What Wolfspeed’s 20-Year Operator Added to the Mohawk Number

Balkas endorsed the CFO’s ladder, attached the error bars, and disclosed a 300mm option nobody models.

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July holiday. Amazing to see America turn 250 years young.

I spent the last few weeks between London, Paris, and New York City meeting with clients and portfolio companies while my family did some sightseeing. Grateful for the chance to build, invest, and spend time with family across three incredible cities.

Lets dive in we have Wolfspeed in here along with some other updates.

“It’s a little bit of a prediction at this point... like in EVs we had similar predictions and then as the market grew the competition increases and then there’s some pressure on it.”

That was Cengiz Balkas on a call with me last Tuesday. Balkas has been at Wolfspeed since 2006, ran the power and RF device businesses for twelve to thirteen years, and since last year runs every business unit in the company. When the CFO talks, you hear the balance sheet. When Balkas talks, you hear the fab.

Quotes from Wolfspeed management in this piece are from my July 1 call with the company.

The prediction he is hedging is the ladder Gregor van Issum gave me in May, the silicon carbide dollar content per megawatt in the AI rack that I published in The Mohawk Number. A month later, the operator who has run these products for two decades backed the ladder, hedged the dollar figure, and told me one new thing that sits in zero models I have read. This is a short position update, not a new thesis.

Behind the paywall: the operator’s sign-off and his EV caveat in his own words; the three questions he would not touch; the date the 800V story now carries and how this morning’s NVIDIA roadmap fight changes it; the 300mm silicon carbide disclosure with zero revenue and zero coverage; the beats on Gen 5, GaN, 10kV, and CHIPS; how I am handling the run-up; and what breaks the position from here.