Okay, hello everyone. Yeah, thanks, thanks for coming, and I want to welcome you all to the AGM. As you know, I had a challenge to get here and, you know, with the visa issues and everything, so thanks to some good friends here with Ash and Ron, and, you know, pulled strings and helped me get into the country. So I'm very glad to be here. Unfortunately, Dadi, for other reasons, he didn't get the visa on time, and he’s not here with us. He's here on the Zoom, and I'll be handing it over to him in a second. But I'd just like to welcome everyone, and especially we have here two of our directors. We have Naomi Simson and Ashley Krongold that are here.
I'll give you this one because I was drinking from the other one.
Oh.
That's fine. That's fine. No, no problem.
Okay.
Also, Mark Licciardo, our corporate secretary, is here. And Madeline, thanks for setting all of this up. And we have the people also from Automic that are helping us with Ron and Eric and Jess, wherever, yeah. So over there. So thank you all, and I guess I'll hand it over to Dadi, who's on the Zoom, so that we can start the formal meeting. Dadi?
Thank you, Coby. And good morning, everyone. Good afternoon, I'm sorry. My name is David 'Dadi' Perlmutter, and I have the privilege of being the Chair of Weebit Nano. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2023 annual general meeting of Weebit Nano Limited. I apologize for not being able to participate in the meeting in person. As Coby mentioned, some visa problems. Hopefully, next time I'll be in person again. We have a quorum, so I declare the meeting and all open. Notice of the meeting was distributed on 20 October 2023, which is set to the business and resolution to be considered at the meeting, and I will take the notice of the meeting as read. It is now 3 PM, AEDT, the time appointed for the meeting, and we have a quorum, so I declare the meeting open.
I would like to start by outlining some of the procedural matters. In addition to our personal meeting, in-person meeting in Melbourne, we are also conducting a meeting with a virtual component. This hybrid forum allows shareholders and proxies, wherever they may be, to attend virtually. All shareholders and proxies have the ability to ask questions and vote today. For those of you online, should you experience any technical difficulties, a recording of our AGM will be available on our website following the meeting. If you experience any technical issues during the meeting, a short recess may be required. Should this occur, we will communicate accordingly. Shareholders will have an opportunity to ask general questions after the conclusion of the formal items of the business. For those attending virtually, please see the steps as outlined on the screen.
For those attending the meeting in person, please raise your hand. When prompted, you will be called upon at the appropriate time. Voting today will be conducted by way of poll on all items of business. Instructions on how to vote through the Computershare platform is displayed on the screen. In order to provide everyone with the opportunity to vote, and in case everyone cannot stay for the whole meeting, the poll is now open, and you could vote on all resolutions. I will give you a warning before I move to close voting. For those voting holders physically in the room today, you will have received a voting card upon registration. Please complete the reverse of the voting card. Should you require assistance to do this, we have Computershare staff available to assist you.
Today, I'm joined by my fellow directors, our CEO, Coby Hanoch, Ashley Krongold and Naomi Simson, attending in person. We also have present in Zoom our CFO, Alla Felder, representatives from our company secretary office, Mertons Corporate Services. I'm happy to have you, Muranda, Janse Van N ieuwenhuizen, our Auditor from Nexia Perth, and Julianne Muis from our share registry, Computershare Investor Services, who will also act as our returning officer. I would like to make a short statement as Chair. The past year has been Weebit Nano's most successful to date, and we have seen our transition from focusing on our technology development into a commercial company. We have laid the foundations and opened the gates to acquire customers, de-risking our embedded ReRAM with our successful qualification of the technology at industrial and automobile specified temperatures in SkyWater Technology.
We have also re-signed a licensing agreement with tier one foundry, DB HiTek, and generated initial revenues. Our proven ReRAM IP is now commercially available in SkyWater, S130 CMOS process, marking our transition from a future technology to the industry-leading foundry agnostic provider of advanced non-volatile memory. Our recent licensing agreement with global top ten foundry, DB HiTek, is assisting our discussions with other leading foundries, integrated device manufacturers, and semiconductor companies. Under our licensing agreement with DB HiTek, our embedded ReRAM will soon be on the shelf in one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world. In addition to further validating the quality and the maturity of our embedded ReRAM, our agreement with the tier one chip manufacturer increases the urgency for other foundries to add our ReRAM on their shelves.
The urgency is being supported by increasing industrial recognition that ReRAM is a better replacement for flash memory than other emerging technologies like MRAM. In most applications, given the significant manufacturing and cost advantages, the industry demonstrated its view of Weebit ReRAM a few months ago, with the semiconductor engineering community naming it the Embedded Solution Product of the Year in the Electronics Industry Awards. While our first IP is already in the market, ReRAM is still very much of an emerging technology. Much like flash, which has continued to evolve over the past three decades, we will continue to improve the baseline parameters of our ReRAM over the coming years to meet customers' demand for smaller, more efficient, non-volatile memory.
In parallel, we are also progressing our selector development for the discrete memory market, which provides an additional and much larger opportunity over the long term. To the best of my knowledge, there's no other team in the world which has the same caliber of engineers across the disciplines required to drive such broad developments. Instrumental to our success in full year 2023, have been our enduring partnership with development partner, CEA-Leti, and our collaboration with commercial partner, SkyWater Technology. On behalf of the Weebit team, I'd like to thank CEA-Leti and SkyWater for their support over the last year. We look forward into another successful full year in 2024. This year has not been without its challenges. This include volatile capital markets and geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China, with the semiconductor industry in the middle of it.
We've also navigated increased shorting activity as we were added to the ASX 300 and then to the ASX 100, and delays in finalizing our first tier one agreement. More recently, we have had to cope with the conflict in Israel. Our world-class leadership and board have successfully steered the company through these challenges, and our confidence in our technology, market opportunity, and outlook has not wavers. I'm incredibly proud of our team for upholding the Israeli tradition of pushing ahead with milestones, not losing a single day of work, any delivery, or any customer, despite the ongoing conflict. We are well organized to continue to do that in the future. Weebit continues to strengthen its governance credentials, welcoming a well-known Australian entrepreneur and marketing executive, Naomi Simson, to the board in August 2023. We are committed to increase our board diversity going forward.
It is a privilege and an honor to be the chair of Weebit Nano, and I'm incredibly proud of our achievements over the past year. I'm looking forward with excitement for the future of Weebit. I'd like to extend my thanks to my fellow directors of Weebit, and Weebit entire team across the world for all your hard work and dedication over the past year. We have an exciting year ahead. Before I hand over to Coby for an operational update, I'd like to thank our highly engaged shareholders for our continued support. Our successful capital raise of approximately AUD 60 million during the year ensures we have all the building blocks in place to capitalize on our position as the leading independent provider of ReRAM.
Our strong start of full year 2024 provides the momentum for the exceptional year ahead, and we sign new agreement with foundries and customers, growing revenues as ReRAM starts to replace flash in next generation designs. Longer term, Weebit has what it takes to be the global leader in the ReRAM domain, underpinned by the world-class team and game-changing technology. Now we will turn to the formal part of today's meeting. I confirm that I propose to vote those proxies left to my direct discretion as the chair of Weebit. Sorry. I confirm that I propose to vote those proxies left to my discretion as the chair in favor of all resolutions. Proxy voting received prior to the meeting will be shown on the screen for each item of the business to be voted today.
Only shareholders, validly appointed proxies, and corporate representatives are entitled to ask questions at today's meeting. It is my duty as chair to ensure the shareholders here, as a group, have the reasonable opportunity to discuss the management of the company and the item of business before the meeting. The following procedures have been adapted for this meeting. Questions and comments should be concise. Questions and comments must be confined to the particular item being discussed and to matters relevant to the shareholders as a whole. Shareholders are limited to one question at a time. As outlined previously, for those attending virtually, please see the steps as outlined on the screen. For those attending the meeting in person, please raise your hand when prompted, and you will be called upon at the appropriate time.
The first item of business is to receive and consider the company's annual report, including the director's report and auditor's report for the year ended 30th of June 2023. A copy of the 2023 annual report was made available to shareholders on 25th of August 2023. There is no formal resolution to put in the meeting in relation to the adoption of the 2023 annual report. However, I will respond to questions from shareholders in relation to the annual report. Muiranda of Nexia Perth is also available online to respond any questions relating to the audit and the financial statements. We will also take questions about or any comments you may have in relation to the management of the company. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
Thank you, Chair. There are no questions online in relation to item one.
Thank you. There are no questions via the phone lines.
As there are no questions online or on the phone... I'm sorry, that already passed. No questions in the room, so I now move to the next item of business. Resolution 1 relates to the adoption of the-
Hold on.
- Remuneration report for the year ended 30th June 2023.
Hi, Dadi. Sorry, there's just a question in the room.
Yes, I'm sorry.
One moment.
Oh, okay.
Good afternoon. My name is John Sabljak. I just have a question as to whether any of the directors or all the directors need to actually hold any shares that they acquire on market, as opposed to options or performance rights or anything else, because I noticed one or two of the directors don't have any actual equities. Or is there a plan to introduce such a policy?
We don't have a policy for holding shares. All directors, of course, have their options and performance rights. Most of the shareholders, including myself and the CEO, hold personal shares as we invested in the company. Any other question?
No further questions in the room.
Okay. Thank you. Resolution 1 relates to the adoption of the remuneration report for the year ended 30th of June 2023, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions and comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online in relation to resolution one.
Thank you. There are no questions via the phone lines.
Any questions in the room?
As the next item relates to me, I will hand the chair over to Coby to address this resolution.
Thank you, Dadi. Thank you, Dadi. Resolution two relates to the re-election of Mr. David Perlmutter, as the director of the company, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments on the phone?
There are no questions via the phone lines.
There are no questions online either.
Any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions, I will... Where was it? I will hand back to Dadi Perlmutter to chair the meeting.
Thank you, Coby. Resolution three relates to the re-election of Mr. Ashley Krongold as the director of the company, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online in relation to resolution three.
Thank you. There are no questions via the phone lines.
As there are no questions online or on the phone, are there and? Also, no question in the room. So in that case, if there are no further questions to the room, I will now table the outcome proxy voting, received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution four relates to the election of Mrs. Naomi Simson as director of the company, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online in relation to resolution four.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Any questions in the room?
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 5 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Executive Director and CEO of the company, Mr. Coby Hanoch, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding resolution five.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Any questions in the room?
Is there no questions in the room?
No questions in the room.
I will now table the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 6 relates to the approval of issue of options to Executive Director and CEO of the company, Mr. Coby Hanoch, as set out in notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding Resolution 6.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. As the next item relates to me, I will hand the chair over to Coby again, to address this resolution.
Thank you, Dadi. Resolution 7 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Non-Executive Director of the company, Mr. David Perlmutter, as set out in the notice of the meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments on the phone or online?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 7.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Okay. As there are no questions online or on the phone or in the room, I now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution eight relates to the approval of is... and of issue of options to Non-Executive Director of the company, Mr. David Perlmutter, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments on the phone or online?
There are no questions regarding resolution 8 online.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
As there are no questions, I will now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. I will now hand back to Dadi to chair the meeting.
Thank you, Coby. Resolution 9 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Executive Director of the company, Dr. Yoav Nissan-Cohen, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online, online or on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding resolution nine.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 10 relates to the approval of issue of options to Executive Director of the company, Dr. Yoav Nissan-Cohen, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 10.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now. I have a problem in my computer. I will not show the results. Let me open the other computer. I apologize for a second. For some reason, there's a problem in the file that I'm reading from.
Is it okay or do you want me to continue?
No, I will continue in a second. I opened another, the file on another computer. Thank God to having multiple computers in my room. I apologize for that. For some reason, the file is corrupted on my computer. Resolution 9 relates to the appro-- Okay, this one did. And we also approved resolution 10, correct? Which was resolution 11. I'm sorry. Okay. Resolution 11 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Non-Executive Director of the company, Mr. Ashley Krongold, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the screen?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 11.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of the proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 12 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Non-Executive Director of the company, Mr. Atiq Raza, as set out in the notice of the meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online and on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 12.
There are no questions on the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 13 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Non-Executive Director of the company, Mrs. Naomi Simson, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the spot?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 13.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. Resolution 14 relates to the proposed increase to Non-Executive Director fee pool, as set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments online or on the phone?
There are no questions online regarding resolution 14.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions in the room, I will now table the outcome of proxy voting received prior to the meeting, as shown on the screen. I remind those shareholders that wish to vote today, who have not already done so, to please complete their voting in accordance to the instructions provided at the beginning of the meeting, as the poll will be closing soon. I would like to open the floor for any general questions from shareholders for the board. I remind you of the procedures I've already outlined for questions on this meeting.
There are two questions online regarding general business. The first question is from Paul Dunai. "I get confused about the revenue potential of Weebit when I'm presented with the NVM, NVM market size in the multi-billions and what we can address specifically as royalties. So what would be the maximum royalties that Weebit could address from a company like DB HiTek?
Okay, I will be addressing this more in the presentation. I think the answer. Just to give an initial answer, a foundry like DB HiTek has hundreds of customers, including many big name companies like Samsung and Sony, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, et cetera. And the deal with a foundry like DB HiTek enables us to access all of these customers and to license the technology to them, eventually resulting in license fees, potential engineering fees, and of course, royalties. The royalties are calculated based on very different schemes, and it's really very hard to give, you know, one rule of how royalties are calculated. I would say, in general, the royalties are a function of the revenues that the customer has from the product that has Weebit's technology in, embedded in it.
So you can try to think of the revenues that these companies have from different products, and normally, these companies would not develop a product which doesn't bring significant revenues to them, and we will be getting a percentage of that. The percentage, and the details, and the order, the way that we built it varies from deal to deal, and it's really very hard to give specific numbers or you know, to give anything more exact at this point.
There is one other question from Robert Carmen, which I don't know if you want to do it after your presentation, Coby. It references slide 18 in the pack that was lodged with the ASX on Tuesday morning. Just asking, given the slide shows the predicted embedded ReRAM market growing by a CAGR of 131% over 2023-2028, could we expect this trend to continue beyond 2028?
So yes, again, I will be addressing all of these things during my presentation. You know, what you saw on that slide is the prediction of analysts that are experts in this market. I believe that, you know, anyone can see that if a market is growing this fast, you can think of it as continuing. It won't stop at that point, but I cannot... I personally can't make that prediction, and I think even the analysts, beyond several years, it's hard for them to provide specific numbers. But again, everyone can apply their own judgment of what happens when the market grows so fast. Normally, it doesn't stop that, at that point.
There are no further questions online regarding general business.
There are no questions via the phone lines.
Are there any questions in the room? There are no questions in the room.
As there are no questions, that concludes the formal items of business, to be considered at today's meeting, and I declare the poll is now closed. As it takes some time for the poll results to be known, they will be announced to the ASX later today. I thank you all for attendance and declare the meeting closed. I will now hand over to Coby for today's CEO presentation. The presentation was released to the ASX on 21 of November and will be now displayed on the screen. And before I do that, I, I didn't introduce, Atiq Raza, who is online as well. So I'm very happy to have another director joining us in the room. So, Coby, go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, Dadi. And again, thank you everyone for coming, and I will also thank you for supporting us. As you could see, the resolutions, I'm hoping that everything is passing. I think it was known that there was a challenge with the recommendations that institutions got, and I just want to thank all of our loyal shareholders that jumped in and voted and helped us. So we really appreciate your support. Before I start the actual presentation, there's a video, a short video that I'd like to present, and then I'll dive into the presentation.
What does it take to create an innovative semiconductor technology for a new era of connected devices? To develop a product that will challenge the status quo in non-volatile memory, to create an incredibly complex technology that customers can easily adopt and integrate? At Weebit Nano, we know what it takes. This is what we're doing with Weebit ReRAM. Our ReRAM performs significantly better than flash memory, and is easy to integrate into even the most advanced manufacturing flows. What does it take to do this? It takes device and process knowledge. Our physics experts focus on innovations that achieve the best-performing memory cells. And our chemistry experts concentrate on perfecting the technology recipe and tuning it for particular processes and materials. It also takes analog and digital design expertise. Our NVM designers have deep experience optimizing for low power and developing unique algorithms to enhance performance.
All four of these disciplines work closely together, and we continue to innovate on all fronts, knowing that technology excellence is a continuous process, requiring ongoing research and a robust roadmap. Finally, it takes an experienced, committed, and resilient team that has done this before and has the ability to do it again. At Weebit, we are applying our shared passion, experience, and technology to help customers deliver their designs on spec, on time, and with high quality.... We have what it takes to become the world leader in non-volatile memory solutions for a new generation of connected devices. We are Weebit Nano.
Okay, thank you. So, and thank you for our marketing team for setting up this video. So, yeah, well, I hope that by the end of my presentation, you will all agree that Weebit has what it takes to become the leader in this market, and even more than that, that as far as I can see, we are the only company that has what it takes to become the leader. So, let's start. I will skip the few slides, and let's skip... I think everyone here knows these intro slides, so let's go to the next section. Whoever doesn't know what's on these slides until here, I think, you know, we can talk about it later, but most of you can present it better than me already. So let's talk about the recent achievements.
Let's talk about what happened last year, because I think that this past year, for us, has been a very, very important year, a, a year of success, of moving forward, really. You know, we've been talking about this transition to commercialization, and I think this year has really been a very important year. You know, it started with getting the wafers from SkyWater. It seems like ages ago, it was a year ago, that we got the first wafers produced in a mass production facility in our hands. You know, since then, we went forward and we got, first of all, the 85 degree qualification, and then the 125 degrees qualifications, which we had announced just now. That really opens up the market.
It really projects to the market, not only to the SkyWater customers that we have it, but the market in general. The other foundries are seeing that this technology is robust. It can withstand 125 degrees for 10 years. You know, that's not negligible, and it's very important. In parallel, we had other milestones this year, and I think more notably, we announced, of course, the GlobalFoundries getting the GlobalFoundries wafers finally and working with them. And maybe the biggest announcement in the last couple of months, I think, was DB HiTek.
So, before I dive into that, I think it's also important to note, and maybe this is the first time that I'm putting an emphasis on it, because Weebit also, this year, went through a real transformation on, on the operational side, on the governance side. You know, just in March, we entered ASX 300. Before we knew it, we were already ASX 200. Obviously, the requirements from companies at this level are different than they are from smaller companies, and the company has been undergoing an important transformation to meet the expectations from an ASX 200 company. So, part of that was setting up the board subcommittees. The board infrastructure has changed. The procedures, we're working now on all of the procedures. I think you all know our board is...
I consider it one of the most conservative boards on the ASX, even before we became ASX 300. I think I stated that even last year. The board has really been very, very cautious about its decisions and about the way that it works. You know, sometimes we had surprises from the ASX during the year and things that we didn't expect, but at the end of the day, it is a very, very conservative board. These are people that were on boards of public companies, major public companies in this industry, be it AMD or Intel or Mellanox or others. You know, they know how big companies need to be governed, and we have that knowledge in the company, and they are driving the company. Actually, from the very beginning, they've been driving the company to meet these expectations.
Now, obviously, we're even doing the next step. I'm very happy we also have Naomi, who joined our board more recently. I think, you know, I referred to it just when, before this presentation, part of becoming such a company is the fact that institutional investors. Well, first of all, the index funds come in and invest. Unfortunately, the next day, they go and they give their shares to shorters, and I've been receiving so many comments from so many people about it. What can we do? You know, the shorters have it. They do what they do. We don't control the shorters. We only control what we can, and I'm totally focused on just delivering. You know, we see the achievements, the milestones. We're going to continue.
The focus now is on the business milestones, on getting more agreements with foundries, with customers, product companies, et cetera. That's the only thing that I can do against the shorting activity, and we're going to continue to deliver. We're going to continue to deliver on both the technical and the business sides, and hopefully, at the end, you know, the shorters will understand the message. So that's very important. And also, since some of you guys had these questions, you know, it happened so fast that we got into the ASX 200, and suddenly we have these institutional advisors that start analyzing the company. We didn't really have a relationship with them before. We didn't have time to even set that up. They have their own way of analyzing companies and of deciding what they recommend to vote for or not.
You know, they don't know Dadi or his contribution to the company, so I think it's public knowledge that they were recommending to vote against Dadi. They considered the fact that we are allocating options to him as something that makes him not independent. I strongly disagree with that because all of the major companies in high tech that I'm aware of, from Intel, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, you name them, they all give options to all of their directors, and nobody claims that their boards are not independent. In any case, obviously, before next year, we'll be working with these advisors, and I hope we won't get to the same place as we did this year in asking you guys to help us, and that's part of this transformation.
It doesn't happen overnight, but the company is getting organized and set up to be an ASX 200 company with everything that it implies. So, we're doing that, and thank you all again for the support meanwhile as we're doing that transition. So let's talk about the good things. DB HiTek, and excuse me if sometimes I refer to them as Dongbu in their previous name, they are, for me, a very, very important achievement. This is already one of the top 10 foundries. They're actually one of the leading foundries in the analog and power management domain. As I stated already, they have hundreds of customers, big-name customers, behind them. This is really a very well-organized foundry, and we're very happy. They took us through quite a bit of due diligence and checking.
You know, their facilities, as you know, cost them billions of dollars to set up, and they were very cautious in bringing us in. I'm really happy we have a very good relationship with them. We started already the technology transfer. They actually already identified 20 of their customers as the first potentials for us to work with. We're now engaging with them. We will start working with those customers to get them to know and understand Weebit. So this is really good. You know, as you can understand, the potential here is very big. Each one of these customers, I mentioned—I answered that question already before the presentation, but, you know, there's a potential for very nice revenue from royalties from each one of them, and we expect that to obviously grow.
You know, again, the comments that I get from you guys, somehow ASX didn't understand that potential, and just when we were releasing the announcement, they took off the price sensitivity of it, and many of you were asking why. Well, we had it price sensitive, and unfortunately, the ASX, for some reason, thought that it wasn't. But anyway, it's a very good thing. By the way, having DB HiTek sign up with us, definitely, and I can feel the impact that it had already on other foundries. So we are working with many of the other big foundries, and they are taking us through intensive evaluations and due diligence, et cetera. But the SkyWater announcement, the DB HiTek announcement, these things are impacting and helping us to move forward, and we will have additional foundries over time signed up.
The other big announcement that we had, and I know many people were asking me again over time, "What happened with GlobalFoundries? You taped out in January. What's going on?" Unfortunately, you know, they give priority to wafers that generate revenue for them, and you know, they have customer wafers running through the fab. We got lower priority. It takes time. I know I say it many times in semiconductor, these things take time, and you know, that's the nature of this industry. But we're very happy to have those wafers now, and initial testing has already shown that the memory array is functional. We're going to go into much deeper testing, analysis, and you know, eventually, we hope to get to the point where we can start qualification. There's a lot of work going on.
I'll talk about it more later, but I think you know that GlobalFoundries has also acquired the ReRAM technology that used to belong to Adesto, so we're actually running in parallel on both technologies. They basically are trying to figure out if they want to work with one of these technologies, with both of them in parallel. You know, they're trying to decide how they move forward. I remind you that, you know, these technologies for a foundry are only enablers to selling wafers, right? And this is something that I will repeat again later on in this presentation, but it's really important to understand. For a foundry, the key is to sell wafers. That's where they make their $ billions, from selling wafers. And having, you know, all of these IPs are an enabler to that.
You know, so a foundry. Because—and maybe I'll stop here just for a second and try to explain a concept. You all know that we're focused now on the embedded market, on embedding our ReRAM into what's called a system on a chip. You know, the system on a chip, because everything has been shrinking in semiconductors, people now can put a full system on a single chip, including a processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, you know, sensors, whatever, and also memory, right? Now, when a company goes to a DB HiTek or goes to a GlobalFoundries, you know, they basically, in order to make their system on a chip, they don't want to redesign the whole world again. They don't want to reinvent the wheel.
There are very good IP modules out there that perform Wi-Fi or that perform Bluetooth or that perform whatever. So normally, what they do is they design the heart of the system. That's their IP, that's their smarts. And then the rest of the stuff, they take IP modules that are already out there that do that function. They do them well. By the way, ReRAM is one of those modules, and they take a ReRAM module and embed it as well. That's what we're doing, right? So customers need all of these modules so that they can quickly finish their design and send it to mass production, to the manufacturing, right? So that's the concept that I hope that you have. And for these foundries, ReRAM is one of those IPs that is an enabler for their customers to manufacture their products, okay?
So, GlobalFoundries, the fact that they have the Adesto ReRAM, it's not a competitor to Weebit. You know, they have several versions of processors that are available for their customers, and customers can choose whichever one they want. They have several versions of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and all these other things. For them, if they have both of us on the shelf there, it's fine. It just even enables maybe more. So it's really important that everyone understands we're not in competition with GlobalFoundries there, and they are looking at our technology and just trying to decide what they're doing. So I sidestep a little bit, but I think it's important for everyone to understand this concept because it's a basic concept that you'll see also. I'll refer to it in the—when I continue the presentation.
Now, of course, the qualification at SkyWater, I already mentioned it. 125 degrees is already automotive grade. You know, it opens up an additional market for us. Many, many applications which are more consumer, which are industrial, etc., a lot of them, 85 degrees are enough, and that was the first level that we did. Getting to automotive grade, that's already an important step forward, showing the robustness of this technology. And it's a very important milestone for us, and it sends the message also, not only... By the way, SkyWater's customers, you know, are a lot of them from the Department of Defense and in the mil/aerospace. They need the ability to work in high temperatures in many cases.
So it's important for SkyWater customers, but it's also much more important for us showing to other foundries, "Hey, we achieved this, you know, we're robust. You know, stop evaluating us and let's sign the agreements already," okay? So, that's kind of a key step here. I will, at this point, also address a question, and I got so many of them already, about: "So what-- where are these SkyWater customers? What, what happened to them? You said that you're going to have a customer already signed up by the middle of this year, before the end of this year." And I want to address that openly with everyone. We actually had customers that were already lined up, and we even negotiated and had agreements on the commercial terms with them. I mean, we-- I was sure that I was going to have...
In some of the interviews, you could have sensed my confidence that I was going to close these agreements. Unfortunately, SkyWater is a relatively younger and newer foundry, and we found out these customers, when they went to SkyWater and they said, "Okay, we need these IPs in addition to the ReRAM," and, you know, they found out that some of the IPs are missing, and as you can understand, they couldn't do their chip without all of those IPs. They came back to us, and they said, "Listen, we want to work with you, but, you know, we're kind of stuck here." Those deals fell apart. Those customers definitely didn't disappear, and they're going to come back to us and in their next project, and we are working with them.
The good news is that SkyWater today realizes that they have that issue. They hired a new President and COO that came on board a month and a half ago. During this month and a half, I already had three meetings with him to discuss this and discuss how we move forward, and he is very focused on fixing this situation. So, you know, we had that surprise kind of happen to us that we didn't realize it was going to have such an impact. But the good news is that we're working with them, and I hope, I can't tell you exactly when, but we will be engaging with them, with the customers, and working to fix this issue. So just wanted to address that question that I get very often. So, you know...
That's the achievements that we had in the past year. Again, you know, going from just getting first wafers from a mass production facility, all the way to having now DB HiTek and DB HiTek and, and, you know, achieving 125 degrees, and having wafers already in GlobalFoundries, et cetera. I think we managed a lot over the year. But where are we going now, and what's ahead for Weebit? So, first of all, I remind everyone, we're part of the semiconductor space, which is a very fast-growing space. Everything is becoming digitized. Electronic components are now everywhere. You all know that, I won't spend time on it. The semiconductor market is going to be more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade. You know, that's a very big number. And Ron?
In that market, memory is the biggest segment, or you could say one of the two largest segment with logic. It's a very critical element in semiconductors. Both you have the discrete, and you have all of these other domains that actually require embedded memory to operate, so there's a lot of work here. And you know that that the non-volatile memory market is a market that's going to be $124 billion very soon. So it's a very big potential that we have. And another important part of this is really the fact that we're going down in the 22 nm. Now that we have wafers, and they're we can already see that the initial functionality is working, and we're going to be moving forward.
We've already started working, I think I mentioned it in the past, analyzing, going into the, what's called the teens. Different foundries are working at 12, 14, 16, whatever, you know, that level. It's already in a more advanced technology called FinFET, and we are already working on that in simulations and analysis. So there's a huge market there and going down to smaller geometries. So, you know, the bottom line is the market needs a technology like ReRAM. Today, it's not a question, everyone is talking about it. The largest automotive supplier in the world, Infineon, made a clear announcement, all of their future chips are gonna be based on ReRAM, and that really shook up the market. Everyone is now aware of the fact that the big players, Apple, has a chip with ReRAM in an iPhone.
You know, people know that it's here. ReRAM is here, and this is a technology of choice. By the way, you know, to look historically, I mean, we've had Flash for so many years. People have been looking for a new technology, and MRAM came out first. It's already out in mass production for a few years. You have, I mean, companies selling it and being profitable. But as time goes by, it's very clear to people that MRAM is not the solution. First of all, it's just such a contaminant in a fab. You have to set up the whole manufacturing in a separate facility. It's a very expensive production line for MRAM. They have so many steps and so many very thin layers that they need to do, and this is really a big challenge.
The cost of manufacturing MRAM, and you guys, I think, already know, it adds about 30, 40, even more % to the cost of a silicon wafer. That's huge. You know, flash is only 10%-20% added cost, and ReRAM, it's 5%-7%, okay? So obviously, people, some people are using MRAM. They couldn't wait, and you know, it has some advantages. The big advantage of MRAM over ReRAM, by the way, is the endurance. Very few people need that big endurance that MRAM has. We are already, as you know, 100 times better than flash, but you know, MRAM has its space. I've had already quite a few consumer and other companies tell me, "No way on Earth will we ever touch MRAM.
This thing is too dangerous for us," because if a guy has an MRAM in his cell phone and he walks through airport security, he goes to a hospital next to an MRI machine or whatever, you know, that thing can erase the memory eventually. A big consumer company was telling us about their ear pods that are in a case that snaps shut with a magnet, and they're afraid that over time, that will erase the memory. So, you know, people are looking for ReRAM now that ReRAM is out there. It started with TSMC announcing it. Now, Weebit and UMC have ReRAM. The market is very interested in this, and we're getting people from all over that are interested and want to work on it. Now, so...
Oh, and I guess the previous slide showed that ReRAM will be taking over the MRAM market very soon. I mean, the expectation is that 60% of the wafers that have new memory technology on them will be with ReRAM in just a few years. So, you know, I think, again, it just shows the potential of this market. Now, before I dive into a little bit more of exactly the analysis of the market and so on, I want to just remind everyone a few details about how this market works. So in terms of the business model, and by the way, I'm focused now, talking about the embedded side of things. I will mention the discrete a little later. Today, the focus of Weebit is embedded. I want to make the maximum out of this.
We need to get as many deals as we can with foundries, with customers, to start ramping up the revenues. The discrete is happening in the background at lower priority. We are making progress on the selector and so on, but I will be focusing over the next slides on the embedded side of things mainly. So just a reminder, the way that this thing works is, first of all, Weebit needs to work with a foundry. You know, that's why working with DB HiTek is so important. We sign up the foundry, they pay us the license fee, they pay us NRE, which is non-recurring engineering. It's for all of the work to transfer the technology, and we transfer the technology to them. The license fee, very often, is paid upfront.
That's what will happen in future deals, we will insist on getting paid upfront. Today, you know, with these initial deals with SkyWater and DB HiTek, et cetera, obviously, you know, we have to compromise. They have their concerns, and you know, the license fee is actually paid in payments tied to certain milestones and so on. So I'm very happy to say we have first revenue, and you guys saw that announcement. It's a small number, it's $100,000. That's the initial payment of the initial license fee. You know, the dollar amount isn't so important, it's the fact that we actually are no longer pre-revenue, okay? The company made another very important transformation in the past year.
We are now a revenue-generating company, and, and this was only the first payment, and we will see more payments coming in, and, and things will start moving. You know, we'll talk in a minute about projections and, and about how exactly this will happen, but I think that's an important thing. And then, once we work with the foundry, like a DB HiTek, we already engage with them and start looking for the product companies. We want to bring them on board. As I mentioned with DB HiTek, we're already identifying customers. By the way, with SkyWater, it's the same thing. We have now, now that they're focused again on getting customers, we, we are identifying customers with them and starting to talk to these customers.
These product companies, you know, some of them will be small, and maybe, you know, we don't want to waste energy on too many accounts which don't generate a lot of revenue. So some of them will go, and basically, we will be working with them through the foundry. We won't have a direct relationship with them. When they go to the foundry, and they buy wafers, they will tell the foundry, "We want this IP, that IP, that IP." The foundry uplifts the price of a wafer, and then from that uplift, part of that will be paid to Weebit as royalties. So that's one way of working.
And in that case, just so, because people are asking me about royalties, and there was a question even earlier, in this case, the royalties will actually be a function of the wafer price, as you can understand, which eventually reflects also the revenue, but that's one way. With the big, important, strategic product companies, you know, the Apple, Broadcom, Google, whatever of the world, we will want to engage directly. So we will actually work with them to get the license fee directly paid from them, to get paid, you know, the NRE from them, for tailoring the module to their needs. We will want to tailor the module so that it is the most optimal possible for them, that they will be as happy as they can.
They will come to us again, they will tell their friends that they're happy, so there will be a very close relationship with them. And then, we will actually get paid the royalties directly by them as a percentage of their revenues. So there are... As I mentioned earlier, there are so many different ways that royalties are calculated, and I won't go into all the details, but, you know, different companies function differently. Some companies have one division developing the chip, and then they do an internal sale to another division that builds the product and sells it, and you need to adapt to all of these different scenarios. So I'm not going into the detail, but at the end of the day, it's a function of their revenues. And it's really important, and this is really a key element.
When we sign with one of these foundries, Ron is busy there again. We actually engage all of their customers behind them. I'm repeating this again, I was so surprised that the ASX couldn't understand this concept, but I know that you guys understand it. So there is a huge potential behind every one of these foundries. Now, it's important for me that everyone understands, and that we set expectations properly. You know, I don't want to mislead anyone. You've heard me say many times, in semiconductors, things take time. It's a very expensive environment, and the manufacturing is so delicate. So, you know, basically, the flow is when we sign, I don't have a pointer here, but when we sign an agreement with a foundry, we start transferring the technology to them.
It's a process of roughly half a year. Then, we go, and we manufacture the first wafers, another roughly half a year to get those wafers back, to start testing them, and eventually, to do the qualification. Now, qualification, I think you already realized, is a long process. We need to put. Part of the qualification process is to put these chips in ovens in high temperatures for thousands of hours, okay? No matter what I do, thousands of hours are many days, and I can't shorten that. So it takes that time. After roughly order of magnitude of a year and a half, we are qualified, assuming everything goes well, and we're ready for mass production. Now, we don't wait for that in order to engage with the customers. You know, we will go to the product companies earlier.
Like you can understand, we already started talking to DB HiTek about their customers, and we will start exposing their customers to our technology. We will start learning their needs. We want to get in their mindset so that when they're starting to think of the next project, they will have us in mind, and they will come to us with questions. We'll answer, and maybe even, you know, we'll modify the module that's running through to do that qualification to already start addressing their needs. So the goal is, as quickly as possible, get these customers on board and have them decide that they want to run with us. Now, once they decide that, that's the long period that, okay, they decided now they want to make this product. Our ReRAM is part of it. They have all of these other IPs.
They have their own IP. It's a process of between 9-18 months for them to design this new product, get it ready to tape-out and manufacture. You know, then they go and manufacture, and as you know, order of magnitude of half a year, they get the chips, they do the testing, they do the qualification, et cetera. Again, you know, roughly order of magnitude of 2 years. You know, I'm saying this not to scare you off and to say, "Oh, my god, you know, now..." But it is what it is. This is how this industry works, and we just need to accept that fact.
The good news, and again, the thing that I really want to emphasize, the day that I signed with DB HiTek, you know, yes, it's going to take us this process, process, and it's going to take this time. But DB HiTek would not engage with Weebit if they didn't believe. I mean, it's a huge effort on their part. They are allocating their teams. They're allocated time in their fab. Do you know how much each second in a fab costs? Again, these are multibillion-dollar structures that are supposed to be manufacturing wafers that generate revenue to DB HiTek. When they are working on our wafers, they're not running wafers that are generating revenue. So the fact that they are now working with us on this shows you that they see that potential.
They see the revenue potential, and it's worth it for them to work with us and to push this. And they know because they did the survey with their customers. They know that their customers want ReRAM, okay? So, yes, it's taking time, but the revenue's there. You can already predict them. You can already look at it and say, "We know that they're going to be coming," because there's all of that that's happening towards that point, and that's really the important point. So, you know, we're not giving any guidance yet because it's just too early, and there are too many questions. But, you know, I do think kind of helping you understand the concept and the general potential that we're talking about. In 2024, 2025, Weebit will be engaging with more and more foundries as we go.
As we do that, we will start getting those customers on board. Two years later, in 2026 timeframe, we will, very hopefully, start seeing some of these royalties coming in. The royalties are really what generates that hockey stick effect, okay? So again, I always try, I think you guys know, I always try to be as transparent as I can on what's happening, where we're going. I don't like to sugarcoat things, and I think that, you know, the potential here is very, very good.
It does take some time to get there, but you can already try to think of the DB HiTek customers and the type of products that they have and how much revenues they generate, and think of the fact that we will get a small chunk of each one of those revenues, and that's what's going to grow here, the royalties. So now I'm getting maybe to the most important point of this presentation, because, again, people are constantly thinking of, okay, there are other ReRAMs here and, and what exactly... I mean, where does Weebit fit in this thing, and, and what is the, the future of Weebit? Where are we heading? So, first of all, you know that there are other ReRAMs in the market. TSMC announced that they have a ReRAM. UMC announced that they have a ReRAM solution.
You know that GlobalFoundries acquired what was left of Adesto, and they're trying to make it work. There are actually 4 ReRAMs in the market. Now, the first thing that I want to point out is, developing a ReRAM technology is a very, very difficult task. It takes a lot of time. Actually, each and every one of these ReRAMs that is in the market has been in the making for about 20 years. Weebit is 8 years old, but our partner, Leti, has been working on ReRAM for 20 years, and they already have so much know-how, and we are working with them. We licensed some of their technology. We developed some technology on our own. We have some joint technology. By the way, whatever we licensed from Leti is exclusive license to us.
Yes, there were foundries that tried to go behind our back and go to Leti to get that technology, and Leti told them, "No way," okay? So they're a very close partner. We're very well-aligned, and we're moving forward. But the key point here is ReRAM is a difficult technology to develop, and you can look at the marketplace now. Since it's a 20-year process, you can look around and say, "Well, who else is even close?" Nobody, really. It's these four technologies right now. So three out of these are foundries. That's the first point that I want to make out, okay? UMC, TSMC, and GlobalFoundries, they will never give their technology to anyone else, okay? To any other foundry, right? These are direct competitors. No way that they will ever give it to anyone else.
So the other foundries, they really have one solution right now. They have Weebit. And that's why when I tell you we're working with the majority of the major foundries, you can understand why. Because they know that they need ReRAM, and we're it, okay? The second point that I want to emphasize, and I already talked about it when I, when I explained GlobalFoundries, for these three, the ReRAM is an enabler for them to sell wafers. This isn't their big focus. This isn't the thing that they're putting everything they have into it, okay? They, they developed something... By the way, we had customers come to us, product companies, more than one, you know. They, they, they come to us and they tell us, "We went to TSMC.
We wanted their ReRAM," and they told us, "Oh, yeah, here, we have several options for you." And, you know, they looked at it and they said, "No, but we need a different version. We need something which is, you know, more low power or more, you know, faster or whatever." And TSMC said, "Well, guys, you know, this is what we have. You know, choose one." And so they came to us, they said, "We really need something that is tailored for our needs." What does it take to really develop ReRAM technology? What does it take to make this technology the leader in the world? There still is so much R&D that needs to go into ReRAM technology. We are a young technology, despite 20 years.
Yes, in semiconductors, 20 years is not much, and this is a new technology that is just getting to market, and there will be a lot of work to improve the quality, to lower the power consumption, to speed it up, to have smaller cells, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's still a lot of work. Just to give you a feel, by the way, flash technology, which has been around for ages, right? I think it was about 20 years since they started mass production until they finally had what's called 3D NAND, okay? 3D NAND is basically that ability to go three-dimensional, okay, which is critical for them, right? That's what makes them so competitive today. Otherwise, they would be dying very quickly, okay? So 20 years after they started mass production, that's when they finally had that breakthrough.
There needs to be continued R&D all the time of a very strong team, and we're talking about a very strong device team, the physics side of things. We're talking about a very strong process team, you know, the chemistry side of things. We're talking about a very strong analog design, a very strong digital design, a very strong test, and characterization, and qualification team, and all of this needs to be working in very close harmony, and they need to be working together because they feed each other. You know, you have issues that come up from one side of things, and I was giving the example of a meeting we had just recently, where the process guys were saying, "This foundry wants us to achieve voltages that are, we can't get there.
We're trying, but we're not managing to make it." And the analog design guys came, "Oh, don't worry about that. You know, we'll take care of it. It's on us. You know, we'll make it work," you know? And so you need to have that working, and you need to have the management focus. This is critical, to have the management team that is focused on this, that makes this happen, okay? Without one of these elements, it's very hard to become the leader in the ReRAM space. Now, TSMC, I mean, their device and process teams are second to none. I mean, they're amazing, right? And I'll never say anything about that. But as you can understand, customers that came to them and wanted to start tailoring things, they said, "Oh, the design side, it's not really what we do.
You know, we manufacture wafers. We're not gonna start putting so much effort on the design side." You look at UMC, it's even worse because the, the process and device technology doesn't even belong to them. They're licensing it from, I won't go into all the details, but they license it from Panasonic. Panasonic actually sold it already to Nuvoton as part of a big sale of the whole division. Nuvoton doesn't want it, et cetera, et cetera. Never mind. The bottom line is, there isn't enough focus. Weebit has more than 10 PhDs in ReRAM, in, in, in memory, that are working in our device and process teams. You know, these are guys that... I mean, I sit in those meetings and, oh, my God, I don't understand anything that they say. You know, it's, it's amazing the work that they're doing. Our chief scientist-...
is a PhD in ReRAM that has been researching ReRAM for 20 years. Our CTO, Ishai, he's a co-founder of Adesto. 18 years ago, he founded Adesto. The last 18 years, the only thing that he did is ReRAM. You know, these guys are what it takes to get that process and device engineering going. And we have on the analog and digital design, our VP R&D, again, 25-30 years doing memory modules, and he's well-known worldwide in his abilities there. And by the way, he's already built the memory module in such a way which is configurable and parameterizable and all of those nice things, so that once we have more and more customers, we'll be able to automate things and have a compiler which generates these memories so that we don't have to do everything manually.
90% of the work will be done by the compiler, and we'll do the final tweaking. So it's really important to understand, I really can't see any other company in the world today that has what it takes to take this ReRAM technology and move forward and become the leader. And that's even before I start talking about developing things like the selector and so on, which is a very massive effort. And again, it's really, you know, TSMC might be working on it. I can't see UMC or GlobalFoundries doing something like this. So Weebit is... And let's go to the next slide. Weebit is the only company that I can see that has these abilities and has what it takes to become the leader in the ReRAM space.
And you're talking about the whole infrastructure, if you're looking around, this slide that we're doing. So, you know, now that I talked about all of that, what's coming up? Where are we heading, and what's going to happen in the next half year or so, in the next several months? So first of all, I already talked about SkyWater. We're now at the point where we're working with them to get these customers on board. You know, I'm really sorry that we don't have the first customers on board as I expected, but we're definitely working hard at it, and we will have them over the next several months.
With DB HiTek, we're just in the beginning of this process, but we will be pushing forward and, again, try to go through the milestones to already tape out and be in production as we move forward. You went back? Yeah, next one. Overall, again, you know this slide, we are engaged now with the majority of the names that you see on this slide. Evaluations, negotiations, you know, different stages. I'm expecting to be able to close with another one or two foundries or, you know, we'll see how it goes. They are extremely cautious. I can definitely understand it, but as we move forward, as we show them the progress, it becomes easier, and once we have one or two, we'll be getting there.
So bottom line is, we'll be starting to grow revenues, we'll be getting fab partners, we'll be getting customers and, of course, you know, continuing all of the R&D work. And despite anything that happens, and no matter what conflicts we have in Israel or elsewhere, we will be delivering, no matter what it takes, and that's really the key message for you guys. So that's, I guess that's it. I talked a lot, and I hope you guys kind of get the feel of where we are, and I don't know if you have any questions or anything. Yeah.
Coby, there's 3 questions online-
Okay.
that have come through. The first one's from Aaron Twigg: In order to streamline the road to revenue, does the tapeout to DBH have a particular end customer in mind?
I won't go into exact details, but yeah, we have a knowledge of, you know, the application area, and we are looking at how we tailor things to them.
We've had a few more questions come in. This one's from Boyd Hunter: Who will be qualifying the wafer recently received from GlobalFoundries?
Qualification in general is done by Weebit. We need to meet the requirements that were defined by the JEDEC standard and, you know, and then show the results and demonstrate them to the world.
Two questions from Nathan Varnavas. The first question: I appreciate Naomi Simson's background in marketing. What is she doing? How is she assisting in winning business for the company?
Well, she's a great consultant for me, and we've been talking about this, and I'm extremely happy to have her on board and the brainstormings that we're already having about how we build the marketing and different positioning of the company.
The second question-
I think... Okay, yeah, let's have that and then ask - let people in the room also ask. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, the second question from Nathan: Noting Everspin's MRAM revenue of $16.5 million in Q3 2022, around $80 million annually, are we talking roughly in the same ballpark for Weebit over time once we start ramping up?
Well, I think I mentioned already the comments that we're getting from customers about MRAM and the fact that MRAM, you know, has not taken off as much as people were thinking, and I think those numbers reflect that. I believe that the potential is much bigger than that with the ReRAM.
Last question online from Robert Carmen. Could you give a brief explanation on how Weebit's ReRAM could be used in cybersecurity applications?
So, there are many different ways that it can be used in cybersecurity. You know, first of all, we are a robust technology that is hard to kind of play with from the outside. I won't go into the technical details. But one of the things, by the way, when you go down to the small geometries today, and since there isn't flash technology there, many companies actually have their system on a chip, and then they glue on top the flash, which was manufactured in a larger geometry. People can eavesdrop there, and that's one of the big concerns that companies have that, you know, because of that communication between two chips. So we obviously can solve that part.
I won't go into technical details, but, you know, there's a technology called PUF that ReRAM is very good for, again, for that application. Yeah, I really don't wanna dive into technical things right now.
There are no other questions online.
Okay. And yeah, Benny?
No, no. Coby, can you elaborate on some of the advice you're receiving from your corporate advisors about, I guess, approaches the company can take to counter the shorts at the moment?
I think they're very unanimous. We just need to have good news. That's basically what everyone is telling me. I haven't received anything beyond that, that is, you know, that is relevant. So that's what I'm focused on doing. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Well, two or few there, so yeah, one after the other. Yeah.
Good presentation, Coby.
Thank you.
Would one of the fabs or even Leti ever consider investing in someone like Weebit if it's so great and so hot?
So Leti, first of all, belongs to the French government. They definitely don't invest in anything. The other fabs, or foundries and so on, you know, it's possible, and by the way, it's not like these kinds of things don't happen. You know, if they want to, we'll be glad to have them invest. We will never give anyone exclusivity. You know, if that's your next follow-up question-
Looking for some good news, and even-
Yeah
... putting it out there, that is always a possibility.
Yeah. So it's, you know, we'll be glad, I mean, to get investment from anyone. By the way, a question that was still not asked, but, you know, we announced that in the last quarterly, we have $84 million in the bank. So we have money. We're not looking for money right now. It's not like we're planning a raise or something like that at this point. But if a strategic investor comes in, it's something that you consider, of course, and-
Because they could easily, you know, someone like Samsung or something, you know, give the whole business a lot of credibility, and they'd probably-
Yeah.
be very well
It's their decision, it's not mine.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, they need to decide if they want to do something like that.
Yeah, they might.
Behind you. Yeah.
Coby, does the company has a target number of foundries to sign up in the next 1-2 years? I'll preface that question by saying, Weebit is obviously a small company in semiconductor terms.
Mm.
Do we have the human capacity, the capital capacity to, say, sign up all the top 20?
Mm-hmm. Well, we have the capacity now to sign up another couple of foundries. You know, as we progress with that, we will be hiring. You know, we're very controlled in all our budget spending and in our growth, but as I see that the potential is growing, as I see more and more potential engagements, we will hire more. We have contractors that we actually have ready in case, hopefully... And, you know, I really wish we have this problem of all 20 of these guys signing up tomorrow. I mean, that would be great, and we have contractors that are available for that.
You're not signing them up if you can't service them properly.
Yeah.
That would be detrimental to you.
And believe me, we will service them properly. We have a plan for how we grow, and as soon as I see that a certain agreement is materializing, I already start moving in that direction. We'll hire more. We have quite a few contractors today that we have trained and ready, and if I need them, I can bring them on board as a stopgap or even beyond that. They might be working with us long-term on that. Yeah.
Okay. And one more question: As you're signing up all these foundries and as you progress with them, are you able to learn from one foundry to the next?
Oh, definitely. I mean, again, we have this phenomenal team. Every tape-out that we do is better than the previous one. You know, when we did tape-outs at Leti, you know, we improved them. When we moved to SkyWater, every tape-out at SkyWater, and we've already done quite a few, you know, they've been improving. And now moving to DB HiTek, we already have taken whatever we learned and improved. And again, the device and process team are constantly working on the core technology, and every time that they have something that improves, you know, we use that already in the next tape-out. So that's why I'm saying in order to become the leader in ReRAM, you need to have that ability to constantly improve, constantly move forward. Okay. Well, I guess I'll say thank you to everyone. I really appreciate you guys coming.
I really appreciate the support. Looking forward to continuing to work with you and giving you good news. I'm working as hard as I can. The team is working as hard as it can to achieve that. See you, as always, next year. I'll be coming a few times, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again. Thank you.