the same skill, the reason CEO Randy Chou gave for not patenting how Nubeva reads binaries. So each sale could shrink the edge Nubeva is selling. → Cash and compute: Chou gave no cost for running “hundreds and thousands” of AI agents on a private model. For reference, Nubeva spent $714,772 on R&D in FY2026, equal to 28.7% of its $2.49M in cash as of April 30, 2026. → Missed targets: Nubeva’s AI decryptor builder missed four targets starting in August 2023, so “days and weeks” (Chou’s timeline for the model) is a target, not a result just yet. So even with a working model, Nubeva still has to (1) sign a contract before the labs can read the hardest binaries themselves, (2) get paid for its model and engineers instead of by the hour or task, and (3) fund the training without draining its cash.
@convequity 1 click

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

All letters
EXPE · long

Expedia Group INC

Expedia Group, one of the largest online travel companies, has roughly 3.6 million lodging properties and is expanding internationally.

EXPE $35B
Value Investors Club

Heico Corporation

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

HEI $42B
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 $29B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 109

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 54 of 247

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

90 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

190 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.