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TLDR: ENVX is around $3.15 after getting absolutely murdered when the CEO suddenly stepped down. Market cap is only around $700M now.
At the same time:
- their 100% silicon smartphone battery passed 1,000+ cycles
- commercial smart eyewear batteries are already shipping
- drone opportunities alone are over $100M
- total drone/defense/industrial pipeline is around $183M
- Q3 guidance was reaffirmed even after the CEO left
Either the market knows something horrible that hasnt come out yet, or everyone finally gave up on this company right before the thing they've spent years trying to commercialize actually starts working.
My bigger thesis is that batteries could be one of the next major tech trades after AI.
Not because batteries are new.
Because a bunch of new industries are suddenly running face first into battery limitations at the same time.
And ENVX is my favorite high risk/high reward way to play it.
First, why batteries?
Everyone keeps asking "whats the next Nvidia?"
I think thats probably the wrong question.
Nvidia existed forever before AI.
GPUs weren't new.
Then suddenly a new workload appeared that needed an insane amount of GPU compute and something mostly associated with gaming became one of the most strategically important pieces of hardware on earth.
I think something similar could happen with batteries.
Look at what we're building now:
AI glasses
autonomous drones
humanoid robots
military unmanned systems
eVTOL
phones doing more AI locally
massive data centers
grid storage
renewables
millions more EVs
Every one of those eventually runs into some version of:
where the fuck does the power come from?
There are basically 2 battery gold rushes happening.
One is:
make batteries cheaper
Grid storage, cheap EVs, data centers, renewable buffering.
The other is:
put way more energy into way less space and weight
Drones, phones, AI glasses, robots, defense, aviation.
ENVX is mostly a play on the second one.
So what happened to ENVX?
ENVX was already beaten to shit.
Then this week CEO Raj Talluri suddenly stepped down.
The market did not take that well lol.
Stock is now around:
$3.10-$3.20
Market cap:
roughly $680-$700M
This thing used to trade in the $20s.
Obviously the immediate question is:
why the fuck does the CEO leave right when the company is supposedly approaching the commercialization moment they've spent years working toward?
I dont know.
And anybody pretending they know is full of shit.
Company says he left for another opportunity and it wasn't because of a disagreement.
They reaffirmed Q3 guidance.
Customer programs apparently havent changed.
T.J. Rodgers, chairman and biggest shareholder, is taking a more active role as Executive Chairman.
Ryan Benton is interim CEO.
So I see 2 possibilities.
Bear interpretation
Talluri knows theres more bad news coming and got the hell out.
Bull interpretation
Guy actually left for another job, market assumed the worst, and a company already trading like shit just had another couple hundred million dollars erased from its valuation even though guidance and the customer roadmap didnt change.
I have no idea which one is right.
Thats part of the gamble.
But unlike buying this thing at $20, you're now buying it around $3.
Why I still care about ENVX at all
The entire ENVX thesis basically comes down to 100% silicon anode batteries.
Most lithium ion batteries use graphite in the anode.
Silicon can store way more lithium than graphite.
Problem is silicon expands massively while charging and historically destroys itself pretty quickly.
Thats why silicon batteries have been "the future" forever without actually taking over.
Enovix designed the whole cell architecture around controlling that expansion.
For years the question was:
Now we're getting closer to:
That second question is way more interesting from an in