AR Supply Chain Tollbooth
Paul Canetti@paulcanetti
−14.3%
since Oct 7
The idea
I believe AR glasses will gradually replace screens, signage, and physical goods over the next decade, and rather than guess which company wins the face, I want to own the suppliers every platform has to pay. This basket spreads across sensing and edge silicon, optics and waveguide glass, chips and foundry, assembly, microdisplays, and batteries, with multiple competitors in each layer instead of single picks. Unproven names are capped around 2-3% as speculative sleeves, and I'm holding roughly 11% in cash.
What it owns
- Glasses must see, hear, and track the world on a tiny power budget, requiring sensors, vision chips, low-power wireless, audio silicon, and reprogrammable processors that glasses makers buy rather than build. · STMicroelectronicsIt supplies MEMS motion sensors and imaging parts that let glasses track head and eye movement, serving as the established anchor of the sensing layer as AR devices pack more sensors per unit., ON SemiconductorIt competes in image sensors that glasses use to see the world, providing a second sensing maker so imaging content isn't a lone bet in the take., Cirrus LogicIt makes audio chips, and glasses without earbuds need serious audio silicon in the frame, getting paid per pair if AR glasses replace headphones alongside screens., SynapticsIt sells low-power wireless and touch chips that all-day glasses need to talk to phones without draining the battery, staying relevant as long as glasses makers buy rather than build connectivity., Lattice SemiconductorIt makes tiny low-power FPGAs that handle vision tasks at the edge of the device, already appearing in headset designs as glasses makers choose small flexible silicon over fully custom chips., AmbarellaIt makes computer vision chips that recognize objects and map space at low power, the core job of AR, winning dedicated silicon sockets as glasses get smarter.26%
- The lens and waveguide are the hardest, most defensible part of AR glasses, requiring specialty glass, lasers, and precision photonics that only a few suppliers can provide. · CorningIt makes the specialty glass that waveguide lenses are built on, the layer that turns glasses into displays, selling raw material to every pair if waveguide approaches dominate., CoherentIt supplies lasers and precision optics for AR displays and depth sensing, competing alongside other optics players so the take doesn't ride on a single supplier., LumentumIt supplies photonics and 3D sensing lasers for depth mapping that AR glasses need to understand a room, kept as a second optics player alongside Coherent so optics isn't a lone bet.17%
- AR headsets need compute chips designed on advanced silicon and manufactured at scale, creating tollbooth positions for the designers and makers that nearly every glasses maker must use. · Taiwan SemiconductorIt manufactures every custom AR chip for Apple, Meta, Qualcomm and other designers, making it the purest tollbooth in the take as long as advanced chip production stays concentrated there., QualcommIts Snapdragon AR chips sit inside nearly every glasses prototype outside Apple, so whoever wins the face market likely pays Qualcomm first for the silicon inside.16%
- Building and packaging dense AR devices at scale requires specialized contract manufacturers for volume production, precision optical assembly, and advanced chip packaging that concentrate the work among a few players. · FabrinetIt does precision optical assembly that waveguides and laser modules demand, work most contract manufacturers cannot perform, serving as the specialist in the assembly layer., JabilIt assembles hardware at scale for platform giants, becoming a likely production line when any major player ramps glasses production to volume., Amkor TechnologyIt packages chips into dense, tiny forms that fit compute into a frame, performing a step every AR chip in the take must pass through as advanced packaging demand grows.14%
- Tiny ultra-bright displays are the image engine of every pair of AR glasses, and multiple competing technologies means the take wins regardless of which display approach the market chooses. · Universal DisplayIt collects royalties on OLED materials used in microOLED displays, creating a royalty tollbooth inside the glasses stack if OLED-based microdisplays remain competitive in AR., Himax TechnologiesIt makes LCoS microdisplays and driver chips, competing with microOLED technology so the take wins whichever display approach glasses makers settle on., KopinIt is a pure-play bet on microdisplays that only works if its displays win real AR design slots, sized small because it remains unproven while the broader AR display premise holds.12%
- All-day AR glasses need energy density that current batteries don't provide, making this a small speculative allocation to emerging silicon anode technologies that haven't yet proved they can ship at volume. · EnovixIts silicon anode batteries promise the energy density all-day glasses need, held as a small speculative position because it hasn't yet proven it can ship at volume., Amprius TechnologiesIt competes on battery energy density with a different silicon anode approach, kept small alongside Enovix because, like all emerging battery makers, it remains unproven at scale.4%
- Cash11%