Been holding for a while, and still have yet to take a profit. But asking long term holders - do you have conviction in upside with criticality of energy in the next 2-3 years?
Per Bloomberg
COMPANY BACKGROUND
T1 Energy is a US solar manufacturer in Texas. They run a 5 GW module assembly plant in Wilmer and are building a 2.1 GW solar cell fab in Rockdale that comes online late 2026. They also have a US polysilicon and wafer deal with Corning, so the whole chain is domestic.
SITUATION
Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP went from a few hundred million to $13.7B in under 18 months running one of the more rigorously argued AI-power theses on the Street. His flagship long is Bloom Energy. On May 18 his fund’s 13F revealed a fresh 10M-share, $43.9M position in T1 Energy alongside other US-domiciled AI infrastructure and onshoring names. The very next day Fuzzy Panda dropped a 10-part short alleging FEOC non-compliance and a sham IP transfer to a Singaporean entity called Evervolt that they claim is a Trina Solar front. Stock got hit roughly 10% intraday.
Then Roth Capital’s Philip Shen, a five-star ranked analyst who’s been right on this space for years, came out swinging the next morning. He reiterated Buy, held his $10 PT, named TE a 2026 top pick, and methodically took apart the short report, arguing Fuzzy Panda fundamentally misreads FEOC effective-control rules and basic tax-credit accounting. Stock ripped 26 to 28% on his note. So now you have a $13.7B AI infra fund quietly building before the report, a top-ranked sell-side analyst aggressively defending after, and a short whose central claim turns on a regulatory interpretation that Roth says is wrong on the merits.
The structural picture is what makes this interesting. Short interest sits above 27% of the float, the float itself is tight, and the near-term catalysts that resolve this are Q2 earnings and any meaningful Treasury or IRS guidance on FEOC effective control. A credible company rebuttal or a favorable regulatory read puts shorts on the wrong side of a name an AI hedge fund whale is accumulating, with a five-star sell-side bull pounding the table and the domestic-manufacturing thesis lined up with where this administration wants to put industrial-policy dollars. That’s the kind of positioning that produces violent re-ratings.
Risks are real and I’m not pretending otherwise. If the tax-credit accrual gets restated, modeled forward margin swings from positive to deeply negative, and the DOJ and SEC subpoenas are not nothing. But the fact that Aschenbrenner went in this size after presumably seeing the same FEOC structure Fuzzy Panda did, and that Roth is willing to put its name behind a public defense, tells you how the smart money is reading the regulatory question. Watching this one closely.
Base case: TE 1-year PT is $9–10, assuming G1 Dallas executes near the high end of production guidance and G2 Austin funding/progress stays on track. TE 5-year PT is $18–22, assuming G1 + G2 become functioning U.S. solar manufacturing assets but the stock still gets a cautious cyclical/manufacturing multiple.
Bull case: TE 1-year PT is $12–14, assuming G2 financing is secured, initial production starts around Q4 2026, and offtake momentum converts into real revenue visibility. TE 5-year PT is $30–40, assuming TE becomes a scarce strategic U.S. solar supply-chain winner tied to domestic energy security and AI/hyperscaler power demand.
T1 is the old Freyr pivoted into a US solar cell and module manufacturer, which makes it a pure-play on the one thing the AI buildout can’t get enough of — electrons made in America.
Situational Awareness LP just walked in with 10M shares (3.58%, instant top-5 holder), and Leopold doesn’t take stakes that size to dabble — the guy who wrote the trillion-dollar cluster essay is putting his book where his thesis is.
The holder base just graduated from “trade” to “core” in a single quarter: RenTech, Two Sigma, BlackRock, Vanguard, Slate Path, and Electron all swept in.
Earnings just crushed it, which gives the new holders cover to add and removes the “story stock” tag — now it’s a story stock that prints. Stack on the energy bottleneck math (hyperscaler demand growing faster than anyone can permit gas turbines, solar + storage the only thing that scales before 2030) plus the domestic-content tailwind (IRA credits, Section 201 tariff wall, bipartisan anti-China industrial policy), and you’ve got a tightly-held US manufacturer levered to the most asymmetric demand curve in markets.
Institutional ownership is at 65%. Very high conviction play IMO.
This isn’t a complaint as I’ve been in this stock for over a year. Educationally, I’m trying to understand what this movement is and why it’s happening.
As always, love yall and appreciate the color in advance.
Monday, Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund dropped a 13F revealing a fresh 10M-share, $43.9M position in TE alongside other AI infra and onshoring names, and the stock ripped ~23% on the halo.
Then Tuesday, Fuzzy Panda Research dropped a 10-part short alleging FEOC non-compliance and sham accounting around the Evervolt deal, knocking it back down ~10% intraday.
Roth came out this morning defending TE hard — Buy reiterated, $10 PT held — arguing Fuzzy Panda doesn’t understand FEOC effective-control rules or basic accounting, and that TE may actually be exactly what the Trump admin wants in a domestic manufacturer. Net-net: it’s a three-way fight between a hot AI hedge fund long, a hatchet-job short, and a sell-side bull, with ugly underlying fundamentals (cash burn, negative margins), so the real game is whose narrative sticks.
Keep an eye on this one.
That’s all. Buy in new investors.