re: OUST - LiDAR for Physical AI and Smart Infrastructure

I’ve got MVIS ptsd but this looks legit and the market timing could be perfect. Great find BB88.

Flirting with $40 PM

Was hoping to buy some of your picks this morning but do not like the prices this morning. Will do some weekly puts trying to buy at a better price. Do you have plans to buy at these prices or ideas on stocks to place puts on. I know my plans for OUST and NBIS but not sure of the rest. Was looking at DUOT but the runup is crazy. May do a few puts on it but not sure of the price.

I said “frick it” and scaled into DUOT and VLN.

Rational being, this is a market you want to be in.
I’m wayyy up on ENPH and OUST calls.
Those are my work horses.

Can sell some of that if needed, to catch a dip in VLN or DUOT.

But I have a feeling that the DUOT name will be tossed around a lot more soon due to Elon Musk, so I bought.

I had not seen any of you insight on VLN. Thoughts on it and are you doing calls or shares on VLN and DUOT?

I like the space that Valens is in.
Edge AI/Physical AI.
Close connectivity.
Think from the back of a car to the front of a car.
This isn’t wholly dissimilar to OUST in some ways.

Investment Thesis
Valens Semiconductor plays a critical role in modernizing how digital data travels through hardware. The company makes specialized chips that allow massive amounts of high-resolution video and data to travel instantly over a single cable without any lag.
Their primary catalyst is an expanding total addressable market, which the company estimates will reach $5.5 billion by 2029. This growth is heavily driven by the auto industry, where a $4.5 billion slice of that market sits. As vehicles adopt advanced safety cameras, sensors, and digital dashboards, they require massive internal wiring upgrades. Valens provides the chips to connect these systems efficiently, securing partnerships with major global car manufacturers. While they are a smaller business with a market cap of roughly $340 million, they remain in a strong financial position with zero debt and a healthy $86 million cash reserve.
Red Flags
* Not Making a Profit Yet: The company continues to lose money on a net basis and is expected to remain unprofitable for the next few years.
* Steady Cash Burn: Operating at a loss forces them to spend down bank reserves. However, the annual net cash burn from operations is relatively low and improving, sitting at roughly $20 million to $25 million per year.
* Slow Car Industry Timelines: Car manufacturers take years to design new vehicles, making the adoption of Valens' technology highly unpredictable and sensitive to delays.

Last one on VLN today:
I wanted to know how it’s similar to AMBA, which I used to own and is similar to OUST.
AMBA is pippin’ off now.

The Ambarella Comparison

Ambarella (AMBA) and Valens Semiconductor operate in the same automotive safety (ADAS) and camera ecosystem, but they do completely different jobs.
* Ambarella makes the "brains" (System-on-Chip / AI processors). Their chips take raw video footage from a car's cameras and use artificial intelligence to understand it—detecting pedestrians, lane drift, or traffic signs.
* Valens makes the "nervous system" (connectivity chipsets). They do not process AI or analyze video. Instead, Valens chips act as the ultra-fast pipeline that transports huge amounts of uncompressed, high-resolution video data from the car's exterior cameras to Ambarella’s brain chip instantly without any lag.
For an investor, Ambarella is a bet on AI vision software and processing power. Valens is a bet on the physical infrastructure needed to handle the massive data explosion inside modern vehicles.
Understanding MIPI A-PHY
MIPI A-PHY is not proprietary technology; it is an open industry standard.
The underlying technology was originally invented by Valens, but they chose to hand it over to the MIPI Alliance (a massive global organization that sets universal technical standards for mobile and automotive hardware). Because it is an open standard, any semiconductor company in the world is allowed to build chips using it, and member companies grant royalty-free licenses to one another to encourage mass adoption.
This open nature is actually Valens' biggest competitive advantage for two reasons:
* Car Manufacturers Hate Proprietary Tech: Global automakers (like BMW or Ford) refuse to build a car that relies on a single, tiny supplier because if that supplier goes bankrupt, the factory shuts down. They demand a "multi-vendor ecosystem." By making MIPI A-PHY an open standard, other chipmakers (like OmniVision and several Chinese semiconductor firms) have started building compatible A-PHY chips.
* First-Mover Advantage: While anyone can build an A-PHY chip, Valens is years ahead of the competition. They designed the original framework, meaning their VA7000 chipsets were the very first to hit mass production and the first to win actual contracts with automotive manufacturers. As the industry standard scales up, Valens wins the lion's share of early contracts while competitors are still trying to catch up.

Getting close to $41 here

It’s going to be tough to sell all these $35 Jan calls.
Maybe I’ll be in a position to exercise 10 of them