On the eve of CPO mass production, a small Taiwanese company quietly stuck the door to yield - $6830 I saw that @ aleabitoreddit also has recommendations, which are quite interesting, so I researched them. I also plan to open an account on iBKR recently to play Taiwan stocks with small amounts of money. Many people are looking at the benefits of CPO, focusing on optical module factories, lasers DSP。 But there is one aspect that few people are discussing: light loss detection before packaging. This link may be one of the smallest but deepest checkpoints in the entire CPO industry chain. First, clarify the pain points The core of CPO is to highly integrate high-speed computing/switching chips with optical engines at the packaging level. The problem is that the detection of optical chips has long been a blank in the industry. If an optical chip with minor light loss defects inside is directly packaged with a high-value computing chip, the problem will only be exposed after the entire packaging process is completed, and the entire CPO module can only be destroyed as a whole. A tiny defect in a cheap optical chip may eventually render the entire GPU package worth tens of thousands of dollars useless. In the CPO era, yield issues are no longer just about breaking a single chip, but about throwing away the entire high-value system together. There is no buffer space for this loss in the factory. This has transformed the pre packaging optical chip inspection from an optional quality step into a mandatory process that large factories have to do in order to control yield. Where is Panquan Technology (6830) stuck The light loss detection technology on the market is essentially divided into two levels. The first level can only give you a total number - how much light was lost by this chip in total. But I have no idea which waveguide or specific location the problem lies in. The engineer still needs to send the chip for slicing analysis after obtaining this result, which is time-consuming and laborious. The second level is truly valuable: not only can it measure the total loss, but it can also directly draw a loss distribution map accurate to the micrometer level, clearly indicating which optical waveguide has problems, which coordinates the problem is at, and how many decibels of loss it has. When the design team sees this picture, they can immediately know how to make changes to the next version, and the speed of yield optimization is completely different. Panquan holds the second level of patented technology and has transformed this capability from laboratory services to physical testing equipment that can be sold externally. The customer list illustrates the issue According to public media reports and market data, TSMC is one of Pan Quan's clients, as explicitly mentioned by the Taipei Times. Regarding Nvidia and Intel, it is mentioned in relevant materials from the Industrial Technology Research Institute that Panquan has received orders from major companies, but the specific details of the cooperation are still under discussion in the market. ASML reportedly adopted Panquan's material analysis services in September 2024. AMAT、Lam Research、AVGO、MediaTek、 Samsung, MRVL, and other potential customer leads mentioned in public information or market speculation have not yet been officially confirmed. Overall, the customer ecosystem of Fanquan is aimed at the core layer of the AI semiconductor supply chain, but the specific depth and scale of cooperation still need to be continuously tracked and verified. How to understand a moat Pan Quan is considered to have a very high target market share in the market narrative, and has actively defended itself against competitors through patent litigation by suing another Taiwanese testing company, Guangyan Technology (7728). It should be noted that Guangyan refuted that the technical routes are different and the core products are independently developed, and the dispute between the two sides is still ongoing. The direction of this patent war is one of the key variables affecting the sustainability of the Pan Quan card position. From an investment perspective, actively defending patent boundaries is a positive signal, indicating that the company is aware of how critical its position is. But whether the moat is ultimately established needs to be verified by court judgment or settlement results. Valuation and Catalysts At present, the market value is about 1.2 billion US dollars, and some market views believe that if CPO mass production proceeds smoothly, there is significant room for reassessment of the pricing power of this testing slot. Core indicators that need to be continuously tracked: whether monthly revenue can break through the profit and loss threshold of NT $220 million; Actual shipment volume of CPO testing equipment; And the ultimate direction of patent litigation. The upstream variable is the CPO production schedule of TSMC and Nvidia. The progress of the large factory is on time, and the companies on this line benefit from it; The big factory has postponed, and all stories have to be pushed back. summary This is not a confirmed story that has been fully validated, but a worthwhile industry chain bottleneck to track. If CPO starts to increase production, the pre packaging light loss detection will change from an optional option to a mandatory option for yield control. Whether Fanquan can truly convert patents, customer relationships, and equipment shipments into profits depends on monthly revenue, equipment delivery, and progress in patent litigation. Currently, Panquan is one of the few companies that the market considers to have a strong position in this area. Before large institutions enter the market on a large scale, it is worth studying the hidden toll stations in this industry chain. Invisible Champion Technology Stocks Taiwan Stocks AI Industry Chain CPO Silicon Photonics Advanced encapsulated AI infrastructure