Editing Openai/69109937-2170-8005-9304-da49840bb5b9 (section)

===== Rough 3–5 year price range: 0–2 USD =====

What has to go wrong:
* Manufacturing never quite stabilises: yields at Globetronics/NationGate and SPX stay mediocre; too much spread in coupling, reliability issues under thermal cycling, lots of rework.
* Customers don’t scale orders: pilots and low-volume orders continue (like the current 5 M order), but nobody commits to real AI-cluster volumes; Celestial, Luxshare, FIT etc. either delay or quietly pivot to alternatives.
* Cash gets burned ahead of revenue: - They have >300 M in the bank now, but heavy capex, opex, and acquisitions eat that over a few years without the corresponding ramp. optics.org<ref>{{cite web|title=optics.org|url=https://optics.org/news/16/10/21|publisher=optics.org|access-date=2025-11-10}}</ref> - The market realises revenue will be far below the AI hype narrative → multiple compression and possibly another dilutive raise at low prices.
* Market re-rates all AI-plumbing names: If AI data-center capex slows or investors rotate away from speculative hardware, multiples can be savage.

In that world, the equity drifts toward:
* “Cash plus IP value”,
* Or, in a truly bad outcome, a take-under / asset sale where shareholders only get a fraction of today’s cap.

Given today’s ~5.4 USD price, a worst-case 0–2 USD is not outrageous. We’ve seen this movie with many photonics names before.