Karl Lindström
Karl reports on the chip and hardware layer beneath frontier tech — foundries, packaging, photonics, and the supply chains smaller players depend on.
Articles by Karl Lindström
Aeluma Closes Fiscal 2026 With $582,000 of Fourth-Quarter Revenue, $56.0 Million of Cash and a CHIPS Letter of Intent That Would Hand Commerce Stock Worth the Whole Award
The Goleta photonics company reported on Sept. 16 that quarterly revenue fell to $582,000 from $1.3 million a year earlier while the net loss widened to $4.0 million, as it raised $20.1 million through its at-the-market programme. Its 10-K, filed the same day, says $183,000 of the year's $4.5 million revenue came from anything other than government contracts, and that the up-to-$30 million CHIPS award still needs definitive documents.
Commerce Signs Its $1 Billion CHIPS R&D Award With IBM's Anderon. The Government's Release Runs to Two Sentences, and Neither Mentions the Equity Stake Promised in May
The Department of Commerce said on Sept. 16 it had signed a final CHIPS R&D award of up to $1 billion with Anderon, the IBM subsidiary building a 300mm quantum wafer foundry in Albany, N.Y. IBM says it is putting in a further $1 billion of its own. Neither document discloses milestones, a disbursement schedule, or how the 'minority, non-controlling equity stake' the Department attached to every quantum award in May applies to a wholly owned IBM unit.
Quantinuum preprint reports a fault-tolerant architecture validated on its 98-qubit Helios processor
A preprint posted to arXiv on Sept. 2 and written up by Quantum Computing Report on Sept. 9 describes the [[20,2,6]] C4-Helix code running on Quantinuum's 98-qubit trapped-ion machine, with a repeated error-correction figure of 4.6x10^-5 per logical qubit per cycle. The results are error-rate and fidelity gains, not speed gains, and the paper has not been peer reviewed.
A Texas wafer house is now selling strontium titanate to quantum labs. Its launch contains no measured performance data
La Luce Cristallina's quantum-paraelectric STO-on-insulator platform ships today in 2-inch wafers, with 200mm promised for early 2027. The compound has a strong peer-reviewed cryogenic track record — but the record belongs to a different phase of the material, measured by somebody else.
NLM Photonics Adds Pangaea and Mitsubishi Chemical's Venture Arm to Its Investor Base Without Disclosing an Amount
The Seattle organic electro-optic materials company says existing backers also increased their commitments. It has published no round size, no valuation and no close date, and its terabit-class device claims are demonstrations and customer samples rather than shipping product.
Novo Nordisk Foundation Sets Out a 5,300-Square-Metre Quantum Chip Plant in Copenhagen. The Release Puts No Price on the Building
The foundation's Friday announcement gives a size, an opening year of 2027 and a manufacturing scope, but no facility-specific investment figure and no qubit technology. The DKK 2.9 billion in the release is the foundation's total quantum commitment, not the cost of the plant.
IBM's Nighthawk r2 Runs 100,000 Circuits a Second - But the 25x Is Wall-Clock Speed, Not Qubit Quality
IBM's newest superconducting processor pairs every one of its 120 programmable qubits with a dedicated reset element, collapsing the dead time between circuit runs. The headline number is a throughput figure, and reading it as a leap in computational power would be a mistake.
SCREEN Holdings Takes On Neutral-Atom Optics for Japan's NEDO Programme. No Money, No Timeline and No Qubit Target Has Been Disclosed
The semiconductor equipment maker will jointly develop spatial light modulators and multi-wavelength objective lenses with the Kyoto University spin-out Yaqumo, under a Japanese state R&D project aimed at reducing reliance on overseas optical suppliers. It is a supply-chain agreement rather than a performance claim, and the parties have put no figures on it.
Two Answers to Quantum's Wiring Problem, and One Headline That Had to Be Corrected
QTREX says it can route 17,280 coaxial lines into each stage of a dilution refrigerator, and reissued the announcement 36 minutes later under a stronger headline without saying what changed. Diraq and Equinix, meanwhile, are putting eight qubits and under 20 kilowatts into a live Sydney data centre in October.
Xanadu and Mitsubishi Chemical Take EUV Photoresist Simulation Into Phase Two With Canadian and Japanese State Backing
The photonic quantum company said Canada's NRC IRAP and Japan's Strategic Innovation Promotion Program are supporting a second phase aimed at predicting radiation-induced blur in extreme ultraviolet lithography. No amount was disclosed for the new phase, and Xanadu's own US GAAP June-quarter accounts show a $42.1m net loss and $312.8m of cash and equivalents as of June 30, 2026.
Marvell Reports Record $2.739bn Quarter as Data Center Revenue Rises 46% Year on Year
The infrastructure chipmaker's fiscal second-quarter revenue landed $39.0m above its own guidance midpoint, and it guided to $3.150bn for the current quarter. GAAP diluted earnings of $0.33 sat well below the $0.94 non-GAAP figure.
Semtech Reports $341.9M in Fiscal Q2, $13.9M Above Its Own Guide, With a $101.4M Tax Benefit Behind the $1.59 GAAP EPS
Data-center revenue reached $100 million in the quarter and the October guide jumped to $410.0 million. But the headline GAAP profit came mostly from a tax line, and the company's FiberEdge market-share claim rests on no published third-party measurement.
Semtech Reports After Tuesday's Close Against Its Own $328.0 Million Guide, With the Compal Sale Still Unclosed
The company guided to net sales of $328.0 million give or take $5.0 million for the quarter it reports on Tuesday evening. Everything else it guided to, including margins and earnings per share, was on an adjusted basis.
Nvidia Reports Second-Quarter Fiscal 2027 on Wednesday Against Its Own $91.0 Billion Guidance, With the October-Quarter Outlook the Real Test for the Chip Complex
Nvidia set its results call for Aug. 26 at 2 p.m. Pacific for the quarter that ended July 26, 2026, according to a July 29 notice. The company guided that quarter to $91.0 billion in revenue plus or minus 2%, with non-GAAP gross margin of 75.0% plus or minus 50 basis points and no assumed Data Center compute revenue from China. An Investing.com preview dated Aug. 21 cited consensus of $91.9 billion and $2.08 in EPS, and an October-quarter consensus of $103.96 billion, without naming the firm that compiled either figure. Nvidia has not reported.
Micron plans $10 billion over a decade for a Boise memory research campus. Averaged across ten years that is about one-seventh of what the company spent on net capital expenditures in a single quarter this spring.
Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU) unveiled Micron Research Labs on August 20, backed by what it calls a planned $10 billion investment over the next decade, with groundbreaking anticipated in calendar 2027 and a facility capable of hosting hundreds of researchers. For scale: Micron spent $7.084 billion on net capital expenditures in the quarter ended May 28, 2026 alone, and generated $18.304 billion of adjusted free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure, in that same three months.
Wolfspeed Closes Fiscal 2026 With a $149.6 Million Quarter and a Gross Margin Still Below Zero
The silicon carbide maker reported June-quarter revenue of $149.6 million, a GAAP net loss of $145.4 million and negative gross margin on both reporting bases. According to a transcript account published by Investing.com, its finance chief put the annual revenue run rate at which gross margin would break even in the “ballpark” of $800 million.
POET Technologies Doubles Revenue and Sits on $796 Million as Lumilens Order Anchors AI Photonics Ramp
The Nasdaq-listed optical-engine maker reported second-quarter revenue up 112% and a narrowing loss on August 13, backed by a $400 million raise and a $50 million initial order from partner Lumilens.
Fabrinet's Record Quarter Held Two Nearly Equal Numbers: A $57.4 Million Thai Tax Charge and a $56.7 Million Investment Gain
The optical contract manufacturer closed fiscal 2026 with quarterly revenue of $1.316 billion, up 45% year over year, and non-GAAP earnings of $4.10 a share. Two of the items it excluded from that figure landed in the same quarter and almost cancelled each other out. The gap it has guided for the current quarter is more than two and a half times as wide.
AmpliTech Cuts Titan Crest Deal to $7M Days After Pulling Its $50 Million FY2026 Revenue Target
The Nasdaq-listed RF and microwave maker used a Monday release to recap a price cut on its 5G ORAN asset purchase and lay out a backlog and margin roadmap. It followed a Thursday earnings call on which management declined to reaffirm the FY2026 revenue figure it had restated as recently as May, the design package it is paying for has still not been validated for production, and the RFP it highlights has not been awarded.
Coherent Begins Sampling 300mm Silicon Carbide Thermal Substrates to Unnamed AI Semiconductor Partners
Monday's 4:05 p.m. Eastern announcement moves the 300mm silicon carbide platform "from internal development to customer evaluation," in Coherent's own words. It is a milestone in a qualification process, not an order, and it carries no customer, no volume and no timeline.
Semtech Is Selling Its Cellular Module Business For $62 Million. The Release Does Not Say How Big It Is.
Semtech (Nasdaq: SMTC) signed a definitive agreement on Aug. 13 to sell its cellular module business to Taiwan's Compal Electronics (TWSE: 2324) for $62 million in cash. The announcement discloses no revenue, no gain or loss and no headcount for the unit, and the 8-K index shows the report filed under Item 8.01 with the press release as its only substantive exhibit.
POET Technologies Booked $569,925 of Revenue and a $50 Million Purchase Order in the Same Quarter
The Toronto-based photonics company reported second-quarter revenue of $569,925 on August 13 and recapped, in the same release, an initial $50 million order from Lumilens that it first announced on May 14. Neither release says whether that order is binding or cancellable, or over what period any of it would be recognised as revenue.
Fabrinet Monday, Analog Devices Wednesday: the week the AI hardware trade gets audited from the supply side
Fabrinet reports fiscal fourth-quarter results after Monday's close against its own guidance of $1.25bn to $1.29bn, with Nvidia and Cisco alone accounting for 45.8% of fiscal 2025 revenue. Analog Devices follows Wednesday morning carrying a very different signal: an industrial book that grew 56% year over year while automotive grew 2%.
AAOI Closes Up 15.5% and Lumentum Up 5.2% in an Optics Rally No One Covering It Could Source
The reporter closest to Friday's move in AI interconnect names wrote that he could not verify a same-day catalyst, and neither could we. What the group did have: three earnings reports in the prior eight sessions and an FCC proposal that is still a draft.
JPMorgan's $2,250 Target on SanDisk Is Still Below the Stock's Own 52-Week High
Harlan Sur resumed coverage of SanDisk at Overweight on Friday and the stock added another 7%. The number he is underwriting is an EPS line, not a revenue line.
Applied Materials Beat, Raised, and Sold Off: The Flat Gross Margin Inside a Record Quarter
Applied Materials posted record fiscal Q3 revenue of $9.115 billion and guided fourth-quarter revenue roughly $700 million above consensus, then fell in extended trading. The guide holds non-GAAP gross margin flat at 50.4% on a 12% sequential revenue increase — management's ramp costs, in one number.
Sandisk Puts a Number on the NAND Shortage, and the Memory Tape Reprices Again
Sandisk closed Thursday up 13.7% after an investor day that laid out margin targets through fiscal 2030 and a book of long-term supply agreements. Micron rose 4.2%. The rally is built on a supply forecast that management says stays tight into 2028 — a forecast, not a booking.
Cerebras closed up 12%, then gave it back after hours as two versions of its revenue diverged
The wafer-scale AI chipmaker reported $180.1 million of GAAP revenue and $209.9 million of what it calls core revenue for the second quarter. The $30 million gap, most of it a non-cash customer warrant charge, is why the same print looked like a beat and a miss at the same time.
Applied Materials reports Thursday with options pricing a 10% swing
The equipment maker guided fiscal third-quarter revenue to $8.95 billion give or take $500 million. Options traders are positioning for a double-digit move, and the smaller names in the wafer-fab equipment chain will trade off whatever the company says about 2027 spending.
Applied Optoelectronics books a record quarter and says AI optics demand will outrun its factories into 2027
Datacentre revenue more than doubled and the optics maker guided to a sharply higher third quarter, but GAAP gross margin still went backwards as the company spent to add capacity.
Quantum Goes Vertical: IonQ's $1.8 Billion SkyWater Deal Puts a U.S. Chip Foundry Inside a Quantum Company
The completed acquisition of the largest exclusively U.S.-based semiconductor foundry marks a new phase in which quantum players are buying — or building — their own hardware supply chains.
Quantum Computing Inc.'s Chip Bet Comes Into Focus: $5.6 Million in Photonics Revenue, Sold at a Loss
QUBT's second-quarter report showed a 91-fold revenue jump built on photonic chips and three semiconductor acquisitions — and a negative gross margin that shows how expensive it is to become a quantum chipmaker.