Tweet

• Source: https://x.com/pepemoonboy/status/2042404086574956966
• Author: Pepe Invests (@pepemoonboy)
• Date captured: 2026-04-10
• integrated_into: .brief/physical-ai-infrastructure-thesis.md

TL;DR

Retail trader built a 6-stock portfolio around the companies that make AI chips possible — not the designers (NVDA), but the infrastructure behind them. Up 19% in one month. The thesis: packaging, contract manufacturing, photomasks, and process control are the "picks and shovels" of the AI chip boom.

Key Tickers

Key Takeaways

• The "picks and shovels" thesis for AI infrastructure continues to work — these names are running while enterprise SaaS collapses
• AMKR (packaging) and ASX (packaging) are the advanced packaging play — HBM and CoWoS demand
• CLS and FN are contract manufacturers riding the AI hardware buildout
• PLAB (photomasks) is interesting — essential for every chip design, rarely discussed
• ONTO (process control) is the yield optimization play — as fabs push to smaller nodes, inspection/metrology matters more
• Portfolio up 19% in 1 month aligns with our monster sc