HighRisk,High
Stakes

AST SpaceMobile's B2B2C model partners with mobile operators who pay for coverage in areas where cell towers don't reach. The operator pays ASTS; end users just use their existing phone. As of early 2026, ASTS has partnerships with approximately 60 mobile network operators covering over 3 billion subscribers globally, including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten, Orange, Telefonica, and stc. The company secured over $1.2 billion in contracted revenue commitments and generated $70.9 million in full-year 2025 revenue. The constellation target is approximately 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by end of 2026, with launches planned every one to two months on average.

It is important to note that this is very early-stage: revenue is primarily from government contracts and gateway deliveries, not yet from commercial subscriber service at scale. BlueBird 7 was lost following a launch incident in early 2026 — a reminder that execution risk is real and recurring.

Rocket Lab is further along than most moonshots — it is a real, growing business. Full-year 2025 revenue was $602 million (38% growth), with a $1.85 billion backlog and its largest-ever contract, an $816 million Space Development Agency award to manufacture satellites. The Electron rocket is the world's most frequently launched small dedicated orbital vehicle, with a 100% annual launch success rate in 2025. The space systems division — building spacecraft end-to-end — is growing rapidly alongside launch.

The speculative element is Neutron: a medium-lift reusable rocket designed to compete with SpaceX in a much larger market. Neutron's first launch is now targeted for Q4 2026 following a stage 1 tank test failure earlier in the year. If Neutron succeeds, Rocket Lab becomes a tier-1 space company. That step-change in scale is why it sits in moonshots despite being profitable on an operational basis in some segments.

IonQ is further along than the "10 years away" quantum narrative suggests. Full-year 2025 revenue was $130 million — 202% year-on-year growth — making it the first publicly traded quantum company to exceed $100 million in annual GAAP revenue. 60% of that revenue came from commercial customers, not just government contracts. IonQ has also expanded into quantum networking, sensing, and security, and announced the acquisition of SkyWater Technology to strengthen its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.

The company uses trapped-ion qubits — individual charged atoms suspended in electromagnetic fields — as its computing medium, achieving 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity (a world record for commercial systems). Systems are available via AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Despite this progress, IonQ remains loss-making. The company guides for $225–245 million in 2026 revenue. The speculative element is whether quantum advantage — where quantum genuinely outperforms classical computers on real business problems — materialises at commercial scale this decade.

EnSilica designs custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for customers who need chips built to a specific purpose rather than general use. Mixed-signal ASICs — combining digital and analogue functions on one chip — are the most complex type to design and carry high barriers to entry. Customers span automotive Tier 1 suppliers, industrial OEMs, telecoms companies, and defence. EnSilica also holds a portfolio of core IP in cryptography, radar, and communications, providing some product revenue alongside design services. Government contracts, including UK Department of Defence work, validate the quality of its engineering.

Revenue in FY2025 declined to approximately £18m following a stronger FY2024, reflecting the project-timing risk inherent in a services-led ASIC business. Market cap is approximately £37m — micro-cap territory where institutional coverage is sparse.

Micron designs and manufactures DRAM and NAND flash memory — the components enabling computers and data centres to store and rapidly access data. It is a cyclical, commodity-like business where profitability swings dramatically with global memory pricing dynamics rather than Micron's own execution. The specific AI opportunity: high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is a specialised DRAM product used to feed data to AI accelerators like NVIDIA's GPUs, and Micron is a leading HBM supplier alongside Samsung and SK Hynix. As AI infrastructure scales, HBM demand grows with it.

Despite this opportunity, Micron lacks a durable moat. Memory is a commodity — when oversupply hits, as it cyclically does, margins collapse regardless of AI demand. There is no switching cost, no proprietary ecosystem, and no pricing power in down cycles.

Nebius was formed from the non-Russian assets of Yandex following international sanctions, relisted on NASDAQ, and redeployed as an AI-native GPU cloud platform. The transformation has been dramatic: from near-zero revenue to $1.25 billion annualised recurring revenue by end of 2025 (385% growth), with capacity sold out in every quarter. Microsoft signed a contract valued at $17.4–19.4 billion and Meta signed a $2.9 billion contract — both representing dedicated GPU infrastructure over multi-year terms. These contracts provide extraordinary revenue visibility but also concentrate significant customer exposure in two relationships.

Nebius is targeting $7–9 billion ARR by end of 2026 — management's own stated guidance, not independent analysis — requiring a five to seven-fold increase in ARR within one year. That target depends on 800MW to 1GW of connected data centre capacity coming online on schedule.

Iris Energy builds and operates data centres powered predominantly by renewable energy — originally for Bitcoin mining, now beginning a strategic pivot toward GPU hosting for AI. The renewable energy angle is a genuine differentiator: power purchase agreements lock in below-market electricity rates in British Columbia, Alberta, and Texas. As AI infrastructure scrutiny around power consumption grows, clean-energy compute may command premium pricing.

However, it is important to be clear about where this pivot currently stands. In May 2025, AI Cloud Services generated $2.2 million in monthly revenue versus $64.7 million from Bitcoin mining. AI is growing rapidly (from ~$0.8m monthly in late 2024) but remains a small fraction of total operations. By mid-2025 IREN had approximately 4,300 NVIDIA GPUs deployed including Blackwell. The Horizon 1 AI data centre came online in late 2025. This is a bet on whether the AI transition scales quickly enough before Bitcoin economics or broader macro shifts create pressure.

Amprius replaces the graphite anode in lithium-ion batteries with silicon nanowires, producing cells with up to 450 Wh/kg specific energy density — significantly higher than conventional lithium-ion at 250–300 Wh/kg. This makes them substantially lighter for a given energy capacity, a critical advantage in weight-sensitive aerospace applications. The company has been producing commercial batteries since 2018 and reached a significant milestone in Q2 2025: positive gross margins for the first time, with $15.1 million in quarterly revenue. A $35 million purchase order from a leading UAS manufacturer followed a prior $15 million order earlier in 2025. Airbus's AALTO subsidiary (high-altitude pseudo-satellites) has used Amprius cells on record-breaking 67-day stratospheric flights.

The beachhead market is aerospace, defence, and unmanned aviation — customers with lower price sensitivity and genuine need for the performance advantage. The longer-term prize is electric vehicles, but that requires manufacturing cost parity that has not yet been achieved.

Kraken Robotics provides synthetic aperture sonar systems and Seapower pressure-tolerant lithium batteries for naval defence and commercial subsea applications. The core thesis is its role as a primary component supplier for Anduril's autonomous underwater vehicles — the Dive-LD, Ghost Shark (Dive-XL), Copperhead, and Seabed Sentry platforms. Kraken technology is integrated across Anduril's entire subsea portfolio. Each Dive-LD carries approximately CAD $2 million of Kraken components; each Ghost Shark approximately CAD $10 million (these are community estimates, not Kraken's official disclosures). Anduril opened a 150,000 sq ft AUV production facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island in 2025, capable of over 200 Dive-LD hulls per year. Australia's A$1.7 billion Ghost Shark programme of record was awarded in September 2025, with deliveries beginning in early 2026. Kraken Q3 2025 revenue surged 60% year-on-year to $31.3 million CAD with record gross margins.

BYD delivered 4.6 million new energy vehicles in 2025, becoming the first automaker globally to surpass 15 million cumulative NEV sales. Unlike Western EV makers, BYD is uniquely vertically integrated: it manufactures its own batteries (Blade Battery technology), semiconductors, and motors, giving it cost advantages that are structurally difficult for competitors to replicate. In China, BYD commands dominant market share across multiple price points. Full-year 2025 revenue was RMB 804 billion, though net income declined approximately 20% reflecting margin pressure and competitive intensity in the domestic market.

The international thesis — particularly Europe — is where the speculation lies. BYD overtook Tesla in European EV registrations in August 2025. It is expanding its UK showroom network and negotiating to acquire underused European manufacturing plants to mitigate EU tariffs. The tariff overhang and geopolitical uncertainty between the EU and China remain the primary risks.

Pop Mart designs, manufactures, and sells collectible designer toys including the blind-box format where buyers don't know which character they'll receive until it's opened. Full-year 2025 revenue surged 185% to RMB 37.1 billion, driven almost entirely by the Labubu phenomenon — the pointy-eared "Monsters" character that became a global social media sensation. International markets now account for approximately 40% of revenue and are growing rapidly: Americas revenue grew over 1,000% year-on-year in Q1 2025, US TikTok Shop revenue grew 1,828% in the year to June 2025. Pop Mart operated over 630 stores globally at year-end 2025 across 100 countries.

This is a remaining position after a partial sale. The key question is whether Pop Mart can sustain beyond the Labubu moment — building a genuine multi-IP global lifestyle brand, or proving to be a single-character phenomenon. IP diversification is improving: six IPs exceeded RMB 2 billion in 2025 revenue. But Labubu still represents an outsized share.

In 2025, atai Life Sciences completed a strategic merger with Beckley Psytech to form AtaiBeckley — a combined clinical-stage biopharma focused on psychedelic-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant mental health conditions. The lead programme is BPL-003 (mebufotenin benzoate, an intranasal 5-MeO-DMT formulation) for treatment-resistant depression, which met its primary and all key secondary endpoints in a Phase 2b trial in 2025 — the largest controlled trial of this compound to date. The pipeline also includes VLS-01 (buccal film DMT) and EMP-01 (oral R-MDMA for social anxiety disorder), both in Phase 2 development. Cash is funded into 2027. Christian Angermayer and Peter Thiel are major backers.

The science behind psychedelic-assisted therapy has demonstrated meaningful efficacy for conditions that have resisted conventional pharmacology for decades. BPL-003's Phase 2b success positions AtaiBeckley as Phase 3-ready with a potentially first-in-class rapid-acting treatment.

HydroGraph has developed a proprietary detonation technology that simultaneously produces hydrogen gas and high-purity graphene from a single process. Graphene — a single layer of carbon atoms — is theoretically one of the strongest, most conductive materials ever discovered, with potential applications across batteries, composites, electronics, and construction. The production cost problem has historically made graphene commercially unviable at scale. HydroGraph's thesis is that co-producing hydrogen and graphene from one energy input changes the economics fundamentally. Very small position. Pre-revenue. OTC-listed micro-cap.

Oklo is developing the Aurora powerhouse — a compact fast reactor targeting 15–75 MWe output — designed for factory manufacturing and deployment at specific sites. The primary market is AI data centres, which require always-on baseload power and face growing pressure to decarbonise. Nuclear is uniquely attractive here: zero carbon emissions, minimal land footprint, uninterruptible output. Sam Altman is a backer and former board member. Customers include Equinix (PPA signed) and Oklo has partnerships with NVIDIA and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The regulatory picture has improved materially since the 2022 NRC licence rejection. Oklo has broken ground at Idaho National Laboratory under DOE authorisation (a separate pathway from standard NRC licensing for the first unit). The NRC approved Oklo's Principal Design Criteria topical report in May 2026 — an accelerated review — clearing the design framework for future licensing applications. First commercial operation is targeted for late 2027 or early 2028.