AXT (AXTI): The Indium Phosphide Bottleneck Behind AI Optics Every few quarters the AI buildout finds a new component it cannot get enough of. In 2024 it was high bandwidth memory. In 2025 it was advanced packaging. In 2026 the constraint moved somewhere far less visible: the crystal wafer that high speed laser chips are…
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Tower Semiconductor (TSEM): Inside the Silicon Photonics Bet 1. Introduction For most of its history, Tower Semiconductor was a company investors filed under “specialty analog foundry” and then stopped thinking about. It made image sensors, power management chips, and radio frequency components in older fabs nobody would confuse with a leading-edge logic megafab. In 2022…
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GlobalFoundries (GFS): Silicon Photonics and the Quantum Foundry Bet Every technology ecosystem needs a foundation, and in semiconductors that foundation is the foundry: the company that actually manufactures the chips others design. GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) has spent years as the quiet builder in that role, the third-largest pure-play foundry in the world behind Taiwan Semiconductor…
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Micron: The HBM Titan Powering the AI Revolution 1. Introduction: The Hidden Bottleneck of Artificial Intelligence While the world fixates on Nvidia’s GPUs as the “brains” of artificial intelligence, a quiet crisis, and opportunity, has emerged in the “memory” of these systems. The most powerful AI chips in existence, from the H100 to the Blackwell…
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