Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the next quarterly Weebit Meet the CEO conversation that I'm having today with Coby Hanoch, CEO of Weebit Nano. Thank you for joining us. My name is Ronn Bechler, for those that don't know. I will be hosting Coby Hanoch and moderating the Q&A. We have received some questions ahead of today, which I'll make sure we cover. And also, if you have any questions, please feel free to type them in the Q&A box. Please identify who you are, we won't be asking anonymous questions. And I will make sure that we cover the questions off during this session.
We've allowed 45-60 minutes max for the session, but as we have done in the past, maybe Coby, you can provide those shareholders and investors on the session today with an overview of the December quarter and where the company is now at, and then we can move into the Q&A. Thanks, Coby.
Thanks, Ronn. I think we had a really exciting quarter from so many aspects. We had... Well, first of all, we signed the DB HiTek agreement, so, you know, Weebit is now really on the path of working with the leaders in this world. DB HiTek is number 10 on the foundry list. You know, I think everyone knows already, we're engaged with the majority of the people on the top 10 foundry and top 10 IDM lists. And, you know, I came back from a trip to the U.S. last week, and, you know, we had very good meetings, so we are really feeling very bullish about where we are and moving forward.
We had our first revenues, small numbers, you know, not anything big or exciting, and I think the shareholders, we've already been talking about it. The ramp-up will be very slow. You know, we're getting these initial trickle of payments and, but it is happening. DB HiTek is already a big, an important player. They have, you know, people might not know the DB HiTek name, but they know the names of customers, you know, even big names like Samsung and Intel manufacture there, and Sony, and Toshiba, and NXP, and many other well-known companies. The relationship with DB HiTek is really good. They are very serious. We are moving forward very well.
You know, we're already planning our next face-to-face meeting with them, probably will happen in about a month or so. Really, I'm very excited with them. You know, they are very focused on bringing customers on board, so we're already working with... I mean, initial contacts, right? We're far from being qualified at DB HiTek, but we are already engaged with customers who are interested in manufacturing at DB HiTek with our technology. Overall, I think, 2024 is going to be a really exciting year for Weebit. You know, I told the team the goal is, by the end of this year, to be recognized as the undisputed leader in the ReRAM space, and I think we're on track to get there.
It's really, you know, I can, I can see the path to getting to that point within a year, one and a half years, we're gonna be there. You're muted, Ron.
Sorry, Coby. I was trying to find the unmute button. So, maybe we can start. It's a good update. Maybe we can just start. There's been a few questions around revenue. Obviously, this was the Q1 showing revenue. Can you provide... We've got one shareholder who's asked what the makeup of the $457,000 income. Was it licensing or was there some NRE in there as well?
So I think, actually, it's easy to do the math here since, you know, we had an announcement when the first payment came in of $100,000, and you can see the number is higher. So you know, you can see that it actually was two payments. I can say it came from two different companies, which is kind of a sign of where we're heading. You know, it's basically combinations of licensing and NRE. When you sign an agreement with these companies, you know, there's basically the payments that they pay for the license and for the NRE, for the technology transfer work. And you know, in the future, we'll be pushing more and more to get these payments.
Well, the license definitely normally is paid more upfront. NRE, of course, is paid as you go. In the initial deals, when you do them and people have less confidence and you need to really convince them that everything's working, they insist that even the license will be paid based on milestones. The good news is we are making good progress, and we did get these payments, and we will be getting more as we hit other milestones. I said in the past, and I'll repeat, you know, these initial revenues are small payments that are going to start coming in with these milestones. I really don't want people to think that, you know, next quarter it's already gonna be millions, and the following quarter it's gonna be tens of millions.
The ramp-up is going to be slow. That's the nature of semiconductors. That's how it works. Everything takes time. With DB HiTek, and at the AGM, I showed kind of the timescales of things. Getting to qualification is, you know, order of magnitude of a year and a half of work, to get to that point and ramp up customers. I'm really excited that, you know, we already have customers that are coming to us, and we are talking to them about DB HiTek at this very early stage. So that's a great sign. That's really an amazing sign that people already, where we haven't even taped out at DB HiTek, and people are already coming and interested and, you know, wanting to learn more about it.
It's really a very good sign. Over the year, we do plan to get more payments. Again, you know, it's important to set the expectations.
Maybe if we just stay on the quarterly for the moment, and then we can talk about customers and opportunities and growth that you're progressing. We had a couple of questions come in pre the webinar around the R&D expenses in the quarter, and the more, I guess, the more general, the cash burn that's going on. The R&D expenses went up significantly in the quarter relative to the previous quarter. Can you just explain to investors the spend profile for the company? It's not like it's a linear or a straight line or a, you know-
Mm-hmm.
There are high quarters and low quarters, and, you know, I, I think there's a few shareholders or investors that are thinking maybe the company might run out of money in five or six quarters, which is not the case. So can you just talk through,
Mm-hmm.
Why R&D was so high this quarter and the different profile of the quarters?
Yeah. So, you know, we're in the semiconductor business, and in this business, you know, a key element, and I think many people already know, you have to have a fab to manufacture in, and the fab is what really costs a lot of money. I think a lot of people on this call already know Weebit for more than a year, and they know that we have this cyclical type nature of some quarters where there's hardly any expenses, and some quarters where there's suddenly a jump. A lot of our R&D, a major part is done at Leti. We pay them based on milestones. You know, it's funny because, three months ago, people were asking me, "You guys have no R&D expenses.
How does the company work?" You know, we were reporting, I think, in the last 2 quarters before this one, we hardly had any R&D expenses. Leti has, you know, Leti always tries to push to close all of the milestones before the end of the calendar year, which is their fiscal year. You look back over the years and you'll see that, you know, the fourth calendar year quarter is always the higher R&D expenditure. There's nothing special about last year. I'm very happy, by the way, that we hit these milestones. It's really very important progress that was made. But you need to look at Weebit's expenses on a yearly basis, not on a quarterly basis. I think, at the previous quarter, we showed that we have money for, more than 20 quarters.
Now it's... I think it's 6. You know, it's all moving around because we have more expenses in one quarter and less in the other, but we're definitely in a good position. We're not gonna have expenses like we had in this past quarter, over the next 1, 2 quarters. It's gonna even out.
Yeah. Thanks for confirming that, because I think there are a few investors that just looked at the one quarter and then tried to extrapolate, which gives the wrong picture, given the cyclicality of activity and expenses within the company and the investments being made. So thank you for-
I think those are mainly the shorters who have no clue who we are and what we're doing. You know, I've seen that some of them, you know, they don't understand anything about semiconductors. You know, despite the fact that I've been telling people for so long that we'll have just small revenues, suddenly they're shocked about how little the revenues are and things like that. I think the people who do know Weebit know that the company is strong and moving forward on a steady pace, and the same goes for our R&D expenses.
Well, I think also the important point, too, is Weebit's balance sheet has never been stronger in terms of the cash on the balance sheet and the ability for you to accelerate some of the activities. You know, you're not running on one quarter's cash left or two quarters cash left. It's much, much more than that, and gives you the ability to execute on the growth plan without having to go back to market in the near term.
Yes, and actually, we are doing a lot more in parallel. You know, for quite a few years, Weebit was working more serially, doing one thing at a time with Leti; we just didn't have enough cash. I'm very happy. You know, we had the recent raise. Well, not so recent, it's almost a year now. But we have the cash in the bank, so I'm not worried about cash, and I can focus on work with Leti. We are doing multiple projects in parallel, so the progress now is much faster. The improvement in our ReRAM technology is amazing. We're exploring all kinds of ideas on how to continue to improve it. And the progress that's been made over the past year is very significant and much more than we did in previous years.
We've got a question from a shareholder, given you mentioned about the milestones or the payments for Leti achieving certain milestones. Are you able to share what those milestones were that were achieved, and whether or not they'll be announced to the market going forward?
I think, you know, they're very technical. It's very hard to explain, and a lot of them are actually confidential. I mean, that's where Weebit's secret sauce is, so we don't really want to talk about those things very much. But I can say that some of these milestones have been around simplifying the manufacturing cycle so that it'll be even more appealing for different fabs to adopt ReRAM. Some of these advances are in the, I guess, the way or, you know, improving the actual technical parameters of the ReRAM. And some of them have been around just helping us with DB HiTek and SkyWater and others, and you know, with other foundries that or fabs that we're working with.
So it's different things, but they reflect, you know, very, very good progress.
I might just remind everybody, some people might have come on late. If you have a question to ask, please don't put it through as an anonymous attendee. We will be covering off questions from people that identify who they are. Some of you have actually been lucky because some of the questions the anonymous have been asking was put in before anyway by some shareholders. But please identify yourself for the Q&A so I can make sure, you know, who's asking the question. Maybe just, one last question on sort of the quarterly, and then we can touch on SkyWater and DB HiTek. In terms of licensing fees, will they increase as we go further down the track? What does the profile of the revenues look like as you roll forward?
Yeah. You can imagine that when you close the first deals, you know, the level of, you know, hesitation by the customer is high. Nobody wants to be the first one to jump in, and, you know, we talked about it in previous calls. So, you know, Weebit had to be more flexible in the negotiations. In the first agreements, we had to agree to more payment terms and, you know, longer payment terms and be flexible on, to a certain level, on some of the pricing issues and things like that.
As we grow, as we get more foundries, IDMs, customers under our belt, we'll be in a much stronger situation, and obviously we won't need to compromise on things, and we'll be getting larger amounts up, more upfront, et cetera. So this is the process of ramping up. I think it's not even semiconductors. This is how business is done. You always, you know, to get the first deals, you're much more flexible than you are with the future ones. And by the way, Weebit already, the discussions that we're having now with people are already, you know, different from what we had when we started off with SkyWater.
We've had a few people ask... Sorry, one more question on the quarterly. In terms of staff costs, they, they were down, and people were wondering what staffing- what's going on with staffing levels. Are people leaving? Can you give some background on, on that, please?
Well, I'm extremely proud, first of all, to say that we have such an amazing team, and people are really happy at Weebit, and there hasn't been even a single employee that's left, I'm sorry, except one admin that left, but no, no engineer left Weebit. Actually, in the six years that I'm at Weebit, we only have one engineer that's left, so nobody's leaving Weebit. Everyone, on the contrary, we're hiring, we're growing the team at a steady pace. Again, I don't want to have crazy costs, but we've hired... I can tell you that over the past two, three quarters, we hired some phenomenal people. We hired a person who was the manager of a fab at Tower Semiconductor.
She's phenomenal, and she's now overlooking all of our relationships with the different fabs, with IDMs and foundries. We've hired several additional PhDs in the last two quarters. I'll have to do the math, but we have several new additional PhDs that joined the company. So, we're continuing to hire at a moderate pace. I don't want to spend too much, but definitely nobody's leaving.
... Great, thanks for confirming. This has also come up a couple of times. Let's move into more of the strategic and operational side now. The quarterly noted a renewed interest in China. Can you discuss some background to that and whether, there's a view on the board that that won't put the U.S. relationships at risk?
So, you know, China, we said it in the past, and it hasn't changed. China is a very, very big market for semiconductors, and even the largest companies, you look at Intel, again, Intel, Qualcomm, Google, NVIDIA, AMD, you know, they're all selling in China. We just need to be careful about, you know, who we work with. Weebit is very conscious, and doesn't get anywhere close to people on the blacklist, for example. But there are many companies in China that are doing very good business with American companies. So, you know, for a while, we were totally focused only on the Western world. We've been receiving requests from, you know, very legitimate Chinese companies, so we're going in there with our eyes open.
Right. Maybe let's, let's speak a little bit about SkyWater. You've mentioned that there were some challenges, you know, in the last quarter. Where are things at with that? How are you finding that relationship going forward? What progress is being made on that front?
So, I remind everyone, you know, we started working with SkyWater, and they were a great partner for us to do. I'm sorry, to do the first technology transfer and ramp up and qualification. You know, it was good to work with a foundry which was not a tier one, so that we worked. You know, we could look them in the eye, we worked together on it. You know, unfortunately, you can't have only good news, and sometimes there are some things that don't work exactly like you want. They've received, you know, money from the CHIPS Act, basically directed at a different process. They need to ramp up now a 90 nanometer rad hard process, and there's a big focus there on that.
So the company is just not focused on the 130 nanometer right now. They have, you know, they have missing IPs in that process that, you know, we had customers, and when I talked half a year ago about us having big name, product companies, we did. We actually even had already agreed on commercial terms with, with one of them. We were in negotiations with another. But then when they went to SkyWater and they realized that they're missing some of these IPs, I was sure that SkyWater was gonna immediately go and take care of that, you know, and move forward, but their priorities are different. I don't control their priorities. And so in terms of the product companies at SkyWater, I think that's where, you know, we didn't make the progress that we wanted.
You know, it's disappointing, I know. We haven't given up. There are customers who still want to work with us on SkyWater 130. They don't need these IPs, or they manage to somehow deal with it in a different way. So we are working towards that. And even, you know, talking about the CHIPS Act, there are places where some of these customers are talking to us about filing joint proposals for projects under the CHIPS Act that will be done at SkyWater, and we're, you know, we are in the process of already filing for those things. So there's good... You know, we're still progressing at SkyWater, and there will be eventually some deals with customers there.
I'm very glad that right now, Weebit has this relationship with DB HiTek, with other, you know, tier one foundries, and I think we'll be moving the focus to just making sure that we ramp up at these foundries that are looking for customers and, and where the big potential is.
One of the investors has asked whether there's an update on the expected timing of resolving the IP issues at SkyWater.
You know, we're pushing them. We're working with them on it. At this point, you know, I think it's clear that they are focusing where the money is. They're getting a, you know, very significant amount of money from the U.S. government to focus on the rad-hard 90, and that's what they decided to do. So, you know, we'll be pushing as much as we can. We will be, I really hope, bringing customers despite this handicap, you know, but it's not what I was hoping for, I admit that.
Just a qualification question from another investor: Was the missing IP at SkyWater required to be qualified there before it could be used, or is it just a straight-off-the-shelf, plug-and-play type scenario?
So qualification is really a process where we focus on qualifying our ReRAM. You know, we don't go to qualify the whole process of the fab. So we, you know, we have our test chip, which we did. For our test chip, we worked, and we didn't need those missing IPs, and so we qualified it, and you know, so it wasn't a relevant question for us for the qualification.
Great. You mentioned the CHIPS Act, sorry, in the US. Is that creating more opportunities for Weebit, more net opportunities? And there's obviously CHIPS Acts in other markets as well, or similar sorts of legislation.
Mm-hmm.
What's the impact on Weebit from that legislation? How do you think about it going forward?
It's actually very exciting. You know, there's a lot of money being poured into semiconductors now by governments. And you're right, it's not just the U.S., it's Europe and it's other countries. It's stirring up a lot of activity. And we were approached by SkyWater customers that saw the potential of doing a project with us under the CHIPS Act. So, as I mentioned, we are applying for projects under the CHIPS Act with some of these people to manufacture at SkyWater. Under the limitations that we currently have with SkyWater, we can still move forward, and we are, and you know, it's again, it's government. It takes the government time. You file until they actually accept and let you know if you did win or didn't win and everything.
They have a certain time schedule there, so we won't have news on that for, you know, in the next few months, but it's something that's also being done now.
Let's move on to DB HiTek and some of the other foundries. So on DB HiTek, do you see similar issues regarding IP and otherwise, or do you think things will be able to move more quickly with DB HiTek?
Oh, it's a completely-
Much larger fab, right? So.
Yeah. It's a completely different story. DB HiTek is a big, you know, well-known foundry that's been around for a long time. They have a very large customer base. You can imagine that people, you know, I mentioned some of their customers, already, you know, the Sony, Toshiba and Samsung and other NXP and Texas Instruments and other in the world. These guys wouldn't be getting anywhere close to DB HiTek if they didn't have a very solid IP library to provide them. So, everything is really, you know, moving much faster, much smoother, with DB HiTek. We're very happy with them. I'm sure that...
I know that with the other foundries that we're already talking to and the IDMs, we're not going to have that issue.
Great. Also, you mentioned Samsung is one of DB HiTek's clients, and I think Samsung recently announced some new and improved DRAM technology. How are you seeing the competitive landscape change in terms of new and emerging tech, and how does Weebit's ReRAM stack up to it?
I think the people on this call know memory is a very hot topic in semiconductors. It's memory in the large sense. DRAM is a volatile memory, so it's not really a competitor for us. You know, there's DRAM and SRAM. By the way, you know, these are the type of things that, you know, we were struggling with also with SkyWater, with some of these IPs, that some of them were volatile memories than others. But in general, I would say, it's very good news. The world is pushing for better memory technology in general. The world, as you know, is pushing for more advanced non-volatile technology.
I think the people have realized that MRAM, you know, and I remind everyone, MRAM has been around in the market in production mode for quite a few years already, for several years. It's not managing to ramp up.
We're hearing more and more feedback from customers, and again, even just on this last trip to the U.S., again, we've heard of situations where people, consumer companies are telling us: "We don't know where our products are gonna be, and they can be in places where there are magnetic fields, and, you know, we don't know what will happen to the MRAM and if it'll be erased or not." There are stories going around about products that had MRAM in them that, you know, that needed, you know, to operate in places where there were magnetic fields, and the memory was erased. So I think that's pushing everyone to ReRAM. In the ReRAM space, again, you know, you have TSMC and UMC with their ReRAMs.
GlobalFoundries is trying to make the older Adesto CBRAM work in parallel to working with us, by the way. And all of the others, you know, they really don't have a solution. And, you know, TSMC, UMC, and GlobalFoundries, they are foundries. They will not give their technology to other foundries, to other IDMs. So in that sense, now you can understand why so many foundries and IDMs are talking to Weebit, and we're feeling very bullish about it.
You mentioned TSMC and GlobalFoundries, maybe on TSMC first. Are you hearing much about their ReRAM and in particular, the uptake of that product?
... Yeah, we know that some companies are working with them on ReRAM. We also had, you know, more than one of the TSMC customers come to us and tell us: "Listen, you know, TSMC has a really nice ReRAM, but we want a module which will be tailored for our system on a chip." When we talked to TSMC, and that wasn't a surprise for me, but they were saying, TSMC said, "You know, here are a few options. This is what you can have. We're not going to start, we're not a memory company. We're not gonna start tailoring modules for the different customers at that level," and so on.
So that's what triggered people to come to us and say, "Hey, can you provide us, a ReRAM, which will be tailored for our specific needs?" you know, that's a big, big advantage of Weebit. Weebit has a really, really strong analog design and digital design team. I think it's, I think I can say second to none, in the industry right now. People recognize that, that's one of our big strengths. It's not just about the device and the process. It's not just about chemistry, physics. It's the design has, a key part in it, and Weebit has very strong teams in all of these different disciplines.
I mentioned we hired more PhDs for the device and the process side, an unbelievable team, but we also have a very, very strong analog and digital design team, and, and the test and characterization teams. I know it doesn't mean a lot to many people on the call, but we really have all of the disciplines covered now, working very well together, and the industry recognizes that.
Maybe we can just touch on GlobalFoundries. How things progress there? Do you expect customer traction to start from that partnership?
You know, so GlobalFoundries, we have a good partnership with them. They are still trying to make up their mind on what they're doing. As you know, they did acquire the old Adesto ReRAM technology. They are running in parallel now with both of these technologies, you know, trying to decide what they do. So, you know, we didn't get the top priority, but we are progressing. We got the wafers. We have, you know, the initial testing is good. We have some very nice results. We tested, you know, the memory array and, you know, we're already at good, you know... I'm very happy with what we're seeing there. There still is more work to do.
When we'll have actual, you know, progress, we'll be notifying the market. You know, so it's a very good work. And by the way, this shows that foundries don't have to have just one version of a ReRAM, or at least, you know, right now we're working with them on both and it's looking good.
You are in discussions with other foundries?
Definitely, definitely. I've, you know, I've said it many times. Yeah, and you need to understand, these negotiations are very long. You know, some of these guys, and I'm talking about foundries, I'm talking about IDMs, we had one which I actually thought we were going to sign an agreement with already, and then they came back, and they said, "You know, this is even more strategic than we thought. We want to expand the agreement. We want it to cover more ground and things," and suddenly, you know, we're back in negotiation on a much nicer deal, on a broader deal, which I hope will work out.
But it's that kind of thing that these negotiations are just very, you know, very. They take time because you need to go cover a lot of things, but we're clearly, you know, working and moving forward with these guys.
Just a question that's come in on sort of following up with GlobalFoundries. Following the scaling to 22 nanometers with GlobalFoundries, are you planning to test at even smaller geometries with any fab in the next year or so?
By the way, I think I mentioned already in the past that we've already been working at the 10s, what's called. So, we know that we can operate in some of the foundries that we're talking to, and, you know, the discussions have been on smaller geometries than 22. I won't go into more detail on that, but there's definitely been work at what's called the FinFET level. You know, we talked about FDSOI at 22-nm. When you go below 22, you start entering a different type of technology, which is called FinFET, and we've already worked with more than one FinFET technology.
You mentioned that some of the conversations with the fabs have taken a while, they take time. One of the shareholders of the company has come in with a question asking: Has the time to close tier one fabs and IDMs been slower than you would have expected, and is it market related?
No, it's not slower than I expected. Unfortunately, it's, you know, I'm proving my expectations to be correct. You know, for these guys, they, you know, they have these multi-billion-dollar facilities. Everything is very, very sensitive for them. They want to be absolutely sure that, you know, we're not introducing any risk, any issues. With some of them, it's, it can even be, you know, they have issues sometimes. Yes, we're using standard tools, standard everything, and yet in their specific production line, they might not be using something that we need, or they're using a different variant, or their production floor is full, and they need to see how they can reorganize things or make things work.
I mean, there's a lot of, you know, it kind of sounds stupid sometimes, the tactical things that we need to deal with, but it's all of these things that they need to go through and see how they incorporate this into this very big and complex machine that's called a fab.
We've had a few questions about who's gonna be the next sign up. Do you see any signups or new customer signings in the current year or next quarter? Is the next partnership more likely to be fab or a product customer?
I would say, first of all, you know, it's hard to predict when these deals close, but definitely in the, you know, in, in 2024, we, we plan to close, agreements with significant names. You know, we're pushing very hard for it. It's not always in our hands, but, I, you know, I believe, we will be making, good progress with some of these big name companies. I think right now, Weebit's focus is on foundries and on IDMs. The, the reason is simple. When you talk to product companies, the first questions that they ask is, "Well, where are we gonna manufacture it? We know it's gonna take you, you know, a year and a half or maybe two years to qualify the technology in a fab.
We can't sign up if we don't know that you're qualified or being or close to being qualified." So we're engaged with many product companies, but in terms of actually signing an agreement, except for SkyWater, where I still believe we will be eventually getting some customers as well. But, you know, with the other foundries, with the other foundries, we first need to show the customers that we're making good progress, and you know, it's happening.
We've had a few questions come in from various people on the selector. Can you provide an update on the progress with the selector and also discrete memory with the selector?
Yeah. So I think, by the way, the fact that we are even discussing a selector shows you just how strong Weebit is. I dare say the number of commercial companies that are trying to develop a more advanced selector, not even close to a handful. It's very, very, very difficult to develop a new selector, and we really are one of the very, very few companies that even has the ability to work on it. Unfortunately, even Weebit, we're limited in our resources, both manpower and, you know, financial resources, so we have to define priorities. At this point, our priority is to get the big name foundries and IDMs on board. That's where we're really putting a lot of effort.
Even, you know, on the R&D side, improving the core, our ReRAM technology, the manufacturing process, making it easier for these guys to decide on us. So there is progress on the selector. I hope we'll be able to announce some progress. Well, I won't, I won't say when, I won't jinx it, but we are working on that. It's just at a lower priority, but it's progressing.
And also, can you talk a bit about Weebit's ReRAM in the context of artificial intelligence? And there's been a lot of activity around AI and the growth in AI over the last 6-12 months.
Mm-hmm.
How does ReRAM fit into that?
Oh, well, AI, I think that's one thing that in Australia everyone, everyone understands. Semiconductor, many people don't understand, but I think many people know already AI is really, really hot. It's making huge progress. And AI, no matter how much memory you throw at it, they always need more. They always want more. That's one of the things that's pushing the market down to the very small geometries. You can just put so much more memory on a chip in the smaller geometries. And you know, so Weebit is definitely in that, especially... and one of the things that the market has been understanding.
You know, for a long time, people thought that you can work with dumb edge devices that just send everything up to the cloud, and then on the cloud, you have these huge machines that do all that computation and everything and send the results back. You know, the market has now realized, and I think it's very clearly understood, you need to have a lot of intelligence on the edge devices. You want to be able to do quite a bit. For example, you know, you might, if you want to do some image recognition or things like that, you might do all of the learning, the training on a big computer.
But then, when you just want to do what's called inference, just be able to, excuse me, to actually apply it and just compare all of the things that you see to what you have, it's much more effective when you're doing it at the edge. So, and at the edge, people, you know, they want a lot of memory. They need non-volatile memory because they don't want, if power goes out, to suddenly lose all of the stuff that they had. So, so there's definitely a lot of interest in ReRAM for this market. We actually published a paper just recently on it. You can see it on the website and on LinkedIn.
We are doing a lot of research and working with research institutes on how to use our ReRAM efficiently in these different applications. So this is becoming, you know, a more central activity right now for us, looking at how to leverage the AI market. Remember, flash cannot scale down below 40 or 28 nm. These guys want to scale down to very small geometry so that they can have more and more memory. They want to have a very fast memory. Some of these guys are talking about, you know, we want really to... When the machine turns on, it needs to be immediately operating. We don't want to waste time for it to wake up and boot and all of that. So there's...
We have a lot of advantages in this market, and we're gonna capitalize on them.
Just a question from a shareholder. In terms of discrete without a selector, that was something that had been noted as a use for a previous raise that occurred. Can you provide an update on where the discrete memory is and how it's taking shape?
Yes, we are working on that. There definitely is a market that we recognized last year that there is a market for the discrete, even with the existing selector. So, we are working on this direction as well.
So, I'm just conscious we've hit 45 minutes. We've covered almost every question that's come in. A few of them have overlapped, and there's been a couple of questions which were not for this session, around ASX 200 and around why Weebit doesn't do trading halts before sending announcements to ASX, given some of that history. They can be dealt with offline. But maybe just before we wrap up, Coby, so it's a new year or we're already February now, 2024, but you know, we all make resolutions on New Year's Eve. What are Weebit's resolutions for 2024? What can you tell us you'll be focusing on, and what does Weebit want to achieve this year?
Well, you know, if I try to put it in one sentence, I want, by the end of 2024, to be recognized as the undisputed leader in the ReRAM space. That's, you know, that's really the bottom line. I want to achieve, and I believe we will achieve agreements with leading foundries, with leading IDMs. The markets will see the power of Weebit, the power of the Weebit team, and that's really, you know, I was asked just earlier about all the shorting activity and stuff, and I think that the shorters right now don't understand semiconductors. They don't understand what we do, and they're trying to do analysis of Weebit as if it's a, I don't know, whatever kind of other market or company that they know.
But in our space, and I think our shareholders that have been with us for a long time, they know it, it might be taking some time to ramp up, but Weebit have gotten to the point where it is now engaged with many of the big players in the market. We will be, you know, during this calendar year, definitely closing agreements moving forward. We're also growing our, you know, our team, the sales and marketing team, you know, and all of that. So my resolution is, I just wanna be the undisputed leader of ReRAM. You know, I think I believe the shorters will be in for a surprise during this year.
Coby, thank you. But certainly, over 2023, Weebit grew in leaps and bounds, including the very successful capital raising that has put the company in an extremely strong balance sheet, probably the strongest I ever recall the company being in over the last seven or eight years that I've been involved with Weebit.
Mm-hmm.
And, I'm really excited by what the year ahead can provide for the company in terms of the various paths you're going down with fabs and with IDMs and technology evolution that's coming also. So, it will be great to see you and the team execute on your plans for 2024, and we'll look forward, as all the shareholders will be, to updates, the regular updates you provide, and hopefully seeing you out in Australia soon off the back of the results. Fingers crossed, all being well with travel and what's going on over in Israel.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Ron, and thanks to all of our loyal shareholders and, you know, the feedback that I'm getting from them is amazing, and looking forward to a great year.
Thank you, everyone, thank you, Coby, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. If you've missed part of the session or would like to rewatch or, please, be patient, we'll have it up online in the investor section of Weebit's website, as quickly as we can. Have a good rest of the afternoon, Coby. Have a great day. Thank you for joining us early in Israel.
Thank you.
Bye, everybody.