The AI Bullish Run: Why Bodner Says Phase 2 Is Bigger Than Phase 1

The conventional wisdom is that the AI boom has already happened. Nvidia went up 5,000 percent. The Magnificent Seven drove the market. The easy money has been made. Jason Bodner disagrees. In his Accelerated AI presentation, he argues that the AI bullish run is just getting started and that the next 12 to 24 months could produce “bigger gains than the entire AI boom of the past three years combined.”

That is a bold claim, but Bodner’s framework for making it is grounded in historical data and verifiable structural trends. The argument comes down to a simple insight: the first wave of AI was about building the chips. The second wave will be about making those chips work together. And the companies that solve that problem are not the ones everyone already owns.

Why the First Wave Hit a Wall

The first wave of AI was driven by Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia’s chips are the foundation of modern AI computing, and Bodner flagged the stock at $4.50 (split-adjusted) in October 2019, well before the boom went mainstream. That was a Phase 1 call, and it produced gains of over 5,000 percent.

But Phase 1 always hits a wall. In the 1990s, the internet hit a bandwidth wall because data moved over copper phone lines. Users called it the “World Wide Wait.” In 2007, smartphones hit a mobile bandwidth wall. Now AI has hit its own wall: the copper connections between GPUs.

One ChatGPT question burns 10 times more electricity than a Google search. A single AI data center eats as much power as 100,000 homes. The problem is not the GPUs themselves but the copper wires that connect them. Electrons in copper travel at less than 1 percent of the speed of light. They generate heat, consume power, and cannot keep up with the bandwidth demands of modern AI workloads.

Bodner says AI has “slammed headfirst into a wall” and that a “completely different group of AI firms” will be crowned new kings. He says the photonics transition will “leave the Magnificent Seven in the dust.” For more on the framework, see our copper to fiber article.

The Phase 2 Breakthrough: Photonics

Phase 2 of the bullish run, Bodner argues, will be driven by photonics: replacing copper wires with laser beams inside AI data centers. Light travels at 124,000 miles per second. It carries more data, barely uses power, and does not generate heat. Bodner calls it “holy grail tech,” and Sequoia Capital used the same phrase.

The structural evidence is substantial. Nvidia has invested over $7 billion in photonics companies and partnered with Corning to build three optical factories in the United States. AMD is building a $280 million photonics research hub. Ayar Labs raised $500 million from ARK Invest and Sequoia. Bill Gates has personally invested over $200 million in two photonics companies. The Optical Interconnect Alliance includes Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI. For more on the technology, see our photonics explainer.

The Historical Returns

The bullish case for Phase 2 is built on what happened during previous copper-to-light transitions:

  • Internet (1990s): Akamai +16,497%, F5 +14,768%, Equinix +37,000%, Google +12,307%, Amazon +100,000%, Netflix +188,471%.
  • Smartphones (2007): Cirrus Logic +6,500%, Lattice Semiconductor +12,720%, Monolithic Power +17,000%, Meta 42x.
  • AI (now): Bodner says the second wave will be bigger because AI is a larger market.

The three photonics stocks Bodner identifies are already surging: 133 percent, 320 percent, and 210 percent in recent months. That suggests the transition is underway, not theoretical. For more on the investment thesis, see our full Accelerated AI review.

The Free Ticker

Bodner reveals Broadcom (AVGO) for free. Broadcom’s AI revenue was $10.8 billion last quarter, up 143 percent year over year. The company designs custom AI silicon, builds networking switches, and debuted the industry’s first 400G optical chip. For more on Broadcom, see our Broadcom stock article.

The IPO Catalyst

Bodner points to two upcoming IPOs as catalysts that will accelerate the AI bullish run. OpenAI filed an S-1 for a September listing at a $1 trillion-plus valuation. Anthropic is preparing an October listing approaching $1 trillion. These IPOs will inject massive capital into AI infrastructure spending and accelerate the photonics transition. They also create a psychological catalyst: when the companies behind ChatGPT and Claude go public at trillion-dollar valuations, investor attention will shift back to AI, and the infrastructure companies that support them will benefit.

Considerations

The bullish case is compelling, but it is not without risk. The 10,000 percent gains Bodner cites are historical examples, not guarantees. The backtested statistics (350+ stocks over 1,000 percent going back to 1990) reflect pattern matching and likely include survivorship bias. The forward-looking calls we can verify, Nvidia, Super Micro, Vertiv, are impressive, but Bodner himself says: “I don’t always get it right.”

The right approach is to understand the thesis, follow the capital flows, and position for the structural trend without betting everything on a single outcome. For more on Bodner’s track record, see our Jason Bodner profile.

If you want to explore the full thesis, you can access the Accelerated AI presentation through Brownstone Research.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.