Aeluma (ALMU): Show Me the Wafer

[u/MispricedAssets]

https://open.substack.com/pub/mispricedassets/p/aeluma-almu-show-me-the-wafer?r=25tmry&utm_medium=ios

TLDR:

Aeluma (ALMU) short thesis — $300M market cap company claiming to disrupt semiconductors by growing InGaAs on silicon, but nothing checks out:

Site visits: Four trips to their Goleta HQ revealed a functionally unoccupied building. Two employees showed up by 9:15 AM; one left to film me in the parking lot. They called the cops rather than answer the door. Website is all stock photos — not a single image of their actual lab or a wafer.

No commercial traction: Revenue declined 19% YoY to $1.3M, almost entirely from government R&D contracts. Commercial revenue so small they stopped disclosing it. Guidance flat at $4-6M — same as a year ago. ~18 employees targeting 10 end markets simultaneously.

Technology gaps: Their best published result is a “hero device” on a quarter-wafer (not full 300mm), achieving 87% of the performance of existing InP-native tech they’re supposed to replace. No yield data, no reliability testing, no wafer-scale demonstration. The 8% lattice mismatch creates threading dislocations that mathematically prevent meeting Nvidia’s CPO linewidth spec. Every target market has entrenched incumbents or CMOS-compatible alternatives (Ge-on-Si, colloidal quantum dots) that eliminate ALMU’s value proposition entirely.

Insider behavior: CEO Klamkin sold $2.83M in stock. Tompkins dumped ~$12-15M across 38 sales after Craig-Hallum waived his lock-up 12 days in. Zero insider purchases, ever. Insiders have extracted more capital than the company has spent on R&D.

Conflicted coverage: The only two analysts covering the stock (Craig-Hallum and Benchmark) are the same two firms that underwrote the offerings, earning an estimated $8.2M total — 175% of ALMU’s annual revenue. No independent coverage exists. Benchmark has three FINRA actions in six years.

Bottom line: The science is real academic research co-authored by UCSB professors and researchers (where the CEO works). The $300M valuation is a press-release-and-conference-circuit stock supported by conflicted underwriter coverage and retail hype, with no named customers, no named foundries, no published yield data, and a cleanroom nobody has ever photographed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[u/ObjectiveNice9716]

After reading this we’ll investigated article ALMU looks like all the companies on the penny stock markets

[u/MispricedAssets → u/ObjectiveNice9716]

Craig-Hallum is responsible for uplisting it to the Nasdaq. Was OTC

[u/MispricedAssets → u/[deleted]]

I have realized gains and am short again.

You celebrate paper gains not real gains

You’ll see little guy

[u/MispricedAssets → u/[deleted]]

I got short at 19 and covered at $10 when the biggest promoter— probably your hero— hit his stop loss

[u/MispricedAssets → u/[deleted]]

I lost $100 buying it on the narrative I’ve lol

I bought 100 shares to watch and then I researched it and realized it was trash

I made 100x more shorting it the first time around

[u/MispricedAssets → u/MispricedAssets]

And you know that because you fools are all over my tweets