Since launching the Discovery tier less than a year ago, The I/O Fund’s internal process for identifying new winners has greatly improved. Based on the research we produced from this tier, we added stocks like Bloom Energy, Core Scientific and Oklo to our portfolio, and these new additions became some of our biggest wins (thus far) in 2025.
As we continue to build out the Discovery library, we’d like to make it as easy as possible for our readers to follow along. We want to cast a wide net, explore and leave no stone unturned – therefore, we anticipate our coverage to include dozens of stocks over time. However, we also want to make sure we get down to brass tracks by providing you a clear takeaway by ranking what we’ve dug up every quarter. The ranking will also help clarify which ones we are eyeing an entry for and what setups Knox will cover in his Discovery Tier webinars. This will be called the I/O Fund’s Top 10 New Ideas List.
The ranking we provide is an estimate, which means all 10 stocks are of interest. Given the nature of momentum stocks, the ranking could shift quickly. Please check back to the Discovery Ranking list provided on the Dashboard for any changes in the interim.
Themes:
AI Networking:
Networking is at the heart of the new architecture that Nvidia is shipping now as the increased bandwidth is instrumental in driving higher performance. For example, the NVL72 systems will deliver 4X faster training and 30X faster inference compared to HGX systems. Notably, this is accomplished with many more GPUs from eight to 72 per system.
To support the new systems, the NVLink domain moves from supporting eight GPUs to 72 GPUs and 36 CPUs with a speed of 1.8 TB/s with 18 NVSwitch ASICs, up from four in the HGX/DGX systems due to increasing the number of GPUs but also due to doubling the per-GPU links. The 5th generation of NVLink supports up to 576 GPUs compared to the fourth generation of up to eight GPUs.
Scale-up refers to increasing the number of GPUs in an AI system. Proprietary NVLink remains the highest performance option for scale-up interconnects, although PCIe and scale-up Ethernet are also used. For the cabling, copper is used for intra-rack scale-up with up to 5,184 cables per system. Future generations of NVLink are likely to integrate optical I/O so that GPUs can communicate across racks without requiring costly retimers.
A few parameters around the size of the scale-up opportunity:
- GB200 NVL72 with 72 GPUs and 36 CPUs has 18 NVSwitch chips and 72 InfiniBand NICs for scale-out networking and 36 Bluefield-3 Ethernet NICs for front-end networking. Compare this to the HGX systems with 8 GPUs and the DGX systems with 8 GPUs and 2 CPUs has 4 NVSwitch chips and 8 InfiniBand NICs.
- This means the new architecture that Nvidia is shipping now results in 9X more GPUs, 4.5X more NVSwitches, 9X more InfiniBand NICs and 18X more front-end NICs. Each GPU requires its own InfiniBand link for scale-out whereas NVSwitch components grow faster than GPU count as each GPU must talk to every other GPU, therefore, it has more of an exponential growth.
Although NVLink is proprietary, it acts as a bellwether for the importance of AI networking and lesser-known suppliers. Generally speaking, what we can see from looking more closely at Nvidia’s networking fabric is that networking components are increasing 5X to 9X, and in some cases up to 18X.

Source: Nvidia Technical Blog, “Nvidia Contributes Nvidia GB200 NVL72 Designs to Open Compute Project” Nvidia Contributes Nvidia GB200 NVL72 Designs to Open Compute Project”
Scale-out racks refer to connecting multiple racks across a cluster. InfiniBand switches and Ethernet switches are used for this purpose. As you can see below, Nvidia offers scalable units called SuperPODs that offer tens of thousands of GPUs. For a very large SuperPOD with 16,834 GPUs and 2048 nodes, there would be hundreds of InfiniBand switches required (or a hyperscaler can also use Ethernet switches) and extensive cabling is also required.

Source: Nvidia DGX SuperPOD technical blog Nvidia DGX SuperPOD technical blog
Also consider that as the networking and interconnects market matures, there will be new opportunities to participate, for example, co-package optics are expected to be introduced for the Rubin generation of GPUs in 2026-2027.
Regardless of the exact networking-to-compute ratio, as we scale up AI systems, the architecture becomes a networking and interconnect problem that must continually be solved for, and we want to be correctly positioned within the networking supply chain. Therefore, AI networking will remain a key focus for the I/O Fund’s Top 10 New Ideas in the coming quarters and years. You can expect our team to deliver additional names in this trend and to increase our allocation as needed.
AI Energy:
Data center power demand is expected to grow at an accelerated clip through the end of the decade and beyond, with more powerful GPUs and surging growth in inference two main drivers.
McKinsey projects data center capacity will rise ~2.5x to 219 GW by 2030, up from 82 GW in 2025, with AI contributing 70% of that demand. This corresponds to total capacity growth of 137 GW over the next five years, with 112 GW coming from AI.
Goldman Sachs estimated global data center power usage at 55 GW in early 2025, far below BCG’s 82 GW figure. However, GS projects power usage to reach 84 GW in 2027 and increase further to 122 GW by 2030, corresponding to total growth of just 67 GW. However, considering 2025 and 2026 capex spend could support >20 GW of new capacity, this forecast may understate the pace of capacity growth.
We covered this trend more closely in a lengthy Pro Tier article entitled: “Why Power is Critical for Data Centers and their Hyperscaler Customers”
As that analysis pointed out, Nvidia’s Blackwell lineup is bringing a significant increase in power consumption, nearly double the H200’s 70 kW at 120 kW for the GB200 NVL72 and 140 kW for the upcoming GB300 racks.
Beyond Blackwell, Nvidia’s future design lineup shows continual increases in power consumption. Its Rubin generation is expected to boost thermal design power (TDP) by 50% over Blackwell at up to 180 kW per rack, with the upgraded Vera Rubin then doubling this to 360 kW per rack by 2027.
In its largest configuration, the Vera Rubin NVL576, dubbed the ‘Kyber’ rack, could draw as much as 600 kW (0.6 MW), or 5x that of the GB200 NVL72 in just a two-year design timeframe. These figures do not include networking, interconnects, cooling and other hardware, which will further boost power draw per rack.
This rapid increase in power consumption per GPU generation is critical, as existing infrastructure is simply unable to meet these escalating power demands. For example, Applied Digital pointed out that nearly 70% of current data centers “contain racks requiring between four and nine kW of power, and less than two percent of data centers have racks with greater than 50kW.”
For comparison, Super Micro’s GB200 NVL72 SuperCluster requires 132kW, while the upcoming Kyber rack could more than quadruple that to 600kW. Because Blackwell-based servers are now 15x to 30x the power density, cooling and power delivery strategies have to be redesigned, as liquid cooling now becomes a necessity.
This sharp rise in power density means current infrastructure may be unable to transition from 4-9kW racks to >130kW racks without incurring significant retrofitting costs, while building new infrastructure bypasses that hurdle and allows for optimization for high-powered racks.
For example, Vantage’s upcoming 1.4 GW campus in Texas for Oracle is designed for ultra-high density racks up to 250kW, yet this will not be enough power to able to host NVL576 racks in just two to three years’ time. Additionally, a former Microsoft Azure AI executive reportedly said he estimated that the “requirements in terms of power for the data center would probably at least double every three years and maybe exponentially so over a period of time,” further reinforcing this.
The push to 600kW racks over the next few years means this is not a transient problem, rather it is one that the industry will continue to face, meaning continuous new construction may be needed to handle surging power demand.
In the latest earnings call with CoreWeave, management agreed with the analysis we have presented to Pro Members, stating: “at the end of the day, right now, it's the powered shells that are the choke point that is causing the struggle to get enough infrastructure online for the demand signals that we are seeing […]”
Takeaway: When building our portfolio, we have to balance many things when it comes to AI energy stocks. Time to power is paramount as some energy infrastructure is 5-10 years out from commencing operations and generating revenue. Secondly, many energy stocks require significant cash to secure energy sources, get government approval and build the underlying infrastructure, which also includes taking into consideration regional differences, transmission capacity and distances from generation sites to metro areas.
AI Data Layer:
The initial years of AI development were compute intensive to where training created a compute hierarchy. We still see evidence of this hierarchy as companies with access to GPUs, networking and energy have an advantage, and the barrier to entry is high in both costs and by the limited supply preventing widespread access.
Nvidia has enjoyed a near-monopoly by being the parallel processing leader decades before AI took over as the primary market that demanded massive compute and data throughput for matrix multiplications and vector math. The lack of supply has afforded the world’s largest companies a head start in training and deploying models while startups and enterprises patiently wait for access. As more frontier LLMs are deployed by R&D labs and Big Tech, the emphasis moving forward will be on inference rather than only on training models.
The inference market is when enterprises and companies sitting on large private data sets will be able to increase the accuracy of open sourced models and licensed models. There will be an important shift to where companies that can offer domain-specific data in various industries, such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, will do well by optimizing processes to generate more revenue and achieve better margins. It will start with the Fortune 500, the Global Fortune 2000 and well-funded startups. Meanwhile, investors should also not overlook the fact that R&D labs are growing closer to cracking the consumer market, as well, with apps such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Sora, or Perplexity’s search.
While training is benefiting those who sell the compute or own the infrastructure (and we will continue to own these stocks), there will also be a shift toward companies that manage the data pipes by sitting across the many database and software services that enterprises use. Think of all the ERP systems, CRMs, legacy databases, etc, where private data is stored. There will be an emphasis toward combining the data, keeping it private, yet utilizing it to increase the quality of inference.
Takeaway: Compute will continue to drive the scale for inference; data will drive the quality of inference. Therefore, a key focus for I/O Fund’s Top 10 New Ideas list over the next few quarters (and years ahead) will be AI data stocks that help private enterprises use their valuable data to feed data-hungry reasoning models. We will also, in tandem with AI networking and AI energy, be looking to build our portfolio with exposure to stocks that will participate in the AI inference market, which spans hardware, software, the data layer, and more.
The stocks below are new ideas and at time of publishing, the I/O Fund does not own these stocks although they are under strong consideration for the portfolio. To find out the stocks the I/O Fund owns, subscribe to our Pro tier for Research or our flagship tier Advanced with additional research, real-time trade alerts, allocations to stocks and weekly webinars.
CoreWeave: $20B+ in New Deals, Targeting Aggressive Power Growth
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 4/10
Valuation: 4/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
CoreWeave brands itself as the world’s first “AI hyperscaler” as they offer both infrastructure and a software platform for developing large language models and deploying them. Being dubbed an AI infrastructure player means CoreWeave must offer a compelling value proposition to attract business from arguably the largest competitors in the world – AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
One of their primary value propositions is offering bare metal servers, as the company does not need to offer shared GPUs like the hyperscalers. By stripping away the virtualization layer, raw performance goes up for R&D labs, who do not need to want to lower performance for workload flexibility. Although CoreWeave offers shared infrastructure in terms of storage and networking, the company’s key differentiation from the Big 3 is by offering dedicated bare-metal access. CoreWeave also offers proprietary software to help achieve higher total system performance and more favorable uptime relative to competitors.
CoreWeave has already reached a $5 billion run rate with 470MW (~20%) of its 2.2GW contracted power active and operational, leaving an additional ~1.73GW to be developed. The company is planning to have 900MW active by year-end, hence the need for high capex to support growth. At full-scale, the company may be able to support a $25 billion revenue run rate, aligning with FY29’s revenue estimate.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
CoreWeave reached a new milestone of over $1.0 billion in revenue in Q2 2025, growing 206.7% YoY and 23.6% QoQ to $1.21 billion, driven by strong demand for the company’s AI cloud infrastructure services. Revenue growth is expected to be strong in the coming quarters, driven by the robust demand due to training and inference workloads.
Management revenue guidance for Q3 is in the range of $1.26 billion to $1.30 billion, representing YoY growth of 119.2% and 5.5% QoQ at the midpoint. Revenue growth is expected to show a 20% acceleration QoQ in Q4 with revenue growing 139.5% YoY and a further 16 percent acceleration QoQ in Q1 2026, highlighting large deals signed in the recent quarters.
Looking forward, revenue is expected to grow by 174% YoY to $5.26 billion in the year 2025 and 129.6% YoY to $12.08 billion in 2026.
Key Metric Key Metric
CoreWeave reported backlog of $30.1 billion at the end of Q2, up 86% YoY driven by the company’s strategic deal with OpenAI in March 2025 and a subsequent expansion deal in May. CoreWeave expects 50% of this backlog, or ~$15 billion, to convert to revenue over the next 24 months, providing a strong degree of visibility into future growth.
However, CoreWeave’s backlog has now likely surpassed $50 billion, considering the company signed an additional expansion deal with OpenAI worth $6.5 billion and a large-scale deal with Meta worth $14.2 billion, both lasting through 2031.
Earnings Earnings
CoreWeave reported GAAP loss per share of (-$0.60) in Q2 compared to the consensus estimate of (-$0.49), with the miss stemming from higher operating expenses, particularly technology and infrastructure expenses.
CoreWeave is not expected to shift to GAAP profitability until FY27: analysts expect GAAP loss per share of (-$2.67) for this year, followed by (-$0.90) for 2026, before shifting to positive GAAP EPS of $1.59 in 2027.
Margins Margins
While gross margin has expanded over the last two quarters, operating margin remains thin from heightened expenditures and aggressive investments in data center capacity and servers.
Gross margin was 51.2%, up from 50.7% in Q1 and 43% in Q4. This is now slightly below the highest gross margin that CoreWeave has reported publicly at 53.7%.
Operating margin was just 1.6% in Q2, inflecting from a (2.8%) margin in Q1 but substantially lower than the 20% margin in the year ago quarter as tech and infrastructure expenses have surged more than 260% YoY.
Net margin was (24.0%) in Q2, marking a slight improvement from (32.1%) in Q1, with this pressured heavily by high interest payments on debt.
Cash Cash
CoreWeave’s business model is based on aggressive capacity expansion, currently fueled primarily by debt. As a result, cash is rather thin and gets spent quickly, and free cash flow is widely negative.
CoreWeave reported $1.15 billion in cash and equivalents (excluding $0.56 billion in restricted cash and equivalents), though CoreWeave updated in an 8-K related to its now upsized $1.75 billion raise that total cash will be closer to $5 billion.
Operating cash flow was ($251.3 million) for a (21%) margin in Q2, widening from ($117.8 million) in the year ago quarter. Free cash flow was ($2.7 billion) for a (223%) margin, widening slightly from ($2.36 billion) in the year ago quarter.
Debt was reported at $11.05 billion in Q2, with $3.62 billion being current. Current debt is likely closer to $12 billion now, with a majority (~$6.7 billion) tied to its two existing delayed draw term loan facilities. If its new DDTL is drawn upon, debt could rise to $14.6 billion. On the other hand, the company is trying to reduce its cost of capital by raising cash through secured debt, using its highly valuable GPUs as collateral.
Valuation Valuation
Given its limited history on the public markets, CoreWeave’s valuation comps are limited. The company is trading above its average forward PS multiple since IPO of 9.6x, currently valued at 12.8x. This is approaching its peak forward PS multiple so far of 16.8x.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Based on company guidance, CoreWeave’s capex for the second half of the year is expected to be >$15 billion, with cash on hand only covering one-third of that at maximum. The majority of this capex, around >$12 billion, is expected to hit in Q4 due to timing of standing up new infrastructure, placing emphasis on finding funding to finance this spending. Debt is expensive for CoreWeave, with recent raises at >9% rates, making tapping the debt markets a more expensive endeavor – interest expenses were 22% of revenue in Q2.
Customer concentration also presents a risk, though this is now beginning to ease as other anchor customers Meta and OpenAI ramp. Microsoft had accounted for 72% of revenue in 1H, with the former two providing much needed diversification away from Microsoft.
IREN: Aggressively Building an AI GPU Cloud, Targeting $500M ARR by Q1
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 7/10
Valuation: 2/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
There are a few key things that separate IREN from other Bitcoin miners. The first is that IREN is still a Bitcoin miner whereas others have retrofitted their Bitcoin operations for the data center entirely or plan to very soon as the operations were not profitable. In contrast, IREN is able to turn a profit from Bitcoin mining and plans to use that cash to help fund its AI data center expansions.
Secondly, IREN can offer a hybrid mix of both colocation and AI cloud services, which is essentially bare metal servers without a hypervisor or virtual layer. This is attractive to hyperscalers as virtualization can lead to performance loss. For the AI cloud, IREN functions similar to CoreWeave as the GPUs are leased “as a service.” For colocation, IREN provides the facility, power and cooling for customers to deploy and manage their own hardware.
IREN is working to rapidly build out its GPU fleet considering its power pipeline totals 3GW, with the firm now owning more than 23,000 GPUs consisting of primarily Blackwells, more than doubling this month. IREN does have capacity to support >660K GPUs in total, though this will likely cost upwards of $60 billion in full.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
IREN delivered Q4 revenue of $187.3 million, up 229% from the $56.8 million earned in the year-ago period and up 65% sequentially from Q3’s $113.6 million. This kind of sequential growth is rarely seen outside of hypergrowth SaaS, let alone in a miner. The bulk of Q4 revenue came from Bitcoin at $180.3 million.
IREN reported FY25 revenue of $501.0 million, up 168% year-over-year from $187.2 million, underscoring one of the fastest growth rates in the sector. Looking ahead to 2026, IREN is estimated to report 113% growth to $1.09 billion, with growth each quarter expected to be >80% or higher.
AI Segment Revenue Growth AI Segment Revenue Growth
IREN’s AI cloud business is currently a small contributor to growth, with revenue of just $7 million in fiscal Q4. While this represented growth of 180% YoY and 94% QoQ, the segment accounted for less than 4% of total revenue in the quarter. For FY25, AI cloud revenue was $16.4 million, more than 5x higher than its FY24 revenue of $3.1 million.
In accordance with its doubled fleet at 23K GPUs, IREN unveiled a new AI Cloud annualized revenue (ARR) guidance, now targeting >$500 million in ARR by Q1 2026. This is more than double its guidance from August for $200 million to $250 million by year-end 2025, based on a fleet size of 10.9K GPUs. IREN said in early October that it has secured customer contracts for the 10.9K fleet representing $225 million in ARR, and that it remains on track to reach its Q1 target.
Earnings Earnings
IREN reported Q4 GAAP EPS of $0.66, though much of this (~$0.54) was attributed to a $147.7 million gain on financial instruments.
IREN’s EPS flipped positive in FY25, with diluted EPS of $0.39 versus a ($0.29) loss in FY24, marking its first full-year profit on a per-share basis, though GAAP EPS is heavily influenced by fair-value accounting marks. Looking forward, analysts expect GAAP profitability to more than triple through FY26 to $1.23.
Margins Margins
Operating margin shifted to positive in FY25, with Q4 seeing operating margin reach double-digit territory, a stark contrast to other miner peers.
Gross margin was 71.8% in Q4, reflecting benefits from scaling mining operations and disciplined power cost management. FY25 gross margin was 68.3%, up nearly 15 points YoY and signaling more room for expansion with Q4’s print.
Operating margin was 11.0% in Q4, down from 20.1% in the prior quarter. For FY25, operating margin was 3.5%, shifting positive from a (14.6%) margin in FY24.
Net margin was 94.4% in Q4, though stripping out the substantial gain on financial instruments would place net margin at 15.6%. For FY25, net margin was 17.3%, including 15.5 points contribution from gains on financial instruments.
Cash Cash
While operating cash flows were solid, free cash flow was largely negative at more than 2.5x revenue due to elevated capex.
Operating cash flow was $245.9 million in FY25, up from just $52.2 million in FY24. This equated to a strong 48.9% margin, up from 27.9% in the prior year. However, free cash flow widened from ($427.7 million) in FY24 to ($1.13 billion) in FY25, with IREN spending $574 million on PP&E and $799 million on GPUs and hardware.
IREN reported $564.6 million in cash against $962.8 million in convertible debt in Q4. IREN also priced an additional $875 million in convertible debt in early October, which will likely go towards additional GPU purchases.
Valuation Valuation
With its strong multi-month rally, IREN is now trading at peak forward PS multiples at 16.5x, far above its historical average 3.9x forward multiple.
On the bottom line, IREN is trading at the upper end of its forward PE range over the past year at 70x forward earnings. This is notably elevated from early August’s 17x forward PE multiple.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
IREN marks the first (and perhaps only) attempt across Bitcoin miners to double up as a neocloud, which may carry substantial capital risks to self-fund GPU fleet expansion. Analysts expect IREN to grow its GPU fleet by 5x by year-end 2026, though this firm’s estimate hinged on IREN taking on $6 billion in new debt related to GPU purchases. This would quickly consume cash and possibly could cost hundreds of millions quarterly in interest, depending on terms, which would be hard to cover with cash flows.
Additionally, IREN is targeting a rather aggressive ramp in its AI cloud business, which relies on internal projects for utilization, hourly rental rates, and on-time GPU delivery, all factors that may change quite quickly. Monthly AI cloud revenue has still yet to reach an inflection point as of August, suggesting little to no new GPU deliveries have occurred since June.
Palantir: AI Platform Drives Eight-Quarter Revenue Acceleration
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 9/10
Valuation: 1/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
The difference between Palantir and other AI-enabled database competitors is that Palantir is able to answer questions a model cannot answer. Traditional business intelligence companies require a complete data set whereas Palantir is able to tackle situations where there is not a complete data set. You can think of the competitive advantage as being actionable depth, which Palantir has described as “the reasoning that goes into decision-making, not just data.”
Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) integrates generative AI with operational data and workflows, and when combined with Palantir’s other platforms Foundry and Apollo, it provides an AI service mesh that can run hundreds of microservices, scale compute through its Rubix engine and orchestrate updates through Apollo.
Additionally, Palantir’s knowledge graph referred to as Ontology is a distinct advantage. The graph offers better context than a large language model would on its own – or as Palantir states, it’s “the reasoning that goes into decision-making.”
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Palantir cracked the $1 billion quarterly revenue milestone in Q2, with revenue of $1.003 billion in the quarter. Growth accelerated nine points to 48% YoY, and seven points to 14% QoQ. For Q3, Palantir guided for growth to accelerate slightly to 50%, what would mark its ninth straight quarter with accelerating revenue growth.
Management also boosted its full-year revenue growth forecast by ~$250 million, from $3.9 billion to $4.15 billion, corresponding to growth of 45% YoY. This marks a sharp acceleration from 29% growth in FY24.
AI Segment Revenue Growth AI Segment Revenue Growth
Palantir’s US Commercial segment is the primary vector for its AIP-driven growth, with the company seeing robust momentum from the segment. US Commercial revenue grew 93% YoY (a 22 point sequential acceleration) and 20% QoQ to $306 million.
Palantir also scored US commercial remaining deal value of $2.79 billion, up 145% YoY and 20% QoQ, while US commercial total contract value (TCV) rose 222% YoY to $843 million. US commercial customers rose 64% YoY to 485.
For the full year, Palantir boosted its guide to >85% YoY growth to $1.302 billion, compared to its Q1 guide for 68% growth to $1.178 billion.
Earnings Earnings
Palantir reported adjusted EPS of $0.16 in Q2, up 78% YoY, and GAAP EPS of $0.13, both coming in ahead of estimates. For Q3, Palantir is expected to report adjusted EPS growth of 67% YoY to $0.17.
For fiscal 2025, Palantir is estimated to see adjusted EPS rise 57% YoY to $0.64, before slowing to 32% growth to $0.85 in fiscal 2026.
Margins Margins
Palantir is a standout in terms of margins, as the company continues to drive operating margin expansion while accelerating revenue growth. This helps the company’s Rule of 40 metric, which stands at 94 as it combines adjusted EBITDA margin with revenue – or more than double the ideal 40 that many SaaS companies set out to achieve yet cannot due to a lack of GAAP margins.
Gross margin was 80.8% in Q2, down from 81% in the year ago quarter but up marginally from 80.4% in Q1.
Operating margin was 26.8%, expanding significantly from 15.5% in the year ago quarter and from 20% in Q1. Adjusted operating margin was 46.3%, up from 37.4% in the year ago quarter and 44.2% in Q1; Palantir guided for continued strength in Q3 at a 45.6% margin.
Net margin was 32.6%, up nearly 13 points from 19.8% in the year ago quarter and up from 24.2% in Q1.
Cash Cash
Palantir also stands out for its ridiculously strong cash flows, with margins above 50%, putting it in rare territory for a high-growth AI stock when combined with its operating and net margin profile.
Operating cash flow was $539.3 million in Q2 for a margin of 54%, well above its 20% margin from the year ago quarter but slightly below its peak OCF margin of 58% in Q3 2024.
Adjusted free cash flow was $568.8 million for a 57% margin, again up substantially from 22% a year ago but below its peak FCF margin of 63%. Palantir raised its adjusted FCF guidance for FY25 by $200 million, from $1.6-1.8 billion to now $1.8-2.0 billion, or a margin of 45.8% at midpoint.
Cash and equivalents totaled $6.0 billion, while debt was zero.
Valuation Valuation
On the topline, Palantir trades at 105.4x forward PS, far above its 5-year average multiple of 33.4x and well above the second most expensive software stock in Cloudflare at 35.7x forward PS. Palantir is in uncharted territory as it is at its peak multiple ever sustained for this metric.
On the bottom line, Palantir trades at 288x forward PE, again at its peak and far above its average of 103.4x. On an FCF basis, the company trades at 273.3x, also above its average multiple of 154.5x.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
The valuation with Palantir is a gamble as the company is attempting to set a new bar for AI software, with >100x forward sales multiples only achieved for short fashion in 2021 for a handful of prior market darlings, whose stocks have yet to return to those prices. Palantir’s elevated valuation may also present a risk if/when the company reaches peak revenue growth, as it cannot accelerate the topline forever.
Lumentum: Cloud & Networking Growth Accelerates to 16% QoQ
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 6/10
Valuation: 4/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
Optical interconnects are a trend the I/O Fund has been tracking for more than a year, as these interconnects help data centers accelerate data throughput between and inside the data center between servers or racks, while reducing latency and power consumption. Lumentum supplies components for datacom transceivers (including VSCELs, CW lasers for silicon photonics and EML-based lasers) and optical interconnects with tech that has caught the attention of heavyweight Nvidia.
While we have been closely monitoring Lumentum and waiting patiently for their EML lasers for 200G to ship, the company’s most recent report provided confirmation of the EML laser ramp, as EMLs achieved an all-time high for shipments with revenue more than doubling versus its June 2024 baseline. Management also cited a “substantial” 200G EML order to be fulfilled in the December quarter, although offered little additional clarity on the size of the order.
Lumentum also remains quite confident in its growth opportunities from EML lasers, optical circuit switches and co-packaged optics heading into 2026. The company provided a new $600 million quarterly revenue target it expects to reach by next June or earlier, up from $424 million in the current quarter.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Lumentum reported Q4 revenue of $480.7 million, beating analyst estimates by a modest 2.29%. This was a notable uptick on the top-line, with growth of 13.1% QoQ, accelerating 7 points, and 55.9% YoY, accelerating 42 points, beginning to support the thesis that Lumentum is past the cyclical low it experienced in FY24.
Guidance for Q1 FY26 came in at $510 to $540 million, representing 55.8% growth YoY and a slight moderation to 6% QoQ growth. Management attributes the strong forward revenue guide to surging AI workloads and the “shift toward high-speed photonics for hyperscale cloud operators.”
FY25 revenue came in at $1.65 billion, with growth rebounding to 21% YoY from FY24’s (23%) YoY decline. FY26 is expected to see revenue growth accelerate nearly 20 points to almost 40% YoY, with current estimates at $2.29 billion.
AI Segment Revenue GrowthAI Segment Revenue Growth
Lumentum’s Cloud and Networking revenue came in at $424.1 million in Q4, representing 66.5% YoY growth. Additionally, the segment’s QoQ growth of 16.1% accelerated sharply from 7.6% QoQ in Q3.
Management cited a few factors behind the outperformance in Q4: strong hyperscaler demand driving more than 50% QoQ growth in cloud modules, all-time high in EML shipments, and strong transceiver demand. Of these, EML drove the results this current quarter: “In Components, we achieved an all-time high in EML shipments, nearly doubling the revenue compared to our June quarter 2024 baseline.”
For Q1, management expects Cloud & Networking to be up QoQ, and based on guidance, this would likely correspond to approximately 10% QoQ growth at midpoint. Management indicated there was potential for strong growth starting in the upcoming December quarter: “Recently, we received a substantial order for 200-gig lane speed EML chips, which we expect to fulfill in the December quarter. Overall, we expect 2026 to be a breakout year for laser chip sales of both 100-gig and 200-gig lane speeds.”
Earnings Earnings
Lumentum reported adjusted EPS of $0.88 in Q4, beating estimates of $0.81 and improving against the $0.57 reported in Q3 and $0.06 reported in the year ago quarter. Management guided for $0.95 to $1.10 in adjusted EPS in Q1, up nearly 470% YoY, while Q2 is expected to see 176% growth to $1.16.
Looking ahead, Lumentum is expected to see adjusted EPS rise at a 77% CAGR through fiscal 2027, rising from $2.06 in FY25 to $4.86 in FY26 to $6.48 in FY27.
Margins Margins
The re-acceleration in revenue drove solid in GAAP gross margin to 33.3%, higher than the 28.8% percentage seen in Q3 and double the 16.6% margin from Q4 FY24. Non-GAAP gross reiterates this story, as Q4’s 37.8% margin continued to expand versus the prior quarter comp of 35.2% and prior year comp of 27.8%.
Lumentum showed continued progress on operating margins as well in Q4 with a (1.7%) operating margin, compared to (8.9%) in Q3 FY25 and (43.3%) in Q4 FY24. Non-GAAP operating margin of 15.0% expanded nicely compared to prior quarter of 10.8% and prior year quarter of (5.1%). Most of the profit margin is driven by the Cloud and Networking segment, which boasted a margin of 23.6% in Q4, up more than 13 points YoY.
Q4’s adjusted net income margin of 13.1% reflects continued operational improvements and the fourth consecutive quarter of sequential improvement (from 9.6% in Q3, 7.5% in Q2, and 3.6% in Q1).
Cash Cash
Cash flows have been lumpy, though Q4 saw Lumentum report the highest operating cash flow margin in the past two years. Despite this, free cash flows are pressured as Lumentum reinvests to expand manufacturing capacity.
Operating cash flow increased 80% YoY to $64 million, representing a 13.3% margin. This expanded nearly 2 points from 11.5% in the year ago quarter and was a notable uptick from (0.4%) in Q3. For FY25, operating cash flow was up ~5x to $126.4 million, for a 7.7% margin, improving from a 1.8% margin in FY24.
Free cash flow declined (7%) YoY to $10.1 million, for a 2.1% margin, down from 3.5% in the year ago quarter. As a result of elevated capex, FY25 free cash flow was ($104.7 million), for a (6.3%) margin, improving only slightly from (8.3%) in FY24.
Cash and equivalents of $877.1 million in Q4, largely in line with the $866.7 million reported in Q3. Debt remained largely consistent with the prior few quarters at $2.57 billion.
Valuation Valuation
Lumentum is trading at peak multiples on a forward PS basis, at 5.2x, nearly twice its average 5-year multiple of 2.8x, where it was valued at as recently as June.
On the bottom line, Lumentum is trading below average multiples, at 35.3x forward PE versus its 5-year average of 40x and its 2025 peak at 50x in January. However, similar to the topline, this has expanded significantly since June, when Lumentum traded at 19x forward PE.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Customer concentration is a risk present in Lumentum, as two customers currently represent 31% of total revenue. When asked about customer concentration for specific products, such as cloud modules and OCS, management stated that due to their being capacity constrained, it was unlikely they would take on new customers.
Trading at peak multiples on the top-line also presents a risk, as the company is expected to see quarterly revenue growth peak in fiscal Q1 at 56% and then decelerate to ~40% for the next two quarters, an unfavorable position to be in with an elevated valuation.
GE Vernova: Aiming for 60GW Backlog, Supplying AI Data Centers
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 4/10
Valuation: 2/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
GE Vernova is part of the spinoff that General Electric first announced in 2021 and later completed in 2024. The company broke up its three biggest segments into separate units: GE Healthcare was spun off first in 2023, GE Vernova for the Energy business was spun off in 2024 and began trading as GEV, and GE Aerospace was the business that remained with the existing stock ticker GE. At the time the Energy segment was split up, it was seeing $33 billion in revenue and was helping to generate 30% of the world’s electricity with 55,000 wind turbines and 7,000 gas turbines.
This year, the company is expected to report $37 billion in revenue with strong earnings growth of 45.3%. The stock is not a hypergrowth profile, but rather, it is a quality, defensible position that could do well during any periods of doubt in the broader AI trend.
The defensibility is particularly attractive when you consider that gas turbines is the crux of the issue for expanding gas power plants. According to Bloomberg’s calculations, more than “$400 billion worth of gas-fired power plants through the end of the decade are in jeopardy of delay or cancellation because of the lack of capacity to meet future turbine orders.” The same article points toward GE Vernova filling orders as far out as 2030.
GE Vernova is the world’s largest gas turbine supplier at 25% ahead of Schneider at 24%. Even still, GEV nearly tripled its gas turbine equipment orders this past quarter – a statement that has us sitting up in our seats. Per the earnings call: “Power orders grew 44%, led by Gas Power equipment nearly tripling year-over-year.” In a bid to supply options quickly to alleviate bottlenecks, GEV is also shipping aeroderivative gas turbine packages and doing extensive R&D on a small modular reactor (SMR) design.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
GE Vernova is on a path to revenue acceleration in 2026, as it is a major beneficiary of the spending surge of hyperscalers stemming from the increasing energy requirements from the global AI infrastructure build-out.
The company’s Q2 revenue grew by 11% to $9.11 billion, beating estimates by 3.6%. Organically, revenue grew by 12% YoY to $9.04 billion, primarily due to higher equipment and services revenue. Analysts expect revenue to grow by 2.7% YoY in the next two quarters and revenue growth to accelerate to 8.8% in Q1 2026.
On the back of strong demand for power and equipment, management has raised its full-year revenue guidance and expects 2025 organic revenue to come at the high end of the guidance of $36 billion to $37 billion. The power segment organic revenue guide is increased to 6-7%, up from the previous single-digit guide, and the electrification segment is expected to grow 20%, up from the previous mid-high teens percentage. On a side note, the wind segment is expected to be down mid-single digits due to the more challenging market conditions.
Revenue growth is set to accelerate over the next three years. Analysts expect a 6.4% increase in 2025, bringing the total revenue to $37.17 billion, a 5.1% growth in 2024. Momentum is projected to build further, with revenue climbing to $40.7 billion in 2026, up 9.5% and to $45.5 billion in 2027, up 11.9% YoY.
Key AI Metric Key AI Metric
In Q2, GEV signed 9GW of new gas equipment contracts with 2GW going directly to orders and 7GW going into what’s called a slot reservation. During the quarter, the company also converted 3GW into orders and shipped 5GW of equipment. GEV is also witnessing robust demand for its aeroderivative technology to support data centers, securing 27 aeroderivative units in the recent quarter compared to only one in the same period last year.
Overall backlog is now up to 55GW, ahead of the 50GW guided in April, including 29GW in backlog and 25GW in slot reservation agreements (SRA), up from 21GW. GEV is expecting the backlog will reach 60 GW by the end of this year. There was a discussion on the call that this represents 3 years of backlog: “And we've talked about the fact that we'll get to at least 60 gigawatts by the end of the year. So that's directionally 3 years of backlog.” In other words, the chances that GEV is not a significant player in supplying energy to data centers for many years to come is nil.
Earnings Earnings
Q2 GAAP EPS came at $1.86, beating estimates by a solid 14.3% driven by profitable volume, better pricing, and productivity gains. Analysts expect GAAP EPS of $1.85 for Q3 2025 compared to (-$0.35) in the same period last year. They expect GAAP EPS to grow 95.4% YoY to $3.38 in Q4 and 137.4% YoY to $2.16 in Q1 2026.
Analysts continue to expect strong EPS growth in the coming years. For the year 2025, analysts expect GAAP EPS to grow 45.3% YoY to $8.11, and 58.9% and 41% YoY in the subsequent two years, reaching $18.16 in 2027.
Margins Margins
GEV has rather thin margins, with operating margin in the mid-single digits, but management expects that higher turbine prices and strong demand will lead to improved margins as the backlog approached 60GW by year-end.
Gross margin was 21% in Q2, flat YoY but up 2 points from Q1. Operating margin was 5.6%, rebounding 4.7 points QoQ but down 2.4 points YoY. Net margin was 5.6%, up 2.3 points QoQ but down 10.2 points YoY.
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.5%, up more than 2 points YoY, with the improvement driven by volume and price, offsetting tariff impacts and investments. While GEV did raise its full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guide to 8-9%, management was clear to say that this included approximately one point of negative EBITDA margin related to tariffs.
Cash Cash
Management raised full-year free cash flow guidance from a range of $2.0 billion to $2.5 billion to a new range of $3.0 billion to $3.5 billion, primarily driven by a higher profit outlook and increased down payments due to rising orders. Year-to-date, GEV has generated $1.17 billion in free cash flow, implying a strong acceleration of free cash flow in the second half of the year to $2.1 billion.
Q2 free cash flow of $194 million represented a sharper decline versus $821 million in the same quarter last year, though GEV had benefited from a $300 million arbitration in the comparable quarter.
GEV has $7.9 billion in cash and equivalents and no debt.
Valuation Valuation
GEV is trading near peak multiples on the top line, but there is more room on the bottom line as multiples are not nearly as stretched.
The stock is trading at approximately 4.6x forward revenue, just below its peak of nearly 4.9x and above its average 2.6x multiple, though data is limited as the spinoff has only traded publicly for a year and a half.
On the bottom line, GEV trades at 83.3x forward earnings, slightly above its average 73.9x multiple, though shares have traded in as wide a range of 36x to 137x over the past year.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Wind is providing a notable drag on growth and earnings, with GEV stating that they have lost approximately $300 million in the segment through the first half but expect to be closer to breakeven in the second half. Q2 adjusted EBITDA for Wind widened approximately ($50 million) YoY to ($165 million). Additionally, Q3 growth was guided to be down mid-teens YoY, but excluding a one-time settlement in the year ago quarter, growth would be up low single digits.
Applied Optoelectronics: Optical Component Supplier Targeting 8.5X Capacity Growth by Year-end
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 2/10
Valuation: 3/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
Applied Optoelectronics (AOI) is a lesser-known optical component and transceiver supplier, though the small-cap has recently caught our attention for its ambitious capacity growth targets, aiming to become one of the largest domestic manufacturers for 800G transceivers.
The VSCEL laser, EML chip, and optical transceiver supplier has provided some of the strongest commentary for future growth, with management outlining 8.5x capacity growth by year-end and another 2x capacity growth in 2026. This builds upon a comment slipped into Q1’s call that AOI believes it can become the largest 800G/1.6T optics supplier to Amazon, after signing a deal in March that management says is worth more than $4 billion over ten years.
AOI also stood out from its 40% QoQ growth in data center revenue in Q2, though this came after a soft Q1 affected by inventory digestion at its largest hyperscale customer and seasonality. Interestingly, data center was not the core driver of growth in Q2, with cable TV taking the reign with 8x YoY growth in the quarter. However, management is eyeing 800G transceivers to begin ramping as early as late Q3, supported by that substantial capacity growth come 2026.
The crux with AOI is that cash flows are much softer than more-established AI networking stocks, and GAAP margins are still negative, though it’s hard to argue with the implications from the profound expansion in capacity and how optics growth can transform margins.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
AOI reported revenue of $102.95 million in Q2, up 138% YoY and 3% QoQ, though this was a modest (2.7%) miss versus consensus estimates. This was a slight deceleration from 146% growth in the previous quarter. Cable TV was the primary growth driver with revenue up 862% YoY to $56 million, while data center revenue rose 30% YoY to $44.8 million. Telecom and other revenue was $2.1 million, down (45%) YoY.
For Q3, AOI guided for revenue to be between $115 million to $127 million, pointing to 86% YoY growth at midpoint, though on a sequential basis this is a sharp uptick to 17% QoQ growth. Management expects that there may be some initial contribution from 800G modules late in the quarter: “Looking ahead to Q3, we expect a sequential increase in our datacenter revenue, driven by continued growth in our 100G and 400G products with the possibility of layering some additional increased 800G revenue late in the quarter.”
AI Revenue Growth AI Revenue Growth
AOI’s data center revenue rose 40% QoQ and 30% YoY to $44.8 million, though the high sequential growth rate (the highest among AI networking stocks we track) was due to a soft comp in Q1, where revenue declined (29%) QoQ on inventory digestion at one of AOI’s largest hyperscaler customers and seasonality.
>800G revenue has not yet begun to appear as AOI has not yet begun shipments, with volume only going to qualification this quarter and accounted for 1% of data center revenue at maximum. Revenue from 200G/400G products accounted for 20% of revenue, or ~$9 million, while 100G accounted for 70% of revenue, or $31.4 million.
For Q3, AOI guided for a sequential increase in data center revenue, saying that “400G is picking up so strong in Q3, Q4.” There is also the possibility that some initial 800G revenue begins layering in late in Q3, but primarily in Q4 and into 2026 as capacity expands and customers move ahead with projects.
Earnings Earnings
AOI reported a ($0.16) loss per share in Q2, missing estimates for ($0.07), as margins did not improve much sequentially. For Q3, AOI guided for ($0.03) to ($0.10), a decent sequential improvement, likely driven by the ramp in 400G.
Looking ahead, AOI is expected to shift to GAAP profitability by Q4 and expand earnings through mid-2026, with current estimates pointing to $0.03 in Q4 and rising to $0.19 by Q2 ’26, driven by the ramp of 800G.
Margins Margins
AOI is not the strongest on margins, with operating margin widening for a second consecutive quarter on increased expenditures related to customer qualification projects for 800G and 1.6T products.
AOI reported GAAP gross margin of 30.3%, up more than 8 points YoY but down 0.3 points QoQ. Adjusted gross margin was 30.4%, with management guiding this to be essentially flat next quarter at 30.3%. Management has a medium-term target of 40%, emphasizing that they will need a few quarters for higher-margin 800G and cost reduction efforts from shifting to larger wafers to be seen.
GAAP operating margin was (15.5%), a notable improvement from over (60%) in the year ago quarter, but widening from (6.5%) in Q4 and (8.9%) in Q1. Adjusted operating margin as (10.5%), down from (4.8%) in Q1 but up from (37.6%) a year ago.
Net margin was (8.8%), improving from (9.2%) in Q1 and more than (60%) a year ago. Adjusted net margin was (8.6%), down from (0.9%) in Q1 but improving from (25.1%) a year ago. For Q3, management’s guide implies adjusted net margin improving to (3.3%) at midpoint.
Cash Cash
Cash flows are also quite weak, though this has been mostly from surging accounts receivables and capex to support capacity expansion, a solid signal for the upcoming 800G ramp in conjunction with management’s commentary.
Operating cash flow in Q2 was ($65.5 million), widening from ($50.9 million) in Q1 as inventories and accounts receivables surged, up $36 million and $40 million QoQ respectively. OCF margin was (63.6%), down from (4.6%) a year ago and (51%) in Q1.
Free cash flow was ($104.3 million), widening from ($87.2 million) in Q1. Capex for the quarter was $38.8 million as AOI is quickly purchasing equipment to meet its aggressive capacity expansion targets for year-end and mid-year 2026.
Cash totaled $87.2 million versus $188.2 million in debt, with AOI recently completing its ATM program in Q2, raising $98 million net cash that will help support its capacity expansion and R&D.
Valuation Valuation
AOI is trading a 4.2x forward revenue multiple, well below its 8x peak at the end of 2024 but also far above its low of 1.2x in April, emphasizing the volatility that stems from its small-cap profile with strong growth and weak cash.
On the bottom line, shares are trading at 37.5x estimated EPS of $0.85 in 2026, with this expected to be the company’s first year of GAAP profitability since 2017.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
The primary risks with AOI stem from its margin profile as it is much weaker than more established networking players as well as the hypergrowth players we track. While there is an expectation for margins and EPS to improve through 2026 as 800G/1.6T products ramp, this will need to be proven over the coming few quarters. The weak cash flows also present a risk if there is a prolonged recovery, given the thinner cash position AOI has.
Micron: HBM, LP Server DRAM Driving Strong Growth
Thematic: 9/10
Fundamentals: 6/10
Valuation: 7/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
Micron is a primary beneficiary of rapidly increasing dollar content of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips with each new generation of GPUs. AI training and inference rely heavily on HBM for the massive memory bandwidth that complex models require. AI servers also use more DRAM and NAND than a traditional server. These are reasons that Micron’s cyclical fundamentals could become more secular as the AI economy is built out.
In fiscal 2025, Micron’s HBM, high-capacity dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) and low-power (LP) server DRAM revenue reached $10 billion, up more than fivefold from the prior year, while HBM alone reached $2 billion in revenue in Q4.
Management expects robust AI server demand, the shift to HBM4 and tight DRAM supply to remain tailwinds to growth and profitability moving through 2026: “we expect healthy demand supply environment in 2026 for overall DRAM, and that bodes well for profitability of DRAM, profitability of HBM and of course, profitability of non-HBM as well, which is experiencing tight supply.”
What Micron will need to answer is if the cyclical nature of the memory market will smooth out as the dollar content of memory is rapidly increasing. Data center is already proving to be a strong driver of growth for Micron, accounting for 56% of sales in FY25, up from 35% in FY24. On a dollar basis, data center revenue surged 137% YoY to $20.75 billion.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Micron reported record Q4 revenue of $11.32 billion, driven by DRAM products (and within that HBM) with revenue up 27% QoQ to $9 billion. Growth accelerated nearly 10 points sequentially to 46% YoY, and on a sequential basis, growth was 22% QoQ, a six point acceleration. Micron guided to a fresh record in Q1 at $12.5 billion at midpoint, pointing to 44% YoY growth and 9% QoQ.
For FY25, revenue rose 49% YoY to $37.38 billion, driven primarily by DRAM and HBM revenue, which rose more than 62% YoY to $28.58 billion. HBM reached an annualized run rate of $8 billion in Q4, with HBM share to grow again in Q1 and HBM4 capacity in discussions to be sold out for calendar 2026. Micron has not provided a full-year guide for revenue, but current consensus estimates call for 43% growth to $53.5 billion in revenue.
AI Revenue Growth AI Revenue Growth
In fiscal 2025, Micron's data center reached a record 56% of company revenue, with growth primarily driven by DRAM products and aided by data center SSDs and NAND components. Overall, data center revenue increased 137% YoY to $20.75 billion.
Micron’s Cloud Memory Business Unit (CMBU), which consists of its HBM, high-capacity dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs), and low-power server DRAM solutions, saw revenue surge 257% YoY in fiscal 2025 to $13.57 billion, or YoY growth of nearly $10 billion. Micron’s other data center unit, its Core Data Center Business Unit (CDBU), consists primarily of data center SSDs and NAND components. This unit saw revenue growth of 45% YoY to $7.23 billion.
For Q4, CMBU revenue rose 214% YoY to $4.54 billion, while CDBU revenue declined (23%) YoY. CMBU revenue growth was driven by HBM and strong bit shipment growth, though Micron offered no commentary behind the decline for CDBU.
Earnings Earnings
Micron is expected to see earnings double this fiscal year as margins have swiftly recovered from late 2023 and early 2024. In Q4, Micron reported adjusted EPS of $3.04, up 157% YoY and beating estimates by 6%.
For Q1, Micron guided for adjusted EPS to be $3.75, +/- $0.15, more than 23% ahead of guidance and corresponding to YoY growth of 110%. Earnings growth is expected to reaccelerate to 155% in Q2 but then decelerate to 126% in Q3. For the full year, Micron is expected to see 100% YoY growth to $16.63.
Margins Margins
Micron’s margin turnaround story has been impressive, with gross margin up more than 55 points over the last two years and operating margin up more than 66 points.
GAAP gross margin in Q4 was 44.7%, up 7 points QoQ and 9.4 points YoY, aided by strong growth in CMBU which carried a 59% gross margin in the quarter, DRAM pricing and favorable product mix. For Q1, gross margin was guided to be 50.5% at midpoint, a nearly 6 point sequential expansion and up more than 12 points YoY.
Operating margin was 32.3%, up 9 points QoQ and 12.7 points YoY, again aided by CMBU which carried a 48% margin in the fourth quarter. For Q1, Micron expects operating margin to be 38.6%, up more than 6 points QoQ and more than 13.5 points YoY, signaling some tailwinds from operating leverage from CMBU.
Net margin was 28.3% in Q4, up 8 points QoQ and nearly 17 points YoY. The trajectory within gross and operating margins suggests that there is a path for net margin to potentially expand to the mid-30% range in FY26.
Cash Cash
Operating cash flow was $5.73 billion for Q4, up 68% YoY and more than 24% QoQ. OCF margin was 50.6%, up 1 point from Q3 and up 6.7 points YoY. For the year, Micron generated operating cash flow of $17.53 billion, more than doubling from $8.51 billion in fiscal 2024, with OCF margin expanding 13 points to 46.9%.
Adjusted free cash flow was $801 million in Q4, shrinking from $1.95 billion in Q3 on surging capex. Adjusted FCF margin was 7.1%, up from 4.2% in the year ago quarter but down from 21% in Q3.
Micron reported total cash and equivalents of $11.9 billion and total debt of $14.6 billion.
Valuation Valuation
Despite its recent rally, Micron trades at reasonable multiples, well below its peak from 2024. On the top line, Micron trades at 4x forward revenue, 10% above its average 3.6x multiple and far below its peak of 6.8x from mid 2024.
On the bottom line, Micron trades at 11.6x forward earnings, though its 43.9x average is skewed higher by 2024’s >100x multiples when margins were razor-thin. Since the start of 2025, Micron has traded as high as 16x forward earnings and as low as 8x.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Micron’s growth to this point and beyond has been centered around HBM, both on the top and bottom lines. CMBU is the only unit that sees operating margins above the corporate total, at 48% versus 25%, 29% and 20% for its other segments, meaning that future operating margin expansion will be tied solely to growth from CMBU, and felt more the faster CMBU grows. This may mean that margin and earnings upside in 2026 may be limited come 2027.
Talen: $18 Billion, 17-Year Nuclear Deal With Amazon
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 5/10
Valuation: 3/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
Talen is an independent power producer with its power assets primarily located in the PJM region, with more than 10GW of generation capacity with 2.2GW nuclear. With assets primarily located in Pennsylvania, Maryland and now Ohio, Talen has exposure to growing data center regions, having already locked in a long-term power agreement with Amazon to fuel data centers in Pennsylvania.
Talen’s deal with Amazon not only locked in substantial power generation for Amazon’s data center assets in a time the industry is facing a power crunch, but also locked in substantial revenue and free cash flow generation for Talen. The deal is expected to add a visible 50% uplift in cash flows as the deal ramps into full capacity by 2032, while providing a repeatable colocation model for Talen’s other assets to meet rising data center demand in the PJM region.
Talen is also expanding its power production portfolio with recent acquisitions of the Freedom Energy Center and Guernsey Power Station for ~$3.8 billion gross, expected to add 2.8 GW of combined-cycle natural gas generation capacity in the PJM region. The two plants are suitable for hyperscale data center supply, and are also expected to be immediately accretive to cash flows.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Talen’s Q2 revenue rose 29% YoY and 62% QoQ to $630 million, positively impacted by a $176 million gain on derivatives (compared to a $76 million gain in the year ago quarter). Revenue from contracts with customers was $409 million, up 18% YoY but down (37%) QoQ. This shows the quarterly fluctuations that can stem from commodity contract hedging. For the first half of the year, Talen’s revenue was $1.02 billion, up 2% YoY, though revenue from customer contracts was $1.06 billion, up 40% YoY.
Looking ahead, Talen has some visibility into 2026 revenue from the PJM auction in July, where Talen cleared 6.7 GW of capacity translating to ~$805 million in capacity revenue for the 2026-27 planning year lasting June 2026 through May 2027. Talen expects 2026 capacity revenue of ~$747 million, up ~124% from $333 million projected in 2025. For additional perspective, capacity revenues were just $88 million in Q2, or ~22% of total contracted revenue with customers.
Key AI Metric Key AI Metric
Talen’s AI ties are to Amazon, having expanded and signed a 17-year power purchase agreement through 2042 with the hyperscaler to power its data center adjacent to the Susquehanna plant and potentially other facilities in the Pennsylvania region.
Talen signed the 1.92 GW agreement worth $18 billion in June, and expects to deliver the first 240MW by mid-2026, scaling to 360MW by mid-2027 and 480MW by mid-2028. Full volume is expected to be reached no later than 2032 with potential to accelerate this timeline, with price escalators through 2042.
Though Talen has not provided a view into how it believes revenue will ramp, at face value the deal is worth more than $1 billion in average annual revenue, though it will take up to seven years to reach full volume. Talen has provided a glimpse into how the deal will accrete to FCF in the ramp stage. The company expects $1.55 in FCF from Amazon in fiscal 2026, before rising to $4.00 to $5.75 by fiscal 2029 (with 840-1,200MW delivered), and to $7.00 to $8.25 by fiscal 2032 (1,600MW to full capacity).
Earnings Earnings
Talen reported GAAP EPS of $1.50 in Q2, rebounding from ($2.94) in Q4 as sharper losses on commodity contracts ate into revenue. This is also not comparable to the year ago quarter where Talen reported $7.60 in EPS, as this included an approximate $9.40/share benefit from the sale of its Cumulus data center to Amazon.
For fiscal 2025, Talen is expected to report $5.39 in GAAP EPS, signaling a strong second half of the year, with 2026 EPS projected to surge 285% to $20.74.
Margins Margins
Talen’s gross margin (operating revenues including derivatives minus energy expenses) was 60% in Q2, down from 63.3% in the year ago quarter. Operating margin was 10.5%, up from 5.5% in the year ago quarter and (27.2%) in Q1, driven by the adverse revenue impact from derivate losses.
Net margin was 11.4% in Q2, which does not compare to the asset-sale impacted margin from the year ago quarter of 92.8%. Q1’s net margin was (34.6%), dragged down by derivatives.
Cash Cash
Talen’s operating cash flow was ($184 million) in Q2 for a (29.2%) margin, bringing 1H operating cash flow to ($65 million) for a (6.4%) margin, down from $150 million for a 15% margin in the year ago period.
Adjusted FCF was ($78 million) in Q2 for a (7.6%) margin, with 1H adjusted FCF just $9 million. Talen maintained its guidance for $450 to $540 million in adjusted FCF for the year, implying a significantly stronger second half of the year.
For fiscal 2026, Talen is guiding to $980 million to $1.18 billion in adjusted FCF, more than doubling YoY, and for fiscal 2027, adjusted FCF of $1.055 billion to $1.425 billion. This would represent over 250% growth in just two years.
Talen’s cash balance is extremely thin at $122 million versus its reported debt at $2.97 billion in Q2, though pro-forma debt is actually much higher at $6.56 billion, including $3.8 billion for the acquisitions of the Freedom and Guernsey natural gas plants to add >2.8GW capacity.
Valuation Valuation
Talen is trading at peak multiples on the top-line at 8.6x forward revenue, more than 2x its average multiple of 3.6x. On the bottom-line, Talen trades at 80.9x estimated FY25 EPS, at peak levels, but for FY26 EPS, Talen trades at a more reasonable 22.2x multiple, far below its peak 1-year forward multiple of nearly 41x. On an adjusted FCF basis, Talen trades at 18.8x FY26’s adjusted FCF per share guidance of $23.60 at midpoint, versus 43.1x FY25’s adjusted FCF of $10.30 at midpoint.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Talen has a thin balance sheet with substantial debt, and has launched multiple financings via term loans, revolving credit facilities and senior notes to fund its recent acquisitions, though it still may need more cash over the next few quarters. The Amazon deal does de-risk the future growth story by locking in substantial revenue and free cash flow growth, but not for its immediate-term cash needs. Talen had emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 with a significantly reduced balance sheet, though its cash balance has returned to extremely thin levels; the Amazon deal beckons a strong ramp in FCF that may be able to pad the balance sheet in the future.
Nebius: Microsoft Deal Worth up to $19.4 Billion Supports Hypergrowth Phase
Thematic: 10/10
Fundamentals: 3/10
Valuation: 1/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
Nebius is similar to CoreWeave, dubbing itself as AI native cloud infrastructure, which means the infrastructure was built specifically for AI workloads with architectures built on bare metal servers instead of hypervisor layers, for example. This approach along with a few other optimizations can result in significantly faster training.
Nebius offers an Nvidia-optimized cloud platform for teams that need to adjust compute resources, want high-performance storage and an easy-to-use AI environment yet do not want to manage the infrastructure or AI operations. The stock surged earlier this month off the announcement of a mega deal with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion. This deal signals just how supply constrained the market is, given Microsoft is willing to partner with a neocloud to scale quickly.
Given Nebius’ roots are from Yandex, one might question if Nebius is truly AI-native as some of the Finnish data center in Europe was built in 2014. However, that is also where one of Nebius’ strength lies, which is the company offers European data centers which helps a company like Microsoft to expand quickly overseas.
To serve the AI-native market, Nebius has been building out colocation sites to increase capacity and lower latency for the incoming inference market. Companies like Cloudflare and Shopify are early customers, both of which need to power inference at the edge. The company is also expanding beyond Europe with data center expansions in New Jersey and Kansas.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Nebius reported a slight beat in Q2 with revenue of $105.1 million, up 625% YoY and 106% QoQ, versus estimates for $101.2 million. AI cloud infrastructure revenue rose more than 9x YoY in the quarter, fueled by strong demand for Hopper GPUs and almost peak GPU utilization.
Looking ahead, Q2 is marking an inflection point for revenue, with growth accelerating sequentially on a dollar basis. Q3 is estimated to see revenue up more than $52 million QoQ to $157.1 million, before rising another $106 million QoQ to $263.8 million in Q4. For FY25, Nebius has maintained its guidance for $450 million to $630 million in revenue, excluding $50 million to $70 million in revenue attributed to one of its subsidiaries, Toloka.
Nebius is one of the more unique names in the AI universe as one of the few, if not only, AI-focused stock to have multiple years of triple-digit revenue growth ahead. Nebius had already laid out expectations for a meaningful acceleration next year prior to the Microsoft deal, based on timing of capacity ramp in Q4 2025 and throughout 2026. The recent deal with Microsoft is extending this acceleration, with revenue revised more than $3 billion higher by 2029, or 24% to 65% above prior expectations.
Prior to the Microsoft deal, Nebius was expected to surpass $5 billion in annual revenue in 2029, doubling from $2.5 billion in 2027. After the deal, revenue estimates have been raised 24% to $3.1 billion in 2027, and 65% higher to $8.44 billion by 2029.
AI Revenue Growth AI Revenue Growth
In Q2, Nebius boosted its AI Cloud annualized run rate guidance by 14%, supported by its data center expansion, more power coming online in 2H and the rollout of more Blackwell and soon Blackwell Ultra GPUs. To note, the increased ARR guidance preceded the Microsoft deal, although it may be unlikely that ARR guidance will be raised much this year considering that capacity roll-out for Microsoft is more geared towards 2026.
Q2 ARR rose ~73% QoQ and 438% YoY to $439 million, marking a significant two-quarter expansion from $90 million in Q4. Nebius is targeting ARR to more than double over the next two quarters, raising its guidance to $900 million to $1.1 billion, up from its prior view for $750 million to $1 billion.
Nebius explained that the “increase in our ARR guidance reflects the strong demand we are seeing and the expected delivery of additional GPU capacity later this year, particularly the Blackwell Ultras. Because much of this capacity will come online by the end of the year, the impact will show up more in ARR than within the year’s revenue.” Much of the ARR growth is likely to be weighted towards Q4, considering the majority of GPU installations will take place that quarter, such as the ~4,000 Blackwell Ultras in the UK.
Earnings Earnings
Nebius is expected to report negative EPS through all of fiscal 2025 and 2026, with no clear indication yet of when the company could or will shift to profitability. Current estimates show Nebius losing ($1.47) in 2025 and minimal improvement to ($1.34) in 2026.
There are no analyst estimates beyond 2026, but given the capital intensity of greenfield data center development, continuous scaling of capacity, not to mention potential investments into the autonomous driving unit Avride, Nebius may face a long road to profitability.
Margins Margins
While gross margin is expanding rapidly, up from 26% in Q4 to over 70% in Q2, operating margins remain deeply negative as due to the high costs of aggressively expanding data center capacity and GPUs on hand.
Excluding Toloka’s contribution, its subsidiary that was deconsolidated in Q2, gross margin was 71.3%, up nearly 20 points from 51.5% in Q1 and improving nearly 25 points from 46.9% in the year ago quarter. Nebius is now slightly below CoreWeave’s Q2 gross margin of 74.2%, and it remains to be seen how much further upside there is to gross margin as new capacity comes online.
Q2 operating margin was (105.8%), a notable improvement from (236.4%) in Q1 and (773.8%) in the year-ago quarter. Nebius is exhibiting initial signs of operating leverage, with total operating expenses up just 71% YoY versus the 625% YoY growth in revenue; this was driven mainly by 560% YoY growth in depreciation from increased server capacity, as SG&A decreased (10%) YoY.
GAAP net margin was 556%, as Nebius benefited from a one-time $597.4 million gain from Toloka. Adjusted net margin offers a clearer view of Nebius’ trajectory, coming in at (87.1%) in Q2, up from (164.4%) in Q1 and (424.8%) in the year ago quarter.
Cash Cash
Aggressive capacity expansion plans and a 33% increase in FY25 capex expectations from $1.5 billion to $2 billion, or nearly 4x expected revenue for the year, mean Nebius is quickly burning through cash.
Operating cash flow was ($167.7) million in Q2, for a (159.6%) margin, improving from a (357.7%) margin in Q1. This represented just a $30 million sequential improvement from ($197.8) million, suggesting that the path to positive cash flows may be prolonged. Free cash flow was ($678.3) million in Q2 for a (645.4%) margin, versus ($741.8 million) for a (1341.4%) margin in Q1.
Capex was $510.6 million in Q2, or nearly 5x of revenue, down slightly from $544 million in Q1. 1H capex surpassed $1.05 billion, meaning $0.5 billion to $1 billion is on deck for 2H.
Cash and equivalents totaled $1.68 billion, up only slightly from $1.45 billion in Q1 as Nebius deployed much of June’s $1 billion raise to capex and operations. Including the recent $2.75 billion raise and $1 billion share sale, cash is likely around or above $5 billion. At current burn rates, Nebius would have nearly 10 quarters of cash, but it is likely that capex will accelerate (think of CoreWeave as a leading indicator) to support growth in power and capacity. Debt was $0.98 billion as of Q2, not including the recently priced $2.75 billion in notes.
Valuation Valuation
Nebius also trades at a substantial premium to CoreWeave despite lagging its competitor in terms of active power, contracted power and revenue scale. Based on FY26’s revenue estimate, Nebius trades at a forward 18.2x multiple, more than triple CoreWeave’s 5.9x multiple. However, given revenue growth is expected to be triple-digits through 2028, the market is pricing Nebius to quickly grow into these multiples.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Nebius is even more complicated than CoreWeave given they also own a capital-intensive autonomous driving division, among other investments, and was formally the company Yandex. Nebius is high-risk given its success depends on how much capital the company can raise, and the likelihood it remains in CoreWeave’s shadow is high. Regardless of how Nebius competes with CoreWeave, it remains an AI bubble stock as the company has to hope the stock prices goes up to raise cash, which will dilute shareholders (or raise debt). It’s a vicious cycle as during any months/quarters that AI stocks are soft, Nebius stock will carry outsized execution risk.
Cloudflare: Multi-Faceted AI Positioning, Steady Growth
Thematic: 9/10
Fundamentals: 5/10
Valuation: 1/10
Brief Overview: Brief Overview:
There is a quiet strength in Cloudflare’s fundamentals and key metrics. For example, Cloudflare passed a $2B run rate for the first time, signed their first $100M deal, dollar-based net retention (DBNRR) seems to have bottomed along with a slight 1.3% acceleration in revenue. Regarding the bottom line, Cloudflare is certainly stronger than many cloud peers yet tends to walk a razor’s edge due to capex.
Cloudflare references its business units as “Acts” – Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3. The company defines Act 1 as application security, Act 2 as Zero Trust and Act 3 as the Workers Platform. For our purposes as stock investors, it’s Act 3 we are most interested in.
Regarding AI inference and the Workers Platform, management connected some important dots on the earnings call as to why agentic AI will drive forward the massive inference trend. The I/O Fund team recently dug up a stat inference is expected to account for 60% to 70% of AI workloads by 2030. In particular, Cloudflare emphasizes their position is what will help the company win this market: “The fact that we sit in front of so much of the web and that more than half of our dynamic traffic is already between APIs means that we are strategically positioned to deliver the agentic web of the future.”
Cloudflare also introduced Act 4 – a new product that will help AI search engines connect with (and potentially) pay publishers for using derivatives of their copyrighted works. Although the amount of demand for this and exactly how Cloudflare will monetize this new product is not clear, it is interesting management feels confident enough to call the new use case its fourth act.
Overall Revenue Growth Overall Revenue Growth
Cloudflare reported its largest revenue beat in the last six quarters at 2.1% above consensus, with Q2 revenue up 27.8% YoY to $512.3 million. This also marked a slight 1.3 point acceleration on the top-line from 26.5% growth in Q1.
For Q3, Cloudflare guided for revenue of $543.5 to $544.5 million, ahead of estimates at the time for $538.9 million. This corresponds to a slight deceleration to the mid-to-high 26% YoY growth range, where Cloudflare is expected to remain through Q4. This provides no clear indication yet that the company is able to drive a sustained revenue acceleration aided by AI. However, consensus estimates are now above the high-end of management’s guidance at $544.9 million, essentially already pricing in stronger momentum fueling a beat for Q3.
For the full-year, Cloudflare raised its outlook to $2,113.5 million to $2,115.5 million, for YoY growth of 26.7%. This is a $22.5 million increase at midpoint from Cloudflare’s prior outlook for $2,090 million to $2,094 million for growth of 25.3%.
Key AI Metric Key AI Metric
Although management has been optimistic about AI driving a re-acceleration on the top-line, Cloudflare has not broken out AI revenue or contribution to growth. Other key metrics have remained strong in Q2.
RPO increased 39% YoY and 6% QoQ to $1.98 billion. Current RPO accounted for 66% of total RPO, or ~$1.30 billion, increasing 33% YoY in Q2, a four point acceleration from 29% growth in Q1.This is also a notable uplift from 26% growth in the year ago quarter. Billings also increased 33% YoY to $559.2 million, a third straight quarter with growth above 30% YoY.
Paying customers increased 27.5% YoY to 267,929 in Q2, the second quarter in a row with 27%+ growth. This is a notable improvement from 17% and 21% growth in Q1 and Q2 2024. Cloudflare stated that it added a record number of customers YoY spending over $1M and over $5M.
Earnings Earnings
Cloudflare topped estimates in Q2 driven by the revenue beat and stronger adjusted margins, and boosted its FY25 adjusted EPS outlook as a result. GAAP EPS was ($0.15), missing estimates for ($0.08) as GAAP margins drifted lower. Adjusted EPS was $0.21, beating estimates for $0.18, fueled the outperformance in adjusted operating margin in the quarter.
For Q3, Cloudflare guided for $0.23 in adjusted EPS, a slight uptick sequentially, while for FY25, the company raised its forecast from $0.79-$0.80 to $0.85-$0.86. This corresponds to growth of ~14.5% YoY, up from the mid-6% range previously. Growth is expected to be much stronger in FY26 at ~30% YoY to $1.12.
Margins Margins
Gross margins drifted lower in Q2, driven by both an increase in depreciation expenses and in allocated costs from higher network traffic from paying customers. GAAP operating margins followed, moving further away from reaching break-even.
Cloudflare had an interesting comment on long-term margins, stating that it expects to remain comfortably in its 75% to 77% adjusted gross margin target despite passing on substantial savings to Workers’ customers. This suggests that upside to operating margins will be driven by expenditures, such as moderating higher sales & marketing spending, at 36% of revenue versus its target range of 27-29%, and high SBC at 24% of revenue.
GAAP gross margin was 74.9% in Q2, down nearly 3 points YoY and 1 point QoQ. Adjusted gross margin was 76.3%, down 2.7 points YoY and 0.8 points QoQ.
GAAP operating margin was (13.1%), down 4.4 points YoY and 2 points QoQ. Adjusted operating margin was 14.1%, approximately flat YoY and up 2.4 points QoQ; this was also ahead of guidance for 12.6%. For Q3, Cloudflare guided for adjusted operating income of $75-76 million, pointing to adjusted operating margin of 13.9%, down nearly 1 point YoY and moderating slightly QoQ.
GAAP net margin was (9.8%), down 6 points YoY and 1.8 points QoQ. Adjusted net margin was 14.7%, down 2.6 points YoY but up 2.5 points QoQ.
Cash Cash
Cash flow margins contracted sequentially, while Cloudflare significantly bolstered its cash pile after a large convertible note issuance.
Operating cash flow was $99.8 million for a 19% margin, flat YoY but down from a 30% margin in Q1. Free cash flow was $33.3 million for a 6% margin, down 4 points YoY and 5 points QoQ. Network capex was 11% of revenue in Q2, down from 17% of revenue in Q2. Cloudflare stuck to its guidance for network capex to be 12-13% of revenue for the year, suggesting slight moderation in 2H.
In June, Cloudflare raised $1.97 billion in new convertible notes due 2030, raising its cash on hand to $3.96 billion while convertible notes outstanding rose to $3.26 billion.
Valuation Valuation
Cloudflare is trading at peak multiples, and is the second-most expensive name in the software universe behind Palantir. Cloudflare trades at 36.2x forward revenue, slightly below its late September peak of 37.6x but nearly double its average 19.7x multiple.
On the bottom-line, Cloudflare is not yet GAAP profitable, but on an adjusted basis, the company trades at 256x forward earnings, again far above its 144.5x average multiple.
Notable Risks Notable Risks
Given Cloudflare’s valuation, the entry is probably the most important aspect of this stock right now – whereas in the medium to long-term the most important aspect is timing for the broader inference market. The market looks to already be pricing in a sustainable AI inference-aided reacceleration on the topline despite the fact that this has not appeared concretely, amplifying risk if this does not visibly pan out over the next couple of quarters.
Conclusion:
We are thrilled about our new tier Discovery as the results are able to deliver new ideas to enthusiastic AI investors, such as ourselves. We quickly spotted the limitations around running an active portfolio that does not dedicate a separate effort to new idea generation as the market moves fast with new winners emerging every year. As we look at Q4 and beyond, we believe this quarterly analysis combined with an actively managed Top 10 list will become a strong offering. Our cumulative record proves we are one of the strongest teams in the world on AI stocks. Moving forward, our goal is to use our proven methodology to deliver additional value add as we participate heavily in the once-in-a-lifetime trend of AI.
In the coming weeks, we expect things to shift rapidly as new information is published daily during earnings season. Please reference our Top 10 Watchlist spreadsheet and incoming analysis as critical tools for staying on top of the Must Know stocks in the space.
Our goal is to update this list weekly, so stay tuned for frequent updates!
Damien Robbins, Equity Analyst at I/O Fund contributed to this analysis.
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Please note: The I/O Fund conducts research and draws conclusions for the Fund’s positions. We then share that information with our readers. This is not a guarantee of a stock’s performance. Please consult your personal financial advisor before buying any stock in the companies mentioned in this analysis.
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