MSFTMicrosoft Corp
2Bull0Bear15Mention
Serenity @aleabitoreddit
Focused on AI photonics and semiconductor supply chains — sourcing asymmetric setups from bottoms-up value-chain research. Tracks CPO & optical modules closely, with ongoing deep-dives on SIVE, AAOI, LITE, POET.
Quick verdict
MSFT is net bullish (2 bull · 0 bear)
Demand for compute from hyperscalers like Microsoft far exceeds capacity, driving increased capital expenditure.
Last spoke: 08/11/2026, 19:53 · conviction 6/10
8-10 confidence views use larger markers▲ Bull▼ Bear● Mention
View History (17, newest first)
- @NicolaRussoIT Not as familiar with adoption read through with $ANET XPO MSA (ik $MSFT has been the most openly supportive).. so can't really give a good answer to implications on other players like $POET. https://t.co/Xi6zrmo5ha
- As a earnings recap: $AMZN, $META, $GOOGL, and $MSFT guided a 2026 combined capex forecast to ~$720-$745 Billion. Up from $695-$725B Billion previously. Amazon: $220B Google: $195B-$205B Meta: $130B-$145B Microsoft: $175B We've already seen significant deleveraging and retail/institutional margin liquidations (maybe it continues for more time, who knows). But medium-long term, I'm not quite sure how anyone can be bearish the upstream semis or neoclouds. Given each hyperscaler has flagged either compute shortages, rising cloud demand + pricing power, or increased spending for chips/networking. My "bottleneck" thesis with many of these upstream semi supply chains is that when trillions in capital flows into things from InP substrates or memory (which were both treated as cheap commodities) or even energy. Lot of these current AI names that were treated as useless before in telecom cycles or even toilet sellers. Gets rerated when their inflection period hits and capex flows into their balance sheets. As seen with $NVDA GPUs past few years, memory this year, CPUs/MLCCs next few years, CPO in 2027, Glass Substrates in 2027, 800V in 2027, and so on.
- Just a TLDR of this week: Media: Hyperscalers overbuilt and are selling excess compute. -> $GOOGL, $MSFT, $META, and $AMZN: Demand for compute far exceeds capacity. Capex go brrr. Institutions: Emergency rate hike or 3x rate hikes, it's all over. -> Kevin Warsh: No rate Hike. Retail/Media: AI is crashing because it's a bubble. -> Citadel looking to buy AI leveraged hedge funds positions: 👀 Jim Cramer: Sell all your leveraged DC stocks. -> Koreans: SK Hynix +30%, Samsung +26.81%
- @Jespabe Not really, it's accounting framing. Microsoft investment expectations are the same but it's $175B for 2026 instead of $190B for 2026 because of how they reclassified DC leases. So roughly the same projections.
- Just some takeaways from $META | $MSFT earnings calls: Microsoft: - Expected to be FCF positive in 2027, despite the increase in capex (extremely positive for AI buildout that it's funded by operating income) - "Free cash flow was $19.6 billion, reflecting higher capital expenditures" - Quartely capex was $41B, roughly 2/3rds were "short lived assets, primarily CPUs and GPUs" - Expects capex spend will be over $50 billion for next quarter - Capex Guidance at ~$175 billion and 2027 capex roughly the same. Spending plans unchanged and in line. - "Extending the estimated useful life of our data centers from 15 to 25 years" - "We will be among the first cloud providers to deploy next generation rack-scale AI infrastructure based on $AMD Helios and $NVDA Vera Rubin" - "Customer demand continues to exceed available capacity" Meta: - Capex $130-$145 billion (narrowed range), from $125B-$145B. - Meta is receiving offers at a "significant premium" to what they paid for it (compute scarcity, positive for neoclouds like $IREN / $NBIS ) - Expects significant portion of compute (like the 1 GW DC in El Paso) to develop internal models. - Meta has multiple ROI-positive uses for additional compute across its core business (internally, not Meta Compute) - "Finally, we believe that overall industry capacity is going to remain tight for the foreseeable future" - "The industry has under-built historically for the wave of AI adoption, making existing capacity, including our own, extremely valuable" - Susan Li TLDR: - $MSFT and $GOOGL largely sustaining AI capex buildout while remaining FCF positive or through operating incomes. - $META flags available compute materially below demand at least through 2027. And $MSFT also flags compute demand far exceeds supply. - All three hyperscaler capex largely in line with Google hiking capex figures. AI selloff seems extremely overblown now, hyperscalers continuing capex in line (with Microsoft being FCF positive) or even hiked with $GOOGL. Compute scarcity is visible throughout every single hyperscaler ER.
- $AAPL looks to acquire AI chip companies for running AI (Source: The Information) Right now, $MSFT, $META, Amazon, Google are carrying AI capex spend. But what if Apple joined the others after M&A? A possible scenario is that they revise capex largely upward for their own AI buildout. Since they probably witnessed Google cutting off Meta from compute constraints... or what happens when you partner with OpenAI for LLMs. Then learned how important it is to have your own infrastructure. This scenario would be quite bullish thematically from optical networking to foundries and something markets would not expect? We'll see what happens.
- $NBIS signs $1B+ compute agreement with Reflection AI, for GB300 access through 2029. Reflection also signed a multi-billion dollar agreement with $SPCX earlier. Interesting to say the least, seeing Nebius drop -5% off the news today. Also... counterparty to get this done kinda reminds me of OpenAI, where they might not have the funds to actually execute on these LTAs yet compared to $META or $MSFT. But generally positive long term developments, customer diversification was one of the core strengths of Nebius.
- He wouldn't have build a $1T company without pulling off all those moves. - Gets funding from Elon -> Pisses off $TSLA going independent - Gets funding from $MSFT -> Pisses of Microsoft by diluting them with other hyperscaler funding - Gets funding from $NVDA -> Builds their competing chip and funds Cerebras competitors for inference - Works with $AAPL on Apple Intelligence? -> Create their competing devices. - Potential lack of funding? -> Sign a lot of LTAs so the entire industry lives or dies off OpenAI succeeding. Whatever he's doing is working lol.
- Contrarian take, but Sam Altman / OpenAI is doing something right if he's pissing off every Mag7 like $AAPL. By building their own ecosystem instead of being sucked into another. It's been awhile since $GOOGL, Apple, Microsoft, and others had some genuine disruptors.
- @frank_be $MSFT was underwater DCs. These are floating DCs https://t.co/oOEyTEBJ5z
- Fun new information discovery from Poet OSINT community: Seems likely that $POET / $SIVE are going to power a Top-3 hyperscaler (either Amazon, Microsoft, Google). Given a Linkedin update from Ankur Singla (CEO of Lumilens). Who stated their customer is one of the top 3 hyperscalers with their post focusing on CPO/NPO. With that clue, seems more likely the Sivers CW DFB light source path over other EML suppliers given it's CPO Scale Out/NPO. If you don't remember, Sivers is the laser supplier to Poet. And Poet has purchase agreements with Lumilens. Always fun to find major potential breadcrumbs in the wild before they're officially confirmed. (Disclosure, long Sive)
- Yes, choosing the right theme is extremely important. Even if $POET doesn't really do anything, it still gets brought up thematically due to $LITE, $COHR, and others. Even if $RDDT outperforms extremely hard, it still gets brought down from $META, $MSFT, $CRM, and other software basket names.
- Trendforce reports that $AMD is actively trying to secure CW laser supply with multiple major procurement orders... Is probably just the start of the bottleneck? There's not much independent capacity in Western supply chains left other than $SIVE or $AAOI and maybe Macom. Especially after Lumentum/Coherent got locked up with multi-year agreements with Nvidia. (disclosure, own Sive and aaoi) Lumentum is already CW laser constrained and is likely buying off Japanese companies like Sumitomo/Furukawa if I had to guess per ER, and those are probably running at max capacity. From the Trendforce report, this is: "to ensure that its future capacity will not be constrained by NVIDIA and other major Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)." I wouldn't be surprised if other hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and others saw Nvidia / AMD signing LTAs, and are trying to secure capacity next. A lot of it is game theory on not getting choked out by competitors, and looks like AMD is tipping the first domino after Nvidia. But my opinion is that this just goes and show how invaluable this CW laser chokepoint is and the companies are inside it.
- At this point I can't tell anymore if markets from $META to $MSFT are correcting because of macro. Or just liquidity pull from $SPCX + index inclusion. And institutions frontrunning Nasdaq 100 and other rebalancing of SpaceX... Anyone know? https://t.co/sTLjsGq95V
- Yeah… I think all your upstream semi supply chain companies are going much higher. Goldman now expects a combined $5.3 trillion of capex spending for the four largest hyperscalers $GOOGL / $META / MSFT / $AMZN from 2025 to 2030. Revised up from $4.5T from Q1 earnings. “Aggregate capex est. $7.6 trillion between 2026 and 2031.” And it flows upward to these tiny chokepoints like $SIVE for CPO lasers/ $SOI for Silicon Photonics substrates. Leaderdrive/Harmonic for Humanoids components. And so on… Ai names don’t move in a straight line up, but is just the beginning of the next Industrial Revolution as we move from R&D/compute buildout into commercialization from Agents -> Physical AI -> discovery.
- @JonahK44 $NBIS is $META and $MSFT. $GOOGL has done a lot of Fluidstack deals with $CIFR to $WULF for more Colo. my guess is to plug in a lot more of their TPUS
- Ayar’s announcement today with Wiwynn is potentially very material for $SIVE regarding CPO -> rack scale deployments. As Wiwynn cloud clients include $AMZN, $META, $MSFT. And they’ve been in talks for $GOOGL TPU deployments. I think just for some reference architectures it’s around 512+ supernova light sourc a rack. So if $SIVE is the primary laser array supplier (which we expect, given Macom + Lumentum was removed from Ayar’s site). Even modest rack deployments would be very meaningful for revenue. This is just rack scale commercialization potential right now from $SIVE / Ayar / Wiwynn, which won’t show up in revenue financials yet.
Ongoing takes on other optical names too
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