A charger business waiting on a rack that slipped

Navitas Semiconductor, a fabless designer of gallium-nitride (GaN) and silicon-carbide (SiC) power chips sold into chargers, appliances, motor drives and, lately, data centers, told investors on 27 July that artificial-intelligence infrastructure would account for more than a third of its sales by the end of this year. The quarter it was reporting carried $10.5m of revenue, down 27% from a year earlier. Full-year 2025 revenue was $45.9m, itself down 45% from 2024, as the consumer-charger base eroded. Consensus has this year at $47.0m before a step up to $74.2m in 2027 and $124m in 2028.

The shape of that curve is the whole argument. Nvidia's proposed shift to distributing 800 volts of direct current through the rack, rather than converting to 12 or 48 volts upstream, exists because accelerator clusters now draw currents approaching 100,000 amps; at those levels the copper losses in low-voltage distribution become unaffordable, and single-stage conversion from 800V down to roughly 6V at the chip becomes mandatory. Navitas is one of the few listed companies with parts spanning the whole of that chain, from 100V GaN to 6,500V SiC.

But it is one of fourteen silicon suppliers Nvidia names in its 800VDC ecosystem, alongside Infineon, Texas Instruments, onsemi and Power Integrations. That is a place on a list, not an exclusive socket. Navitas has disclosed no dollar-quantified 800VDC design win and no named customer, describing instead "record backlog and book-to-bill extending beyond 2026." Its own dated milestones put 800V sidecar racks in mid-2027, GaN chip-level conversion in late 2027 and solid-state transformers from 2028.

Then the schedule moved. On 6 July, SemiAnalysis reported that Nvidia's Kyber rack — the platform carrying 800VDC to Rubin Ultra — had slipped more than a year, to 2028, on yields for a 78-layer orthogonal backplane circuit board. Nvidia said its roadmap is intact. The market did not wait: Asian board and substrate suppliers shed over $10bn of value that day. Five days earlier, Meta's announcement that it would resell spare AI capacity had already knocked the scarcity premium out of power-equipment shares.

What the accounts show

Add up Navitas's four quarters through June and gross profit comes to about minus $0.6m on $36.5m of revenue. There is no price-to-gross-profit multiple for the company because there is no gross profit to divide into. Reported gross margin last quarter was minus 9.5%, against management's guide of 39.7% on a non-GAAP basis for the September quarter, on revenue of $13.5m — a return to growth, and still less than Vicor books in a fortnight.

The funding tells the same story. Navitas raised $373m during the June quarter at $21.89 a share, after completing a $122m at-the-market offering on 12 May. Diluted shares are up 18.5% year over year. Cash stands at $557m with no debt — enough runway to reach 2028 — but the shares closed at $12.94, some 41% below the price at which that stock was sold.

Competitors are attacking the intellectual property directly. Wolfspeed sued Navitas in Delaware on 7 July over five patents covering essentially its entire GaN and SiC range. Renesas followed on 22 July with trade-secret claims naming chief executive Chris Allexandre; Navitas countersued in Texas on 10 August and has called the suits a harassment campaign.

Where the peers landed

The same architecture is producing hard numbers elsewhere. Bel Fuse, which makes magnetics, connectors, fuses and power supplies, grew revenue 25% to $210.7m last quarter, lifted gross margin 120 basis points to 39.9% and raised operating income 47%, with six consecutive quarters of bookings above sales — though it still earns more from defense ($66.5m) than from data centers ($58m), and trades at 27.7 times forward earnings. Vicor, which sells complete power modules, reported a one-year backlog of $379.7m, up 145%, at a 58.0% gross margin, and now sits at 28.8 times forward gross profit against 61.8x in mid-May. Navitas trades at 91.7 times trailing sales and 71.2 times forward; Bel Fuse trades at 4.3x and 3.9x.

The shares tell you the market has noticed. Navitas is 59% below its 26 May close of $31.79, and its uptrend broke at the end of July when the 50-day average crossed below the 200-day. Its 12% gain over the past month is two sessions — 30 July and 7 August — and nothing else; strip those and the month is minus 11.5%.

The setup

Where it stands — Navitas's 800VDC content is real engineering with no quantified revenue attached, and the ramp is dated to 2027-28. Would confirm — September-quarter revenue of $13.5m delivered with AI infrastructure disclosed above a third of sales. Would invalidate — Another quarter of negative reported gross profit, or a further equity raise below $12.94. Watch next — GlobalFoundries 8-inch GaN sampling, promised before year-end, with qualified production in early 2027. Valuation — 91.7x trailing and 71.2x forward sales; no gross-profit multiple exists, against Vicor's 28.8x forward.