SPEAKER_01 0:00

Eric, we are back with the AI Investor Podcast. And on today's episode, we are going to do a trend review where we look at the memory bottleneck, the new boom in AI robotics stocks. And yes, listeners, your day has come. We have a new portfolio recommendation. And we are also going to give you not one, not two, not three, but four investments to put on your watch list. All that and more is on AI Investor Podcast. This is the episode I have been the most excited about for a long time. I hope you are too. We are finally going to get into AI robotics. I am thrilled. Listeners be warned, this is going to be a six-hour episode. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But Eric, it's good to see you. I'm very excited about what we are going to be talking about today. Robotics was one of the trends that you had identified at the beginning of 2026 that you wanted to put some capital into. And while that might seem like ancient history, um, boy, what a what a list of trends that you unveiled for our listeners. It was I'm old enough to remember in January when you were talking about the memory explosion, uh, that turned out to be a fantastic winner. The rise of AI factories, the return of CPUs uh following the increase in demand for inference and agentic tasks. Intel was a big winner on that one. And you discussed some other ones as well. So I'd love to go through those and recap for our listeners before we get to my favorite, which is robotics.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah, it was definitely a cornucopia of trends for nerds, Austin. Um, which, you know, I'm a nerd. It's great. So we had talked about some different ideas. We had 12 trends to start the year. If anyone out there wasn't listening to the podcast at the time, I do think it's worth listening because as I've talked about many times, what matters more, stock picking or the idea behind stock picking, which is, you know, the trends that you're trying to go after. And I do think the idea behind stocks matters more. And we talked about ideas that we thought would be big throughout the year. So in our last episode, we started the portfolio review, which we're continuing today. And we kind of talked about how I felt about the market, some of the trends I want to go after. And today we're gonna review a few of those trends. We're we'll we'll go through each 12. Some all have a lot to say about, some all have a little to say about. But again, if you want to invest in it something like AI, I do think it matters more. Do you understand the big trends that are happening behind it more than necessarily picking out individual stocks? So let's start. Memory. And Austin, by the way, feel free just to at any point poke in and be like, hey, you've been talking too long. I need to interject here because we have a big list. Uh, memory is something that we've really got in right, and I'm I'm really proud of that. At the beginning of 2025, we diagnosed the importance of memory to basically the architecture of AI. And we said that memory was our top trend of 2025. We recommend Micron, we recommend SK Heinex. We start our supplier recommendations in the equipment industry with CamTech. And it's been something that's been really a pillar of the portfolio. And I do think we were one of the first people to understand how important memory was. You could go back to some of those early episodes in 2025 to see, you know, when I talked about stocks that could double, I very clearly defined as memory being the biggest trend of 2025. To be honest, I didn't necessarily expect memory to be as big a story in the market this year as it was. You know, you you know, we've we've called it, but we also have some humbleness. I as I've said many times, I never expected Micron to be up a thousand percent a year. That's that feels like kind of madness. So, you know, Austin, I think as we enter the second half of the year, there's you can invest directly in the companies. Um, Micron SK Heinex is gonna have an ADR. Uh Samsung is a company that you could buy um via pink sheets and other mechanisms, but there's there's gonna be a few trends that are emerging. Uh we'll talk about advanced packaging as an individual kind of trend later. But I also think with memory, there there's gonna be a lot of supplier plays because as I've known many times on this podcast, the pricing on memory could go down, and that might be a negative for these memory suppliers like Micron, SK Hein, Samsung, but it it will be a long-term positive for the companies making the equipment. And I think they're about to have a lot of demand catalysts. Some other areas would be you know, necessity is the mother of invention. If memory prices are high, uh companies are looking away around it. And one of those is memory pooling, for example. Do you have some clear, Austin?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Can I ask a question on that? Because I actually uh wanted to talk to you about this. Uh the the memory trade, absolutely fantastic. Um, well done there. We see, and you've talked about how the durability of this um industry is such that we can clearly see it continuing to grow in demand through 27 and 28. But necessity is the mother of invention, as you said. I'm curious if this moment you're you're rethinking a Cerebrus. Um, this company's down 35% from IPO. They've got, what, a $20 billion backlog with OpenAI. So that's kind of interesting, right? Like some of the IPO shine has come off. SpaceX is trading below the IPO price, Cerebrus is down 35%, but their chip design seems to at least avoid some of the high bandwidth memory constraints. Now, it's not quite that simple because they're still very expensive chips. And you're sort of, if you're building out an AI factory, so to speak, you're trading one expensive item for another. But I'm wondering now that they're down at 35% off their IPO price, if that's something that might be like worth a worth a small position these next two years.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah, that's an outstanding question. Look at, I mean, this is why you're the best co-host in the business right here. Um it's the cold brew talking. It's the cold brew. No, I I think that's a great question. You know, for people listening, so some trade-offs from uh is it Cerebris or Cerebrus? I'm I'm always so uncertain. Um, I think it's Cerebris. Um they're basically they're working with wafers instead of individual chips, and and that's part of their uh technology solution. They're gonna push more into SRAM versus high bandwidth memory. So I I definitely went way out an investment on them. They just reported earnings. I think a big problem with their earnings, they had some um margin concerns, and it's because they're having to effectively rent back compute because of some arrangements they had. A lot of new public companies don't understand that the valuation of your company is so based upon the narrative you set for the market. And they just definitely their investor relations department, some other areas, they they didn't have their story well told and they got punished for that. So I think that's a very wise question that you asked. That it could be an opportunity, right? We talked about did we want to buy them right after the IPO? I said no. If you have an IPO allocation, you're gonna get a pop versus what you have. But I expect it to trade down after. We saw a similar thing with SpaceX. Um, but now that it is in that zone, I do think it becomes interesting because the things they have to fix, which are their messaging to the market, aren't very hard. Um, so I I like that idea, and it's it's one we'll analyze. Another thing we'll analyze Austin is again this memory pooling, which is a solution to be able to not rely so much on high bandwidth memory. The problem is a lot of the companies involved in solving memory pooling are like Marvell and Estera Labs, and they're pretty expensive, but there are some foreign companies that definitely have some solutions towards this. So, you know, in the past we recommended SK Heinex as we're not gonna buy in the portfolio, but we'll recommend it. We did the same thing for BE semi. I think we might pull some foreign recommendations. It's not gonna be everyone who's a listener is able to buy that, but we would get on the scorecard and we would give people the option. And so I think for memory pooling, I might look at some stocks that trade in, you know, markets like Taiwan, et cetera. Um, but regardless, Austin, I think, you know, it's it's been we we covered memory a lot two episodes ago before this. Um, it has been the story of 2026, and I'm proud that we made that our first trend. And, you know, you can go back and listen to the episodes. We made it our first trend. We spent a significant amount of time on. And I believe we've called that very clearly since the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Um, yeah, congratulations. I mean, an absolute winning trade there. And I I love those points on cerebrus, cerebrus, however, we decided to say it. And you've got to contrast that shrinking margin narrative against micron's expanding margin narrative, right? Which just, you know, two things go in the opposite direction, bad optics. Let's not get stuck on memory, though. Um, I appreciate you answering that question. Let's talk about one of the other trends that you had uh discussed at the beginning of this year, which was the rise of AI factories. What's going on there? How's that trend looking?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yeah, we'll be pretty quick on some of these rise of AI factories, which the idea was we're going to start having gigawatt class factories. Um it's mostly bottlenecked. We we haven't had the capacity additions that we had expected, but the idea behind that was there'd be new architectures that would come from these larger factories. So that that flows into some other trends we have. You could look at some ideas that come from rise of AI factories. We had John Rotanti on recently. Some of his recommendations, like Eden, Quanta Services, play into this. So I think it's very much a trend that's intact. The problem has been we are continue to be delayed um by a lot of these projects being del just not happening at the uh schedule they initially anticipated. The the next trend we have is the return of CPUs. Uh Austin, that's played out beautifully, right? I mean, you you mentioned earlier we had the recommendation in Intel. The only honest thing I would say is we called this, we were very specific about it. I wish we had done more. Um, my regret is the omission. We we don't recommend AMD. It's up 150% year to date. One really interesting thing to track is the gap in valuation between AMD and NVIDIA. Like, what percentage of uh NVIDIA's market cap is AMD? And that that is constantly like it started the year at like 10% and now it's at 20%. And it's interesting because you know, like NVIDIA is kind of encroaching on AMD space faster than AMD is encroaching on Nvidia space, right? Like NVIDIA announced that they had $20 billion in CPU, like standalone CPU sales in there, but the narrative continues being so bad on NVIDIA. So Austin, I would I would say, you know, what I wish we would have done is recommended AMD, and we could have also done ARM. We should have just understood again what's more powerful, the trend or the stocks. We should have understood the trend was so powerful. We're gonna do Intel, we're gonna do AMD, we're gonna do ARM because the trend is so big and we we constrained it to Intel. But it is funny, like one of the companies with the greatest growth from this is NVIDIA, and they've had a very poor year relative.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Well, give give yourself some grace. If I remember correctly, the Intel recommendation was also because they had the additional call option of the fab, and they had the government backing, right? So it was just, it was like I I appreciate your point. We should have gone with ARM, we should have gone with AMD, we should have done the trend basket, and that's how you've done so well in optics and many of these other trends, but hey, you know, you did all you did all right out there. You did all right. Um, another one was self-driving cars going mainstream. I'm gonna call this uh maybe not mainstream, but definitely getting bigger. I'm gonna call this one a win as well. I I was sending you some stuff earlier this year. I had the pleasure of going to Austin, Texas and driving in both a Waymo and a Cybercab back to back. I'm seeing a lot more cyber cab headlines and leaks out there. We know Waymo is continuing to expand their cities and their footprints. So, yeah, what what what is the status of this trend? Still very early days, but definitely more self-driving now than six months ago.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah, we had this on because of the scale of some of the self-driving companies, like uh, you know, Waymo increasing the amount of cities they had. I will say there's a lot of overlap in self-driving versus robotics. So we'll talk about our watch list stocks there. One of the best supplier plays for self-driving is something like an Ava Technologies, which also flows into robotics, which is now seeing a little bit more movement. So we'll we'll cover some stocks that could benefit, um, could benefit from self-driving cars uh a little later in the episode. But you know, like you said, Austin, it's it's not something that has me investing opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Uh okay, well, let's move on to another trend, which I think you got this trend right. I'm not sure that our picks have done as well in this one, and that's off-grid energy, also behind the meter. And yeah, I'm sure our listeners know this, but this is that there's substantially more power needed for these data centers than any local municipality seems equipped to handle. And even if they have the capacity to do it, there's local blowback, there's the concern about raising local rates. The only way to get this power to these data centers quickly, reliably, at the scale and volume that's needed is by going behind the meter and having these data centers bring their own local power generation. Uh, GE Vernova is one of the plays here. Also, I mean, I I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. This is sort of like a uh a revenge of the empire comeback kids uh trend for me, where it's like the old school industries are actually the ones that are doing the best here. Like I think it was what Chevron just signed a huge behind-the-meter deal to bring natural gas to a fab in I'm not a fab, a um data center in Texas. I forget the billions of dollars involved. GE Vernova in many ways, you know, an old school company here. So uh this one feels like it was probably right trend, but maybe we bet the wrong positions. We were so you you were so focused on bottlenecks, right? We were looking for the new players. And really, maybe we should have been looking at is maybe the the pipeline companies and the companies that actually have access to that many, you know, BTUs or jewels of energy rather, that they could deliver. What are your thoughts here?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, I I think the biggest problem with behind the meter is there's an incredible amount of capacity, but projects continue being delayed. Austin, we we recommend Liberty Energy. It's it's been fine, it just hasn't been a standout performer. Um, we recommended American Superconductor, which is a little bit more grid focused. I'm fine with getting more grid plays in. Where my biggest omission would be when I introduced this theme, I brought up specifically Bloom Energy, which I had said is one of my favorite ideas in AI investing. It's a stock I own, it's a stock I talked about for some of our contracting work. I brought up as the next NVIDIA specifically. Um, and I haven't gone into the portfolio and I said, well, I would like it, but it's it's just run up a lot. Well, Austin, it's up another 200% this year. And the reason is it's a company that has a technology solution to be able to meaningfully increase this behind the meter problem. So, you know, that is just, you know, if if I had my biggest airs of omission this year and something that we haven't done right, Bloom Energy is near the top. It's just one that I've consistently love. For whatever reason, I haven't gone into portfolio. There's a litany of reasons. But maybe, maybe I would still even add it today, just despite the gains, because I do just I I do think the story is so great. And maybe from today, the probability of working out might be low in the sense it might be 30% or whatever. But if it does work out, the gains are so massive. And sometimes, you know, as we've talked about, you want those things with slugging percentage in the portfolio and the opportunity for slugging percentage of bloom energy so high. So, you know, sometimes I I worry there's so many trends, right? We we've talked about in the past self-driving. In many ways, self-driving is a very big idea, but there was kind of a single stock that you either bought the single stock or you didn't see gains from it, right? You basically need to buy Tesla, it's been the single thing that accrued gains from this trend. And I worry a little bit that behind the meter, the the single stock to buy was Bloom Energy. And we've talked about it, I've talked about my admiration for it, but I haven't made an official recommendation. And not getting the right stock for the trend can be extremely killer, right? Like if you didn't have NVIDIA from 2016, um, you just had massive performance drag. And um this is one I need to think more about is is I guess what I'm saying. So we we we we identified a good trend and we identified the right company. I didn't make official recommendations. So uh I will continue flagellating myself.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Well deserved, well deserved those 150% average returns in the AI portfolio or nothing. Why don't you get a couple thousand a couple more thousand percent winners in there? Um, speaking of some thousand percent stocks, let's talk about the optics explosion. I I give you an A grade here, you nailed it. I know you you not only recommended many in the portfolio, but you own many of them personally, and I think you even put a little extra spice on top of some options, correct me if I'm wrong. So, how did that trade pan out and what is that what is that trend looking like today?

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Yeah, I mean, optics is something we bent on extremely early. Uh, as you mentioned, A plus plus on memory, a plus plus on optics. Um, optics, we had Lumentum as early as possible. We had Coherent, we had Fabranet, we had applied optoelectronics. We probably, I mean, in many ways, have the best track record of anyone following this in terms of early time and conviction. But Austin, you know, I I saw a stat the other day that shocked me. Um, that a single AI training cluster today requires more optics than the entire worldwide demand in 2008. So I I think you know, optics right now is taking a breather um because number one, it became a core bottleneck trade. And um number two, there's just digestion for many of these ideas. I like many of the stocks for the long run. I'm a little concerned in the intermediate, and the valuation did get very high in some of them, but you know, we've been successful that starting this year. I said I was a little worried about where optics stocks were training, and we went and we found new recommendations. We found Axtron and we found air test system. So, despite the fact that maybe some of the main optics names were very crowded, we we did go out and we did find some of the other stocks. So I'm gonna continue watching optics. There's actually today on the watch list, I have an optics idea that we've never mentioned on the show before. Uh, it's also a self-driving play and a robotics play. So we'll talk about that. Juicy. Yeah, juicy, juicy. So we'll break that down. But um, optics is definitely it's something that in the near term is challenged, but in the long term, is the demand, you know. I bring up that more optics in one trading cluster than all of 2008 to say I'm very confident in the growth of optics long term, but it did become a crowded trade at the beginning of this year. And I'm proud of the way for listeners who are very dedicated and listening to the show, I think they were rewarded very well with the recommendations we made on it.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah, absolutely. No doubt, no doubt. You're being modest there. Um, let's let's move on to one of the most interesting trends here, in my opinion, only because of how differently it contrasts with the rest of your trends, which is has software bottomed. I say that because all of your other trends are growth focused. Where is the capital going? You know, you were early on all the bottleneck trades. The software bottom trend is really more of a market mispricing opportunity. You know, uh software stocks, SaaS stocks have been absolutely woodshed in the last year. Whenever you thought the pain was over, there was more pain around the corner. So this is the most unique trend in that sense in that it stands apart from the other ones in your portfolio. Eric, we also have talked about doing some Mea culpas, and I must be totally honest that I went falling knife catching the other day and I bought a basket of beaten down software stocks. I don't know, I don't know how bad of a mistake that was. Only time will tell. But for the for so that our listeners know, uh, I I picked up some uh some toast, some Salesforce, some snowflakes, some Intuit, and some HubSpot seeing what happens there. So um small positions in each, but I am I am personally invested in this falling knife um bonanza here. Tell me what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

That that's pretty interesting because you know I I can see toast. I I can see some of those other stocks. I'm surprised you went HubSpot. That feels like one I'm I'm a little more reserved on.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

I HubSpot, I actually there was a podcast where I actually said I think HubSpot's not coming back. So I did the smallest position there, purely just valuation, uh to be honest. I just I'm looking at it and it's like the it's still growing. Um it it seems so unbelievably cheap that there's there's got to be some sort of recourse and correction there. But that is like strictly a value play. I actually think the business model. Is is threatened, which means it's a mistake trade. I gotta just gotta admit that right now. We gotta get out of the way. I'm gonna be I'm you know, Eric, here's what it really is. I bought HubSpot for future tax loss harvesting. Okay. I bought it for future tax loss harvesting. That's all it is. I'm gonna admit it right now. Um no, I I did a small one in that just because I was actually I was actually surprised at how robust the business is holding up in most recent quarters. Um and there could be a cliff where you know to come, but I I was surprised when I I took a little deeper look under the hood.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Okay, no, that's great. Uh I'm glad I sussed that one out. Um, but you know, Austin, like you said, there's pockets of what's succeeding and it can change very fast. We had mentioned, I think if you went back and listened to the episode, we previewed that trend that we had said, well, if there's a software sector we believe will succeed this year, it is security. Um, we didn't make a recommendation that was official in there, so you know, muted praise, but I I think we had called out CrowdStrike and some of the other areas. CrowdStrike's up 70% year to date. Amongst stocks we have in our portfolio, Cloudflare is up 28%. You know, you look at the Nasdaq up nine percent and deeply challenged across. I mean, if we went and looked at IGV, I'm gonna actually do it just right now as I'm talking. So IGV year to date is down nine percent. So, so we do have uh Cloudflare snowflakes up 21% year to date, and and really boomed after the last earring. So, you know, it's it's one of those things. I had someone message me the other day and say, should should I sell uh synopsis? And you know, kind of my opinion on that's well, it's been disappointing, but also you know, diversification matters and you feel brilliant until you don't feel brilliant, and having some some you know different ideas in the pool, that that means you won't be able to if you want a thousand percent returns a year, you need to go all in on one idea, but you're taking on a lot of risk. If if you want to diversify, you need to buy the best of breed across different ideas. So I remain fine having some best ideas in software, uh, which is what we have. And as I've mentioned in the past, I won't mind the idea of adding to Cloudflare, even though it's expensive, because I think it is so well positioned for the agentic era of AI. Um, you know, there's a lot of talk of what software stocks are in the token path. And I I think a company like Snowflake lines up very well for that. So I I do think there's a good chance we would add some software stocks in the back half of the year. And I I do think some remain undervalued. I I I think honestly, like if I were to rank my Meg 7 stocks today, like Microsoft is just so beaten down. It it it would probably be high up on the list. I'd rather buy Microsoft than Apple. So um, you know, this this trend, um we we haven't invested in it, which has been probably good for us, but I do believe we'll see some opportunity in software emerge.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Absolutely. And you know, for I also did pick up some synopsis as well. So um, you know, I I on average the the the median stock in the SaaS space is probably not going to have a bright future, but some of these have absolutely been oversold. The question is figuring out which ones, and I like your point about being in the token path. That's a new sort of narrative that's coming out there. Snowflake is is a perfect example of it. So yeah, I um I like having some, I like having some additional and growing exposure to this section of the industry. I'm personally approaching it smaller positions broad-based, right? Like just by 10 small positions as opposed to three big ones, personally. Um, Eric, let's talk about the TPU versus NVIDIA complex. There, you know, there's different companies and AI models that are being exposed here that are trained on it. So, how has that played out? And if I remember correctly, when we were talking about this trend original, originally, it was a little bit more like the NVIDIA complex had that had the strength of the trade. And then, you know, up comes anthropic roaring back, which was largely trained on Google's chips. So, sort of like a changing of the guard there a little bit, not to say anything about what a great company NVIDIA and open AI are, but the narrative much more favored NVIDIA and open AI early this year, and now it's much more you know, team anthropic and TPU.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Yeah, it's it's very interesting because the question was is there gonna be a rebound in these companies, as you mentioned, in the open AI complex, which includes NVIDIA. Last year it was a lot of Broadcom versus NVIDIA as the biggest companies, NVIDIA being larger in neo clouds and open AI, and and you know, you've got the TPU complex with Broadcom and many of the other suppliers. But you know, it's interesting, there's been a huge reversion this year. Austin, one of our biggest winners this year that people who have been listening wouldn't have expected is Marvell, right? It's it was constantly the black sheep of the portfolio. Now it's it's up a lot. I don't know how much is since we recommended it.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

It got put in the doghouse. It got put in the doghouse at one point, and you said I'm I would consider selling it to your credit. You did not. And you know, sometimes we have to take our own advice here. It was some other episode way back when where we said, look, you know, if you're thinking about selling a stock, just just wait, just extend your timeline, right? Like you're you're waiting is is on average a fantastic idea in investing, waiting a little longer. And Marvel sort of the perfect example of that.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Yes, 100%. You know, Austin, you and I have both said our returns on stocks we sell is probably better than returns on stocks we buy. And that's just a certain humbleness of it, it's hard to get right. But you know, what's going on right now is basically Google with TPUs is hedging its bets, and they've got um Media Tech, which has been another outstanding stock. They're probably bringing in Marvell into the mix, and also some Marvell's other projects are scaling. And Marvell's seeing an outstanding year, Broadcom's seen a very middling year. I actually recommended it recently just based on the fact it can be a stalwart and portfolio. But, you know, right now, you know, the stocks that are really winning from this Marvell, MediaTech, SemTech, which I went to details last episode. So sorting out which companies have a deep association to these custom chip projects is gonna only continue being more valuable. So I actually think this is a sneaky, huge theme. And I think it will get bigger in the second half of the year.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Interesting. Interesting. Well, you heard it here first, another trend to watch that the trend watching continues here. Um, let's talk about the Vera Rubin wave, and this is the conversion to 800 V power. This is an interesting one because it sort of spans two industries, which is EVs and data centers, where largely the automotive and EV industry was gearing up to transition from 400V to 800 V. So there's a lot of investments in this technology to handle that additional power. Vera Rubin is such that you need 800 V power, which has different sort of equipment set that you need to manage it to get the power into these factories. But at the same time, the tide is going out for EVs in many ways, maybe loss of federal tax credit or or whatever the case may be. Now these data centers are picking up a lot of that technology and demand. So I find this trend interesting because of the industries it spans. What would but but also don't we have a slight delay on Vera Rubin as well? So we might still be in sort of that a little bit of a trough moment where we're transitioning from the 800V architecture in EVs being built out, EVs sort of wane at the same time. We're expecting this Vera Rubin wave, but it hasn't fully picked up Steam yet. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Yeah, and you know, the big way of just framing it is every single time NVIDIA makes a shift in architectures, it's essentially akin to how Apple used to. It would have, you know, iPhone 4, 4S, and then 5. And as you would do that, it would be massive shifts in what kind of suppliers would make money. Now that happens with NVIDIA and its platforms, and the next one is going to be Ruben. Before this, it was Blackwell. The shifts that they made in Blackwell had enormous consequences across dozens of companies. Optics. Optics is a big one. Yep. And we're going to see they're they're driving the agenda in Optics. They're driving in power management in a lot of these ideas. So basically, what what the debate is that you were referencing earlier was that there's a lot of reports that basically with their next architecture, they're they're going to change it. So they're going to make this 800 V transition. They're going to have an intermediate step. Austin, the the key idea here is, and I think it got into this, as we described in the last podcast episode of whack-a-mole, people looking for all the next bottlenecks. They will probably make it so that they're going to have an intermediate step that many of their, you know, suppliers, their customers, um are going to buy 400V and 800V will be optional. But they are definitely moving to this transition because as we've discussed many times, 800V requires a re-architecting of data centers. But Austin, you know, the key idea here is we were early to this. When we first talked about this power management trend, which I think was our March 13th episode, we referenced it time and time again. I said, I, you know, we were very early on optics. We are very early on memory. I am putting my flag in the ground that we will be early to this power management opportunity. We highlight five stocks, and as far as I know, each of those stocks are up more than 100%. And we went, we circled back and we did recommendations later, and there some of them were down a little bit. But overall, this has been an extremely winning idea. So I remain very excited about this opportunity. I think the trend remains in place, even though there's there's some near-term choppiness. So I'm gonna continue looking for ideas that benefit from this transition. And as a spoiler alert, we'll have one in our watch list stocks, which we're about to get to.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

All right, all right. I'm very excited about that. All right, I'm gonna take a nap for this next one. Wake me up when we're done. Uh tell me what's going on with or tell our listeners what's going on with advanced packaging and just you know, buzz me when I can come back.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Advanced packaging, most boring trend name ever, most important thing ever. You know, Austin, it is just it used to be semiconductor. Gains used to be you'd go to smaller and smaller levels in what you call nodes. So you're gonna get your gains from going from seven nanometers to five nanometers to three nanometers. Increasingly, it's how you package it. You know, at the end of the day, this is gonna be one of our continuing most enduring themes. I've I've talked about Anto innovation as one of my top picks. It's it's up 50% the past month as we film this on July 1st. Apologies, that's it's coming out, but I am on vacation this week. So, you know, if something moves in the intermediate term, that's what's happening. But Austin, we're we're definitely gonna we're we're gonna continue focusing on this and and I think I'll have some new investments and and I'll wake you up to say we're gonna do robotics next.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Oh, oh, okay, okay, I'm here. Let's go. Uh robotics. I'm not even gonna waste time with the tea up. Just go. Tell me what's going on. Where's the opportunity?

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Well, we're gonna spend a lot more time on robotics, but the the bottom line is physical AI is having its moment right now. It's probably because of a SPAC that's happening with agility, which we covered in our latest episode. But we've got a recommendation coming up, and we've got a lot of watch list stocks. So, you know, if you've been waiting for more robotics recommendations, you know, the time is now maybe a little euphoria, and we'll have something on the the downside, but it's okay. I I feel like we we can put some plans in place to make more investments in robotics right now.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

And there's a lot of overlap between robotics and our next trend here, um, and maybe just equipment plays, but also just the industry opportunity, which is drones and next generation security. So yeah, I expect those Venn diagrams have, you know, some similar overlap. But tell me, tell me about that trend. You've not made any real portfolio placements here, at least not in the public-facing portfolio.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Yeah, you know, the thing is it it's a horrible thing to say. I I don't like focusing on this at all, but I think in the war in Russia and Ukraine, um I think it's like 95% of Russian casualties are now due to drones. And I I'm not here to celebrate that. That's that's not what I want. But, you know, another issue that we look at is a war in Iran and the U.S. not being able to enter the Strait of Horn Moose and uh kind of dictate the war because of drones. And again, we're not geopolitical, we're not trying to do whatever, we're trying to be aspirational about the future of humanity, which war is not. We are not here to celebrate war, but all the same, it is clear that the future of security is going to be drones in a massive way, and it will only be proven out more and more. So we would like more recommendations. There's there's just not the existing stock universe we would love. Uh, we're gonna require some more IPOs and some other areas, and also a lot of these stocks got pretty heated at the beginning of the year. A lot of them have come back. Some stocks I've been watching. I I think I talked about this one, is like a crack in robotics. It it's a company that I think is gonna be relatively important. Um, it's just it felt a little expensive and now it's 30% off its highs. And if if it continues selling off, it's it's one I'm gonna, you know, think about adding to the portfolio. Uh, an Andrew. If it IPOs, I will very strongly consider adding it to the portfolio. So Austin, I think it's just, you know, we would like a broader set of ideas, but the key ideas, uh, I believe the uh allocation for the next suggested budget for the US military is something like uh it's a massive increase for drones. It's it's up to like 50 billion or more. And um this is only going to become more important, and there's there's some things that I don't love to talk about from it, in the sense that I I don't love um some of the outcomes from it, but it it's absolutely essential that anything related to national security is massive budgets and it's about to change in a significant way.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Uh absolutely, and I I I echo everything you said. You and I have had a lot of conversations about this just as friends and colleagues over the years. Um, and we're not we're not trying to profiteer off of conflict, and we think everything that's happening, you know, with drones and particularly the war in Ukraine is tragic for both sides. We have also just just to underscore the point you're talking about, though, you know, we we need to be aware of where these trends are going. Obviously, Taiwan and China are watching what's happening in Ukraine and Russia. Obviously, Iran has learned a lot from watching that conflict. They have their own drone programs. Um, but it and and if you just think about the math, you know, early on in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, HIMARS, which are these missile systems, were really a big part of how Ukraine wanted to defend themselves and they were asking for a lot of HIMARS from the US. These are these missiles, missile systems are five to six million dollars per missile. When you think about the equivalent number of drones that you can buy with that money and how much more precision guided they can be and the payload capacity increase, obviously military budgets are going here, and not just military budgets. I mean, there's also plenty of domestic applications as well. We've talked about this book many times, but Chip Wars is a really good book that discusses the uh the way the US defense industry, in many ways, partners with the tech industry to shepherd in and usher in new eras of technology, particularly the microchip with Texas instruments. Something very similar is going to happen with drones, and it probably already is right now. And I would expect as these military dollars flow into drone technology, we see uh decreases in cost, increase in capacity, particularly payload, which then opens up um commercial uses domestically for you know package delivery or medicine delivery or whatever or agricultural applications. We see a lot of seeding applications, pest removal, um, weed removal. I mean, the the list goes on. So, yes, you know, we're we're not strictly thinking about this from a perspective of conflict, but what will happen when all of this money flows into this industry and the opportunities it unlocks, not just militarily, but also commercially as well. Enough on that point, but I just I find that this is a really interesting trend that if you remove, if you think five to ten years ahead, all of that money is going to result in new capacity and new functions. And then people will start to really see in their day-to-day life how how useful these things are.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

And and I might, it's it's worth adding right before we film this podcast, a stock that is one of the blue chips, relatively for drones, aero environment. It had been down 50% year to date and a large rally after earnings. So I think we do see a little bit of a tick back inflection. So as we do that, we'll be responsive to opportunities in the space. So I won't be surprised if we had one or two additions to this in the back half of the year.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Okay. Looking forward to that. And Eric, speaking of additions, our moment has come. We have a new portfolio edition here. It is in robotics. I cannot even contain my excitement. Lay it on us. What are you putting in the portfolio? What is the company? What do they do? And how much are you putting in it? All right.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

How excited are you, Austin? We're gonna say if I announce Regal Rex Nord one to ten.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Here we go, here we go. Buying right now. Mash the buy button.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Have you ever heard of this company before? No, I assume that's 99% of people. And you know, I mean, credit to Carastel Capital. It they released a report on it a couple days ago. I I thought it was extraordinary. I've been spending uh, you know, I probably spent 10 to 15 hours not only reading the report but doing other due diligence. And I'm I'm not someone who wants to impulsively move on a lot of these ideas, but I did really like this. And sometimes, you know, you have these activist funds, a lot of them used to be short sellers, they've moved to now promoting stocks on the long side. Maybe something about the current market environment embedded in that, but they have a great track record of um highlighting past opportunities. So they recently put out a report on Regal Rex Nord, which for anyone out there, if you want its ticker R R X. And you know the highlight reel for this company is it combines a grown presence in data, industrial automation, and a return to US manufacturing, growth in new aerospace and defense areas, as we just talked about, and robotics. So Austin, it's kind of like whoa, this is the most exciting thing ever. That's like literally the white hot center of all the trends we've talked about. And now that I've done that, I need to walk it back just a little bit because um this is an old company, it's a little boring. Um, basically, they they have historical industries around industries, uh, industrial automation and different areas, and also things like H V A C, but they have a growing presence in data centers. So they have a historical foothold in something like switch gears, they have a new growth driver in data center power equipment modules, which is something that John Rotanti, if you go back to that episode, he was really big on. The fact that we are growing so fast that we're going to need to be modular about what works in data centers. And this company has gone very quickly from no revenue to 735 billion or sorry million, I don't want to overstate it, and backlog in their data center business. And that's mostly in these modular data centers. Now, Austin, I should say they've got significant competition. Rex that we have in the portfolio compete with them, Verdev competes with them, Schneider competes with them, some stocks that we've uh issued praise on, but we haven't necessarily recommended, such as ABB, Eden, Powell Industries, they compete here. But the bottom line is this company's uh has the potential to go from today almost no data center revenue. Like this year, they're basically nothing. It's like maybe 3% up to 16% within two years. And the other side, Austin, is something like defense and aerospace. We just talked about how do we get investments in the space that aren't just like super high flying for the future. Well, well, they grew 76% because they are so tuned to the key growth areas like drones. And the next thing I want to talk about is robotics. So they have a broad portfolio of linear motion products. So that that's the main. Area for robotics. Half your uh bill of materials, if you're building humanoid robotics, is things like actuator and and these linear motion products. This company has a small market share, Austin. But but the key idea is we just talked about agility being a company that is going to do a spec. We talked about figure in our latest episode, being a company valued at 39 billion. We talked about Optimus from Tesla. One thing that all these companies want is an American supply chain. And this is what um, you know, this is what this pick provides. This is what Regal Rexnord provides because they are going to be a company for uh, you know, these these humanoid robox companies looking for an American supply chain to be able to rely on. So there's some modeling about what the Robox opportunity could look like between 2026 and 2030. On the low side, it's pretty low, it's only 100 million, it's 102 million. On the high side, it gets up to 1.5 billion. But the key idea here, Austin, is trajectory. So they have one trend in place, which is modular units, and they're scaling on this from the death center build out. Right as modular units is probably reaching some kind of like apex and growth rate, then they have robotics to stack on top of it. And this is what I love because this is a stock that they're trading for 11 and a half times 2027 EBITDA. If you look at 2028 adjusted free cash flow, they're trading for about 12 times. Now, Austin, the 2028 estimates for EPS, they're trading about 13 times. We had a listener question that John Rotanti addressed about Parker Hannifin, and he said, Well, Parker Hannathon is only about 3% AI. Well, Parker Hanniphon trades for twice that rate. So, you know what what could go wrong with this? Um number one, most of the revenue today, I I don't want to say this is an AI company today. It is simply not. Most of the revenue comes from industrial automation, HVAC, air conditioning, which actually is kind of an AI market today, but we won't get into that.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Um I was gonna say that that is anything's an AI company today, and HVAC actually is actually it it is.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Um it is, but that's 60% of their business. So you you look at the AI drivers for their business, defense and aerospace, it's only 7% of their business. But the thing is, it's grown at 76%. So data centers, it's only 3% of their business. But I mean, this is a company that they have now 735 million backlog, that instantly becomes more than 10% of their business. So it's gonna quickly reach within that initial time frame of to 2028, which we've talked about so much on this podcast, is kind of the the zone of uncertainty, it's gonna reach 15%. So the idea here is it is priced at being like 12 times, 13 times earnings. And right when they reach that is when they repriced being an AI company. And Austin, beyond that, is when they become a robotics company, right? So with if if they become a robotics company and all of a sudden starts pricing in that they're gonna start doing 200, 300 million dollars a year, they could see a significant opportunity. So the bottom line is I think this is a $15,000 investment. I think it's relatively low risk, especially compared to many other companies in the portfolio. And I think it continues diversifying exposure. If you want just the modular design stocks, we had John Rotanti on anyone could listen to a podcast with him. I think it was June 4th. He talked about Eden, he talked about other stocks. But this this stock, I believe, in particular, offers a lot of exposure to robotics at a cheap price point. It it it it you know, Austin, it is the problem when you look at other robotic stocks, they're just expensive, they're already anticipating a lot. So I love starting out more robotics exposure with something that it has a high chance of working without robotics, and if the robotics narrative kicks in, it's probably a 100% gainer in the next 24 to 36 months. So this is why I thought this is a perfect stock for you.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

I love it. I love it. I'm a buyer. Thank you, thank you. That my day has come. No, I do love this. I love this recommendation and your point on. I mean, first of all, I like the exposure to other industries as well. A word of caution to people we have seen that companies that sort of have multiple things that could go right are often a lot harder to rate. Uh, so I think about a Marvell, right? Marvell has had many things, and in many ways, they were the perfect AI play from the beginning, but they didn't get re-rated until relatively a lot later into the story, right? They had an optics business, they had a chips opportunity, they had so many reasons they should have gone up earlier, but the complexity of the multiple business lines they had, in many ways obfuscated, and also in many ways their own operational missteps. But a word of caution to our listeners when you have a company that has multiple industries like this, they're harder to value, they're harder to unpack because you don't get sort of the pure play enthusiasm, right? Someone's like, I just want this aspect of this, I just want optics or whatever interconnects I'm going with applied optoelectronics or whatever the case may be. With that said, as I hear you talk about this, it feels to me like there's probably, and this is please forgive me, I'm gonna strain the analogy here. There's probably some equivalent analogy here to like in some ways optics, not the bottleneck aspect that made this stock go well, but for actuators, where if you're building out a data center, the optics are like the the interconnects that you need are a non-negotiable, right? If you're buying these chips, you need to connect them. Otherwise, there's no point in buying the chips and your data center can't go online. It's it's a non-negotiable. And if you're trying to build high range of motions robotics, the actuators are non-negotiable. You can't cut 50% of your actuators and then cut your robotic, your robot's range of motion by an equivalent amount or even more, because the ones that have that high range of motion are going to be significantly more useful in the marketplace, right? It's almost like it's probably one place where you really can't afford to trim and be competitive. And Elon has talked a lot about how challenging it is to build like the hands and the actuators inside Optimus. And you could find any sort of good videos of him describing that there to contextualize how difficult this problem is, but also how important it is. Like you need a lot of actuators to have a robot that has a high range of motions, which is where generalized AI can actually apply itself and be meaningful. So, one, a word of caution just on the expectations for a diversified business like this. But then also, I just I love the actuator moment. It's it's it's if someone like Elon is saying it's difficult, it is very, very difficult. And if you're trying to build a robot that has a general purpose wide range of motion, it's it's a non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

Now I I think all that's a great point. And you know, nothing's 100%, but you know, Austin, I think it is. When we introduced Autstrap said it was relatively speculative. Um, I think all the stocks that most people are rushing to in the Robox space and will preview an oral watch list are relatively speculative. So I just always want to give people something. I as I've said so many times, we're never going for the high score, right? It's it's it's not like I'm creating a theoretical portfolio where I'm trying to make people the most money. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to give people something that they can live with and gives them exposure to trends and lets them sleep relatively easy at night, which doesn't feel great. I'm only like today where everything's moving so fast. But I I just feel like this stock pick it's a great entry point for some robotics and some other trends. And um, we'll we'll build off it and we'll build some more risk off of it. But would I rather you have three times this versus one times a sleeve of something more speculative? I think that's the right way to approach this robotics opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Well, look, I want I want more robotics opportunities, and no surprise, this is going to be a long episode. Of course, our listeners should know I was gonna push this one to be a record length. It's just what's gonna happen. I'm sorry, dear listeners, pour a cold brew and uh join us for the next segment here because that this is so this one's officially going in the portfolio, but in many ways, your watch list stocks have been a great feeder of new ideas and new investments as well. So if people want to gear up, like myself, for this robotics opportunity, what are some of the other stocks that we should put on our watch list?

SPEAKER_02 53:27

I I did I made the mistake. I was like, awesome, I think this one will be like 30 minutes. I didn't like four minutes.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

You should know better by now. Why don't you just say it's gonna be a long one and then we'll actually have a short episode?

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Okay, so we'll do some watch list stocks. I'll make them short-ish. Uh Allegro Microsystems. I had pitched this one last year at InvestiCon. Um quick pitch, InvestiCon.ie. I'm going to be speaking there in Dublin. Um, I gave a presentation last year. Uh the Robux stocks I did were all up 100% or more. I'm gonna have new ideas this year. So if if you'd like, we will put something in the show notes that will give you a 200 euro discount because it is in Dublin. But basically, this is a company that is, you know, it's it's doing kind of boring markets. You would never think about investing before. It's May Neck sensing, it's it's power, um, it's it's going to an auto and market industrial. As I've talked about a lot before, I like companies that have bad markets in the past because you know, they're about to have bad markets and they're about to transition to good markets like robotics. So this one, you know, it's it it has like a lot that's gonna go right for it potentially because it had EV previously, and now it's going to benefit from this transition to 800 V system. So if we looked at what it's gonna do, it has um it has uh isolated gate drivers, which is a three billion dollar opportunity you've probably never heard of.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Oh yeah, isolated gate drivers.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Wait for this next one. Oh tunneling, I can't even standoresistance. Boom.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Oh my god, there we go.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

There we go. But you know, Austin, I think you know, for a lot of these places like how much more can you increase your opportunity in EV, and then how much more can you get from these emerging opportunities? So, this company, it's like for an ice car, a lot of these companies is is the story how much can you get from an ice car? It's a little, how much can you get from an EV car? It's it's a lot more. This is what they're doing, but Austin, what they have is because they have these power management solutions, they suddenly become a data center play. So they go up to maybe making $425 per rack in content, which is up from $20 in 2023, and it's because of this 800 V transition. But then we also have this robotics opportunity, which they're looking at $55 per factory robot, $150 per humanoid robot. I do need to say I'm not just blase about things. When I see sometimes it's like $150 per humanoid robot, I'm like, there's not gonna be that many, right? Like Agility Robux was looking at a trial with a thousand robots for 300 million. Well, $150 times 300, it's not a lot, right? It's not a lot. So I'm completely cognizant of the fact, but Austin, this is this is a stock that I talked earlier in our preview episodes for what stocks we're looking at in the second half of the year. And I said, I want to go for two things. I want either you're justified on your valuation through the period of uncertainty 2028 for stocks like NVIDIA or Broadcom, or I want things that have growth areas that even if data center spending is slowing down, they can significantly exceed that. I think this is a stock that meets that profile. They would be at about $2 per share in 2020, 2029. So they're being valued at that point, but they have a huge play into this power management trend, and they also have a play into power management, so or robotics and power management. So, point being, this is this is this is a watch list stock. I thought about recommending it today. I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger. Valuation is a little bit there. I wish I'd recommended earlier, but um I think I think it's one to put on the radar.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

I I actually love that, and I'm a little bummed to hear that they are already growing into that expectation because I love this the sort of misunderstood, well-placed opportunity. And I was hoping what we would hear, uh, and it sounds like the market caught on already, is that they were being sold off a little bit because of the 800V, you know, that they were exposed to 800 V because of EVs, but people don't realize they're now perfectly positioned for this this rack growth. But, you know, whatever. Cats out of the bag. But you know, it sounds sounds like other people are already savvy to that trend as well. Um, boy, I gotta go, um, I gotta go put on some some vintage clothing here for this next one. Um, we're getting a blast from the past. This was this was an Internet of Things favorite, that a favorite roller coaster that you and I watched go up and down and up and down for many years. Talk to us about the next watch list stock. And it's having a good moment right now. I mean, I I think they were up huge last week.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

Yeah, Ambarella, ticker symbol, AMBA, as you mentioned, blast from the past, huge favorite. We had had in tons of marketing around 2015 from Motley Fool, um, around their exposure to GoPro and drones. They peaked at that point at 120. Uh, then they quickly went back to 40 per share. In 2021, they hit over $200 per share. They went back to 40 in 2024. Austin, there's a great quote from Arrested Development that's like Tobias Funke, which oh, I love this. It's like people delude themselves into thinking this is right, but it might work for us.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

Yeah, and Brad, Brad, you gotta put the meme on the screen right now. You gotta deliver it faithfully. This is one of my favorite shows of all time. I'm not gonna let you butcher it. Uh, he said, you know, he's explaining something to his wife, and he says, you know, people delude themselves into thinking, and she says, like, you know, yeah, well, well, will it? And he says, Well, yeah, for us this time. And then he responds to me, he's like, It might. Well, did it work for those people?

SPEAKER_00 59:55

No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but but it might work for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

So, anyway, but that's the thing. It's like Amberella, it might work for us, right? And that's the question. Like, they've done this now, this super rise and fall, and super rise and fall. And the reason people like it is because it is extreme performance at low wattage, which is what you need for edge AI. So you have all these robots and video cameras and things that you need inferencing at the edge, you need um, you know, video and image signal processing at the edge, and you need to do it with power efficiency, and Ambarella does it. So there's a fresh idea of well, this company's about to be super valuable from it. Awesome. The problem is valuation, which is it's at $90. Uh, yeah, it and their 2029 EPS is $146. So you're paying 60 times 2029, which this is why it's a watchless stock.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

I love the idea, but that's a lot, it's a lot. It they they feel perfectly positioned for the trend we just talked about as well, which is drones, um, and also security, right? Not not that all security needs to be video based, you know. You're mostly talking about cybersecurity there, but I mean, talk about you know power efficiency, just it has a lot of endpoints where it can work. So, yeah, spicy valuation, but could drone play as well. Yep. Okay, one more, I believe. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Which one do you want to do? Ava next, yeah. Okay, let's do Ava.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

So I want the bear. This is our robotics episode. I am not throwing in the towel early. I promised our I this is I've been waiting a year and a half for this. Come on, man. Give me another watch list talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

So we've got Ava. Um, this one's interesting. Ava Technologies, I think. Ticker, because you won't know it from how I said it, uh, is A E V A. Um, we have Alistair. This was the one that we picked. The reason I picked Ousta is because this company, by comparison, is just like a longer putt. Like Ouster's kind of moving for like LiDAR that's going to work in a lot more applications. It's cheaper. You're going to be able to do it in drones. You're it Ava is trying to do something different. They call it 4D LIDAR, which is a continuous way wave. Ouster would be pulsed. So the thing is, this technology works better for markets like trucking, where it's like you need an absolute non-failure rate. And that's where they've got in some of their wins. And some of their future wins will be things like drones and robotics. So, Austin, it is we we are in an architecture battle for things like self-driving cars. And this is what I mentioned earlier, like self-driving cars. We would talk about a stock that's gonna be on the watch list. This is Ava right now because they have they are the preferred platform, they're the uh, I think it's called what is it, like reference architecture, uh for NVIDIA's Hyperion architecture. It is Ava. They also have ones with Daimler Trock, multiple OEMs, so they they have a lot going for them. Um, one other issue I should mention, they're pushing into death centers, which is kind of interesting. So they're trying to do an optical amplifier solution that would be working for co-package optics, which is an upcoming trend. So, you know, Austin, it it is just a tale of two stocks that Ava, it's it's largely pre-revenue. They're gonna do like 33 million revenue this year. Um, Alstra's gonna do 220 million, so that's a delta of like six or seven X. The market cap for this company is two billion versus four mil billion. So the valuation-wise, um it's it's half the size with 15 the revenue or whatever, but I mean, it's just it it maybe has a data center opportunity, it maybe has self-driving, which is a little bit more delayed. So I'm not opposed to adding this stock, and it's one that we haven't added before. Um, but it is just a little risky, right? So we're we're gonna see it just needs more research.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:35

Between the two, based on what we talked about here, I'm definitely a little more excited by ouster. You know, hey, let's watch it. I like it. But when I spragmatic, it's pragmatic. Yeah, it's uh you know, valuation matters, but also um the going continuous versus wave-based lidar makes it more expensive. And that just means your end product has to a demand the difference in performance that you're gonna get continuous versus wave-based, and it's also gonna be a lot more expensive, so you just have fewer endpoint products. Now, cost will come down, but at the same time, ouster's version will also come down. So if I think about where I would rather be for a LiDAR moment, I would want a system that stands a better chance of being affordable so it can be you know more mass installed, as opposed to the highest best performance, which is gonna have fewer endpoints like trucking, yes, but probably not as practical for humanoid or warehouse robotics or or smaller scale applications. But I mean, let's watch it. I I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

But between the two, hearing what you said there, um ouster all day, yeah, and a couple watch list stocks beyond this, like we're just not gonna go for like three hours today. Um uh Vichy Precision Group, Ticker VPG, um, Novanta, which is Nov T. I'm definitely I have a fairly wide net. I'm spending a lot of extra time looking at robotic stocks. So, how many robotic? Fox Ox, do I think could join the portfolio? Um, yeah, I think we could, you know, I think we could get up to five or six pretty quickly. Um, I don't want to be a prisoner to the moment in terms of it's running because we have this spec, but I also do think getting some quality companies in right now is the right time. So I I I think we will get up to five robox companies by the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

All right, all right. Well, sign me up. You know, I'm excited, Eric. You know, we did it, we we pushed into new territory today, not just robotics, but also over an hour on our episode. Congratulations, you did it. Thank you for pouring extra cold brew and making it through that. Thank you to our listeners who stuck with us to the end. I hope I hope they appreciated that. I've really been looking forward to having this conversation. I'm glad we finally got to. And I just wanted to quickly preview our next episode here, which is uh we're gonna take a deep dive into advanced materials, or should I say Eric will? I'm gonna take a nap. Um, so Eric, um, not looking forward to that one, but yeah, I'm sure we'll do it either way. Uh, and then we're also gonna talk about the next advanced packaging technology uh that's coming out of Taiwan semi, and that's glass substrates. Ooh. Um, and then there's gonna be a lot of companies that we haven't discussed before. So uh, Eric, I'm really excited that to hear that you're going into robotics. I genuinely do look forward to the advanced packaging conversation. I think that's gonna be a fun and informative one. I know our listeners appreciate you going as deep in the weeds as you do for their benefit. Uh, should we call that a wrap or do you want to do another half hour here?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

No, I mean, I think it's fine. You know, give a preview of the next episode. We're we're gonna move towards their there's a technology called COWAS, which is uh uh chip-on wafer on substrate. Um they're they're gonna move towards the next technology. This is Taiwan Semiconductor. Uh Intel has its own version of this, but basically there are specific constraints that mean you're gonna move to new materials for this. So we're always looking to get ahead of things that have inflection points before the market recognizes them. And one of the areas is the materials for this. So, you know, we'll we'll talk about um some new stocks like uh I think it's uh it's a it's a spin-off from DuPont's like q q qinity, q I'll get right. It's ticker symbol Q, but MKS Instruments, which is MKSI, and uh we'll also talk about some recommendations like uh Anto Innovation, which has a play into it, and um we'll we'll also talk about things like Kohu, which is uh C-O-H-U, which is a stock that I've recommended. But the point is, Austin will continue diversifying because everything moves forward, right? And there's there's always new things happening, and um I I'm pretty excited about some of the some of the things that we can position the back half of the year. So we'll we'll move forward with that in the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

Fantastic. Well, I look forward to it. I hope you enjoy your time away next week. Eric, thank you for all the recommendations and wonderful guidance. And to all of our listeners, we will see you next time. The AI Investor Podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.