Ex-founder. Learning in public about AI, markets, and human behavior: the tech, money, psychology and memes shaping what comes next.
Joined September 2009
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Askara retweeted
【Tianfeng Securities Overseas Technology】
Takeaways from an Interview with SanDisk IRD
1. Pricing remains a slightly larger contributor to FY27 Q1 earnings growth, but it is reasonable to estimate that pricing and volume each account for roughly half.
2. Volumes under long-term agreements are also fixed, with no room for adjustment. In many cases, volumes are specified not only annually but also quarterly or even monthly. Product types—including TLC/QLC and process nodes—are also explicitly stipulated.
3. HBF is not taking away HBM’s addressable market; it represents an additional memory tier. It is specifically designed for inference rather than training. In inference workloads, read operations significantly outnumber write operations.
4. YMTC is expected to capture an 80% share of the Chinese market. However, China’s market is growing so rapidly that even this would not be enough to satisfy demand. The impact of YMTC’s capacity expansion is material, but it is unlikely to become a major risk to global supply and demand over the next several years.
5. Asian investors are concerned about price declines in Q4 and Q1. However, the company has seen no signs of pricing deterioration to date and does not expect a material change in the 2027 supply-demand balance. The market remains tight. In fact, NBM customers are returning to request higher volumes or longer contract durations.
6. Finally, the company was asked, “What is the market’s biggest misconception about SanDisk?” The response remained extremely bullish. The market is still adjusting to a “new reality”—the sustainability of the business has fundamentally changed. Despite the company providing a range of supporting metrics, the market continues to question the sustainability of its business model.“The market is essentially telling you that the company’s terminal value is zero.”
$SNDK
Askara retweeted
No worries, finbros. The next bull market has to come sometime within the next 6.7 years. Plus or minus 4.2 years.
Since 1999, major S&P 500 bull markets began in:
• Oct 2002
• Mar 2009
• Mar 2020
• Oct 2022
Time between starts: 6.4, 11 and 2.6 years.
Average: 6.7 years.
Statistics have spoken. Please remain solvent.
Askara retweeted
Doubling bandwidth cuts copper transmission distance in half. When we move to 400G, we can no longer fully connect a rack with copper. The copper wall is moving.
Each time the wall moves one step, the number of connections goes up by at least an order of magnitude. This is creating an explosion in demand for the optical industry. So the optical supply chain needs to scale up massively.
In this COMPUTEX 2026 keynote clip, Marvell Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Matt Murphy explains the physics and what comes next.
Watch the full keynote: mrvl.co/4eWEw2t
Askara retweeted
We walk different paths in life.
At every phase, we almost become a different version of ourselves.
We are the cumulative result of all those versions.
Their successes.
Their failures.
Their lessons.
In this series on Humans of $AAOI, one person I find intriguing is CFO Dr. Stefan Murry.
Because he has played many roles. Lived the life of many versions of himself...
The researcher.
The builder.
The seller.
The strategist.
And now, the person responsible for the numbers.
He did not start in finance.
He started in the lab.
University of Houston.
Physics.
Electrical engineering.
Semiconductor lasers.
Crystal growth.
Device packaging.
Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center.
Then in 1997, he joined AAOI as Senior Engineer of Device Packaging.
That was the first version of Murry:
The technical operator.
Then he moved into sales and marketing.
Director of Sales and Marketing.
Then VP of Sales and Marketing for more than a decade.
That was the second version:
The technical seller.
Then in 2012, he became Chief Strategy Officer.
That was the third version:
The bridge between product, customer, and market.
Then in August 2014, he became CFO.
And the timing matters.
He did not take the CFO seat during a quiet period.
He took it when AAOI was starting to scale.
Q2 2014 revenue was up 67% year-over-year.
Data-center revenue was up 170%.
The company had $43M in cash.
AAOI had shipped over one million lasers YTD and was already talking about expanding Texas capacity.
So Murry became CFO just as AAOI moved from an interesting optical manufacturer into a data-center scaling story.
At first, the numbers worked.
2016 revenue: $261M.
2016 net income: $31M.
2017 revenue: $382M.
2017 net income: $74M.
That was the easy version of the CFO job.
Growth.
Profit.
Cash generation.
A model that looked financeable.
Then came the harder version.
After the 2017 boom faded, AAOI spent years in losses.
And this is where Murry’s story separates from Lin’s.
Lin’s story is about the machine:
Vertical integration.
Lasers.
Manufacturing control.
The founder’s operating model.
Murry’s story is about funding that machine when the numbers stop working cleanly.
In 2019, AAOI issued $80.5M of convertible notes due 2024.
In 2020 and 2021, it used ATM equity programs.
One ATM sold 5.9M shares at an average price of $9.12, raising about $54M net.
That is the ugly part of deep-tech manufacturing.
When the cycle turns against you, the technology can still be real, but the company still needs cash.
And to get that cash, you may have to walk the muddy road of dilution, debt, refinancing risk, and if things fail, potential insolvency.
Absolute nightmares.
I wonder how many nights he stayed up late during that phase.
Then came the next phase.
In 2023, AAOI issued $80.2M of convertible notes due 2026.
In 2024, it exchanged most of those notes into new 2030 convertible notes plus shares.
That bought time.
But it also showed that AAOI had not fully escaped the financing treadmill.
When you are on the grind, the rain does not seem to stop.
You navigate one muddy path and think it is over.
Then you turn the corner and see another one waiting, almost laughing at your distress.
No ending in sight.
But that is life.
You continue the grind.
And eventually, the promised land arrives.
For AAOI, that promised land was the AI optics cycle.
And this time, Murry’s capital move looked very different.
Instead of raising at $9, AAOI raised into strength.
In 2024, it sold stock around $31.
In 2026, it launched an ATM, upsized it from $250M to $500M, and completed it at a weighted average price of about $103.50.
Net proceeds: roughly $490M.
That is the part I find interesting.
The old AAOI raised to survive.
The new AAOI is raising to scale.
But now the question becomes much sharper.
Can Murry turn that capital into durable financial results?
Because raising money is not the victory.
It is the starting line.
The real test is conversion:
Capital → capacity.
Capacity → shipments.
Shipments → cash.
Cash → self-funded growth.
That is the Stefan Murry story.
The operator-financier who had to keep the machine funded after the first cycle broke.
And now has to prove the second cycle can become financially durable.
For $AAOI, Lin is the vision and vertical-integration story.
Murry is the capital-allocation story.
And this cycle will judge them both.
Starting a new series on $AAOI management.
This will run parallel to my $SIVE people series.
Because with companies like these, the question is rarely just:
“Is the technology interesting?”
The better question is:
“Who is responsible for turning the technology into numbers?”
For $AAOI, that question starts with one person:
Thompson Lin.
Founder. President. CEO. Chairman.
Running $AAOI since 1997.
He is the technical founder who built the company.
His background:
B.S. Nuclear Engineering.
M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
So when people debate whether $AAOI leadership can execute, many roads lead back to Lin.
He sits at the center of power, technical history, company strategy, and accountability.
And that makes his story more interesting.
Because Lin’s strength is also the source of the risk.
His big strategic bet has always been vertical integration.
$AAOI does not just assemble optical modules.
It manufactures many of its own laser chips in Texas.
It uses proprietary MBE and MOCVD laser fabrication processes.
Simple translation:
$AAOI is vertically integrated down to the laser-chip level.
The company has manufacturing/R&D across the US, Taiwan, and China.
At year-end 2025:
425 R&D employees.
69 PhDs across the company.
199 issued US patents.
140 patents in China/Taiwan.
10 patents in Europe.
So $AAOI is not a fake AI optics shell.
Lin built a real optical manufacturing platform.
But Lin did not just build the platform.
He also presided over its biggest boom/bust.
In 2017, $AAOI had its first huge data-center moment.
Revenue: $382M
Gross margin: 43.5%
Net income: $74M
The model looked validated.
Then came the scar tissue.
In 2018:
Revenue fell to $267M.
Gross margin fell to 32.8%.
Net income turned into a loss.
And the issue was not just “market weakness.”
The 2018 10-K points to lower 40G/100G demand from one customer after that customer changed its network architecture.
It also says $AAOI had reduced 100G shipments to one customer because of concerns about failures in similar products shipped previously.
Production was reduced while they investigated.
That is the historical reason people say:
“Management can’t execute.”
But the more precise version is this:
Lin’s model gives $AAOI control.
Laser-chip control.
Manufacturing control.
Product customization.
Vertical integration.
Customer-specific execution.
But the same model also creates fragility.
High fixed costs.
Customer concentration.
Demand forecasting risk.
Product reliability risk.
Lower utilization when demand slips.
Gross margin compression when the factory is not full.
That is the Lin paradox.
(Lin's $AAOI story is really exciting to dive into. I'll make another post about him, tying the past, present, and future together. TBC)
Askara retweeted
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Askara retweeted
🚀 Join us at #HCOMP2024! Dive into the latest in human computation & crowdsourcing in the vibrant city of Pittsburgh, PA, from Oct 16-19,2024 . Let's shape the future of 'Responsible Crowd Work for Better AI' together! Info: humancomputation.com 🤖✨
Askara retweeted
I'm looking for a PhD student to work on the exciting topic of Human-In-the-Loop AI. Please apply/recommend/spread. Job details: tudelft.nl/over-tu-delft/wer…
