Eternally Paranoid
This newsletter - Eternally Paranoid (漢：居安思危; Deutsch: Ständig auf der Hut) - is a new newsletter written by two like-minded technologists based in America (Jack Huang) and Europe (Omer Cheema) who believe in market-driven innovation and seek to add value for busy engineers, executives, analysts, and portfolio managers in the Anglophone world. The focus is on technological trends and themes involving a global supply chain that affect their portfolio companies’ bottom lines. The name “Eternally Paranoid” is directly inspired by a classic book by the legendary tech CEO Andrew Grove, “Only the Paranoid Survives”, a book that described the epic transformation of Intel from a memory giant to a microprocessor one in the face of Japanese competition a generation ago. As a starter, we will start with co-packaged optics (CPO), a key enabling technology for the buildout of AI data centers globally.
Value Proposition
Purpose: Provide an accessible, information dense (per unit of reading time) reference in the Anglophone world for technological trends and themes across a global supply chain
Intended audience: engineers and executives in technology, buy side analysts and portfolio managers in finance
Author Backgrounds
Between the two authors, they possess technical training at top institutions (ENSTA, INSEAD, UChicago, Booth) and wealth of expertise creating and capturing value at top semiconductor companies (Reneseas, Samsung, AMD, Cadence) around the globe. Furthermore, their cultural and linguistic backgrounds enabled them to have full coverage of a truly global supply chain across North America, Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Contact Us
Feel free to ping Jack Huang (Chicago time zone; English/Deutsch/粵/國) or Omer Cheema (Eindhoven time zone; English/French/Hindi/Urdu) directly on either Substack or Linkedin with a clear short message stating your affiliation, background, and intent if you will like to exchange ideas and belong to one of the two groups:
You are an engineer or executive in the technology sector or buy side analyst or PM in the finance sector
You work at one of the companies we will cover in our newsletter post - currently, we are looking for folks working at a company within the co-packaged optics ecosystem
Topics Covered So Far
Co-packaged Optics (CPO)
CPO Post 1 - Introduction - introduction to CPO along with teasers of future posts
CPO Interlude I - Spreading the Word - spreading the word about the newsletter with brief notes on upcoming photonics events (PIC Summit USA, Photonics West, OFC) and CPO ecosystem geography
CPO Post 2 - Existing Ecosystem (planned next) - please reach out if you work at a CPO vendor and will like us to highlight your company and products
Accessible explanation of CPO system
CPO ecosystem - feedstock, wafer, optical engines, photonic interconnects, and system integrators, PIC foundries, OSATs/assembly/substrates, external lasers sources and lasers, fiber attach units (FAUs) and optical fibers, FAU alignment/attachment equipment, fiber shuffle boxes, MPO connectors, MT-ferrules, electro-optical test equipment, AI servers/switches, hyperscalers
CPO Post 3 - Lessons from the Past (planned)
CPO Post 4 - Value Chain (planned)
CPO Post 5 - Industrial Capacity (planned)
CPO Post 6 - Capital (planned)
CPO Post 7 - Talent (planned)
CPO Post 8 - Industrial Policy (planned)
CPO Post 9 - Outlook (planned)
Disclaimers
The authors may be invested in stocks mentioned in the newsletter.
Opinions are solely those of the authors and not related to past/present/future employers.
All content published in this newsletter is based solely on public information and independent research.
This newsletter does not constitute financial advice and readers should always do their own research before investing in any security.
Friends of Eternally Paranoid
We will like to thank the following friends of the newsletter for helpful feedback on drafts for the posts to date:
Lucas Grosjean (stealth startup, formerly at Google X and CNRS) - his Github
Quentin Wach (software engineer at gdsfactory, formerly at HHI, TU Berlin) - his personal website
Irrational Analyst (unknown) - popular semiconductor newsletter Irrational Analysis
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