Okay, good afternoon and welcome to the Weebit Nano Meet the CEO Investor Briefing. My name is Danny Younis, and I handle investor relations for Weebit Nano. With me today, I have the CEO of Weebit, Coby Hanoch. Good morning, Coby.
Hey, Danny.
Before I hand over to Coby, just a note that we will be having a Q&A session at the end. If you have any questions, please type them into the Q&A box on the bottom of your screen. We are expecting a lot of questions to come through, so obviously preference will be given to those questions that are named rather than anonymously. We'll try to get to all questions in the one hour we have. When necessary, I will also pull the questions where there is overlap. I would now like to hand the webinar over to Coby. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Danny. We had yet another good quarter of progress. You know, we're focused on commercializing, as everyone knows, and pushing the deals forward. We have, obviously, DB HiTek that we're moving forward with. We had some issues when they were using a different tool and had some requests from customers that caused a little change in plan, but we're still definitely on track to do the qualification before the end of this year. That's progressing well. We actually are already talking to customers that want to work at DB HiTek, and there's interest there. DB HiTek demonstrated a chip with our ReRAM in it at the PMIC conference in Germany this quarter and got very good feedback. Overall, I think things are progressing very nicely, very well with DB HiTek. With onsemi, things are moving well also. We're moving forward with our technology transfer there.
As I said, I believe, in previous times, they're very, very cooperative and moving really fast on this, and there's great cooperation there. Things are progressing nicely on that front. Additional foundries and IDMs, there's a lot going on in the background, talking, analyzing, etc. We are committed to get additional deals done this year, and I believe we will get them. We're working very hard on that front. We're also committed to get product companies, you know, the fabs, it's manufacturing license agreements that we do with them. With product companies, it's a design license agreement where they can actually put our ReRAM into their chip, embed it into their chip, and go manufacture. I'm glad to announce that we have a first design license agreement signed, and we have several in the pipeline now. This is starting to move forward. We added it.
It's post-quarter end, so it wasn't in last quarter. It's actually recent now that we signed that agreement. We are expecting to sign more. Following kind of the industry standard, since product companies who end up having a lot more than manufacturing, we'll just be announcing them in our quarterlies from now on as we move forward, the new deals that we do. That's more or less it. It's really exciting times. I think you can see also in the 4C and the cash reports, and at the end of this quarter, at the end of this month in the yearly report, you'll be able to see the cash progress, the revenue progress, etc. It's a lot of hard work, but we're finally seeing the fruits of this hard work, and there's a lot happening and a lot more to do before the end of this year.
Okay, thank you, Coby. We will now move to the Q&A session. If you have any questions, please type them into the Q&A box on the bottom of your screen. We do have several questions coming through. We will maybe start with the new announcement about the product company. How would you describe Weebit's first customer signing mentioned in the quarterly? Are they a big, well-known name or smaller, and are they linked to SkyWater?
It's not a very big name company. It's an important customer for us. In Australia, people don't know even names like onsemi, so I guess I probably wouldn't expect people to know this company's name. It's definitely an important customer for us. They are a security company in the U.S. We can't really mention the name, and right now, the details around this deal are still confidential, including the fab that we're using, which one of them we were working with. It is an important deal, and it is already actually starting to run. The schedule there is pretty tight, so we'll be moving forward with them rather quickly and getting into this project. It's great to have this first one. As I said, we already have several in the pipeline that are coming.
It happened to be that this company was the first and not another one, but we're now starting to see that movement with product companies as well.
Thanks. The next question is a follow-up in terms of where is the new customer going to make their chip. Is it SkyWater, DB HiTek, or onsemi?
Yeah, as I said, right now, I can't answer that yet. I apologize for the secrecy and everything, but some of the details are not always easy to make public. We will make it public when we can.
Yeah. The follow-up question from another investor is probably one you can't answer either, Coby, but I'll ask it anyway in the interest of asking the question. Are you able to indicate when revenues start flowing from this product company?
I can't give an exact answer. I will remind everyone that these deals include a license fee. In this case, it's a design license fee, but it's a license fee that's normally paid up front. As with other deals that we do, the initial deals, you don't get the full amount up front. They want to hit some milestones, etc., so it kind of happens over time. I think you can see already from deals that we did with DB HiTek and onsemi how cash is coming in every quarter, and revenue isn't reported every quarter. It'll be reported at the end of August, but you will see also how the revenue flows. It's going to be similar with the product companies. Each company here, the deals are even more different, but there's a license fee in some cases.
There can be an NRE or other elements, and of course, at the end, the real thing is when they hit mass production and you start seeing the royalties. License fee and NRE, if it exists, those kinds of things you start seeing pretty quickly. The initial payments at least.
Yeah. Thanks, Coby. The investors are pressing on here. Is part of the reason you can't talk about it where the chip is being manufactured because Weebit is working with a new undisclosed fab?
I won't go into the details of that. We are working with undisclosed fabs. I think I've stated that several times. We are working with additional fabs that we're trying to push over the fence and get an official agreement and everything done. At this point, it's just something that, you know, for different reasons, we can't really talk about yet.
Yeah. No, fully understand. You've confirmed you are in discussions with multiple other parties. How many of those discussions could be classified as commercial negotiations?
Oh, they're all commercial. Right now, those are the discussions that we have. They include, of course, a lot of technical parts, but the reason we're engaged is for commercial reasons. Everyone knows that. We know it. The fabs know it. It's definitely, and there's different discussions. I mean, in these contacts, we do talk about dollars. It's not just technology.
Okay. Maybe change tack a little bit, Coby. Maybe go to a financial question here. Andrew Johnston from MST Access has a question. Can we assume that cash receipts for the quarter were license fee payments from onsemi and DB HiTek? Was there any NRE in this amount?
I would say, of course, you know, these are the two customers that are paying us right now. You know, that's where cash is coming in general in these quarters. You get paid from the customers that you already have agreements with. As I mentioned, without going into the details, I don't think it's specified in the 4C, but there's license fee and NRE, and yeah, those kinds of elements are definitely in there.
Okay. Moving to a broader question, Coby. As more contracts are signed, how significantly will the qualification times reduce?
Qualification is something that actually is very hard to reduce. You know, you can try to automate a little bit and improve a little bit on different things, but at the end of the day, and I'll look at the big picture. It's not just the qualification. It's the whole technology transfer. I think that's what people are referring to. From the moment we sign an agreement until we're qualified, the process that we go through today of transferring the technology to the fab, teaching them how to manufacture, adopting the recipe to their specific tools, etcetera, that's something that really cannot change much. We're trying to document better and automate a little bit, but there's a lot of just simple hard work that needs to be done there. You need to go and manufacture the first wafers.
Again, those wafers, manufacturing time, you can push to get faster turnaround, but at the end of the day, it's the four or six-month timeframe that you have normally. It really depends on the fab, how much they want to give you very high priority and rush you through. Normally in fabs, just so you know, there's the standard manufacturing time, and then you can pay for rushing it through. In this case, we're not paying. We are working with the fab. They have the interest to rush it through, and they rush it through many times. What I'm trying to say is overall, the total time will not really change a lot. By the way, the qualification time, as I mentioned in the past, the Israeli joke about not being able to have a baby with nine women in one month.
You need to put these wafers into ovens for a certain period of time and just wait, and there's no way around it. You just have to go through a certain number of hours for each wafer in the oven, and those times definitely can't be shortened either.
Okay. A question's come through on text for me. It's basically seeking a clarification, Coby. What does the following mean? The quote is, "Alongside commercial progress, we continue to make significant technical advancements and are constantly enhancing the baseline parameters of our ReRAM." Can you give me the details of the enhancing the baseline parameters and the significant technical advancements?
That's a very important comment, and I'm glad people notice it. I think I mentioned many times in our industry, you can't ever stop doing R&D. You can't ever just sit back and relax and say, "Oh, I have a working technology now. It's great." You know, lean back. You constantly have to keep running forward. Otherwise, you're falling behind. We are constantly working on improving the quality of the technology, what's called the bit error rate, the number of bits that fail out of a million. We work on improving the yield. For the fab, the most important criteria is the yield. What percentage of dies that are manufactured are actually functional and they can sell them? There are always some defects in the manufacturing. The question is, if it's 80% yield or 90% or 95% or 98%.
As you can imagine, those added % at the end are pure revenue for them. It's very important to keep pushing the yield to higher levels. We're constantly looking for ways to improve the technology to make it a little faster, a little lower power consumption. The test time, I know I'm going into some technical details, but just so people get the feel of things, every chip that comes out of the fab needs to undergo tests. If you think about it, adding one second to the test time of a chip, now multiply that by the number of chips that they manufacture and everything, that's very costly. These machines, the testers, are very costly. Everything is very expensive. You want to improve the test time and reduce it. There are a lot of different parameters that you want to constantly work on and improve.
In that sense, we believe, and that's the power of Weebit. The fact that we have such a strong R&D team, we have such experienced people, experienced management, they're all working together. They have constant ideas of, "Oh, maybe we can do this a little bit differently. Maybe we can tweak something here, and that will reduce a little bit the error rate, or that will change something like that." This is ongoing and actually a very big and important task that we do. If anything, it's going to grow.
Okay. Thank you for that. There's a few questions on SkyWater, Coby. Just pulling it together, effectively, can you give an update on SkyWater? Secondly, is SkyWater going to use Weebit's NVM or Infineon's NVM as part of their new agreement with design IP with Infineon?
First of all, I'd like to congratulate SkyWater for achieving this agreement with Infineon. I think it's an important step forward for SkyWater. This is something that's very new. It was just announced. We are in touch with SkyWater about this, and we are talking about it. At this point, I really apologize that I have to say that it's confidential, but we just haven't made decisions with them yet on this, and there's an ongoing discussion. Next week, there's going to be another meeting about it, and we'll see where this heads. Hopefully, during the quarter, we'll be able to make some announcements, but right now, I just really don't have news.
Yep. That's okay. Moving to DB HiTek, would you look to secure non-binding agreements to proceed with work dependent on qualification? That way, you'd be able to give a higher degree of forward planning certainty.
If I understand the question correctly, basically, we are engaged today with customers who want to manufacture at DB HiTek. On our side, and this was true with SkyWater, and this is true with DB HiTek, and in general, we try to parallelize as much as we can. The normal mode of operation in the industry is you focus on the fab, the foundry in this case. You do the technology transfer, you go through the whole process until you're qualified, and only once you're qualified, you're supposed to go to the customers, the product companies, and start working on the design license agreements and so on. However, that's a very long process, and I strongly believe that it can be overlapped, and I think we're managing to get companies to realize that they can overlap.
The design time of the design company is long, and they can actually start working on their design with our ReRAM in it before qualification. By the time that they're ready, we'll already be qualified, and they'll be ahead of the race. That's what we try to show them and help them gain confidence. Of course, everyone's always afraid, if you won't manage to qualify. I think we've shown that we qualified in several places already. We've done several qualification runs. I think people can have already a high level of confidence in the fact that we will qualify. That's what we're seeing now, that we're managing to push more and more product companies forward, even though technically, we're not qualified at DB HiTek or at onsemi yet, but we are managing to get companies to move forward.
Thank you. How does NanoVM work in with your solutions going forward?
To be very clear about it, we work with them. They're a great company, and we really were very happy to do the demo together with them. However, at this point, they are working, they need to work at very small geometries which we're not qualified at yet. At this point, they're not able to use our ReRAM until we'll qualify in a smaller geometry. We're obviously following up, and I'm sure that as soon as we have something like that—I can't talk about all the stuff that's happening in the background with different fabs—but as soon as we will be able to qualify in such geometry, I'm sure that the good relationships will continue and we'll be able to work with them on a real product and not just a demo.
Okay. In terms of progress on discrete and the discrete selector?
That is work that's being done in the background. I think I mentioned in previous calls, right now we have this amazing opportunity in the embedded space. The embedded market has clearly decided it needs a replacement for flash. I think I can say there's a clear decision that ReRAM is it. At this point, except for TSMC and UMC, Weebit is the only qualified ReRAM, and we're the only independent company that has qualified ReRAM. We have this amazing opportunity in the embedded market. My directive for the team has been, let's just focus on this. There's a big vacuum here. We need to fill it in as fast as we can before someone else will somehow, somewhere, I don't know where, you know, there's always surprises that you never know where they come from. We have this opportunity.
We need to capitalize on it, and we're pushing very strongly on the embedded side. As everyone knows, we're expecting to announce more deals this year and, moving forward to next year, even more. I believe Weebit has a very, very good chance of being the leader, taking over major market share in the embedded ReRAM space. I need the team to be focused on this. Right now, that's the big activity. We haven't forgotten the discrete. There is work going on in the background. We're even constantly looking at it and seeing what we can do there and having sessions with Leti to brainstorm around it. I have to say, it is at low priority. It's not the major activity, and it's not what I'm putting the big resources on right now.
Once we really feel strong and we know that we took over the embedded space, I'll be shifting gears and putting more effort on the discrete.
Okay. Moving on to other matters, there's a couple of questions about the release of the quarterly, Coby, about the supposed delay. It was released later in the date in previous quarterlies. Was that intentional, or was there any issues with the ASX?
No, it wasn't related to the ASX. It was actually more about this notification about the customer that we signed, and we just wanted to do it right. There were different discussions about how we released that information. We ended up deciding to basically follow the standard in the industry. If you look at other semiconductor IP companies, the normal way that they announce design license agreements is in their quarterlies, and they just lump it. They basically come out and state something like, "In the past quarter, we signed 10 license agreements," and they give some qualifications of which sectors or which geographies or things like that. Now that we're seeing that this was the first one, but we're seeing others that are getting into the pipe, we just decided to follow the same methodology. It just, you know, last minute things.
Yeah. There's another question about the ASX from another investor. How is the ASX back and forth over the NDA versus market update situation, and is it likely in the future when you announce product companies that they would be more of a household name?
We definitely plan to have some household names as product companies as well. You know, when it'll be a big name, someone that everyone in Australia will recognize, we'll fight to get a specific release on that. The majority, as we've already learned and as I've learned, people in Australia don't know a lot of these companies anyway. I was surprised to see how even a name like onsemi was not really known in Australia. We are expecting to have hundreds of product companies or growing numbers, and it just doesn't make any sense to announce each and every one of them. That's part of the discussion that we had about this. You announce the very big ones, the ones that are very significant because of the company name itself or because of the application or something. Here and there, there will be announcements.
It's pretty obvious that every once in a while, we will want to make a special announcement. The vast majority of the cases, we'll just be releasing it in the quarterly. I have to say, the ASX, everyone knows, I have my opinions about all of the regulation and how it needs to be done. Obviously, that was part of the considerations when we made this release. We didn't actually have to negotiate with the ASX. We already knew what they would say and how they would react to things. It was mostly work that we did with our lawyers to just avoid getting into difficult positions. In Israel, we say that a smart person doesn't get into a situation that a wise person knows how to get out of.
I prefer to be smart and just not get into those situations and find ways in advance to meet the regulation and move on.
Okay, maybe an update on GlobalFoundries . What's happening there?
At this point, there's not much. They have been trying to develop their version of a ReRAM. They decided that it's very strategic for them. You know, they're making some efforts there. Unfortunately, I mean, for me, I believe it's a big mistake what they're doing, but that's obviously my opinion, and they have a different opinion. They're trying to make it work, and we don't really have a lot going on with them at this point.
Okay. There are three questions around your staffing and your ability to scale up. How many people are now employed at Weebit is the first part. How much do you expect this to increase in 2025 as a function of signing more customer deals is the second part. The third part is how many PhDs have you hired additionally?
I think we have roughly 50 people, you know, plus or minus. I don't remember the exact number that we have. About 35 of them, again, roughly in Israel and 15 in France. We have been hiring. I'm always very cautious about hiring. You know, it's always, I've seen companies get excited about, "Wow, we're going to have all these deals and this and that," and then, "Yeah, let's just go hire people so that we can deal with them." You hire people too early, and then you have a lot of expenses before the money starts coming in, and deals slip and all kinds of things like that. We are very cautious about our hiring, and we're monitoring the progress of the negotiations, and we hire people only when we know that we need the people, and we'll need them for that project.
There's been ongoing growth of, I would say, one, two people per month in the recent months, towards these new deals and towards these activities. I mean, like this product company also, etcetera. We will be continuing to grow at that kind of rate. Right now, I'm again, I'm very cautious about not hiring a lot of people, but we are hiring. We have hired a few more PhDs. I think today, the number of PhDs in the company is already about 15. So, we're growing, but very cautious.
Yeah, clearly, you have capacity to handle all the commercial deals that you have in the pipeline?
If all of them would happen today, I, you know, we would be struggling, I have to say. That's part of this, having to play this game of, you know, I, I've been around long enough to know that the chances that all the deals that you're working on happen tomorrow, you know, they're very slim. It happens over time. I'm just, on a daily basis, we're kinda looking at the progress and deciding where we hire. We will be able to handle all the deals that are in the pipeline. The team knows how to deal with them. We are building the infrastructure, by the way, I mentioned earlier this year, and this work has been progressing very well. This year has been the year of infrastructure at Weebit Nano.
Taking all of the things that we did manually up to now, you know, when you're dealing with just one fab at a time, you can do a lot of things on Excel and, you know, in Word and whatever, and it's fine. When you start dealing with several fabs in parallel and you have more customers coming in, you need to build proper databases. You need to automate the way that you work with the databases and retrieve the data and cross data, compare it between the different fabs and all of that. We've been putting a big effort in building that infrastructure. We have made a lot of significant progress. We're ready. We're ready for the mass, you know, signing a lot of agreements in parallel.
We obviously, everyone knows that we have Lilaf now who's driving the customer success team, and she's been setting up a lot of methodologies and how we work with the customers, etcetera. We have what's called a PMO, a person that's responsible for defining internal methodologies. He's studying how the flow of information, the flow of work, the process between the different teams, and defining more efficient ways to do them, how to build the databases to support this flow of information between the teams so that everything is organized, that all our procedures are now backed up by actual tools. It's not all manual and everyone needs to remember the next step. It's automated. When I approve something, it automatically goes to the next person, and when they approve it, it automatically goes to the next person and things like that.
We've put in a lot of work on infrastructure. I think that's, we're ready now, and we can hire. We know where we wanna hire people from. We know what we'll do. If there is, by the way, this amazing surprise and a ton of contracts falls on us at the same time, we know which subcontractors we can count on, etcetera, to deal with the temporary overload, and we'll take care of it. We're ready.
Okay, going to R&D now. How is R&D with the Weebit chip progressing?
I'm not sure what the people are referring to as the Weebit chip, because, you know, the focus when you're dealing with embedded technology, you're focused on the technology, and you license the technology, you license the module. When we talk about the chip, I guess maybe they're referring to the discrete and the selector, which I talked about earlier. I think I answered that already.
Okay. Moving to various markets, in relation to current target markets, which ones are showing the fastest traction? Is it automotive? Is it IoT, AI, others?
That's a good one because we're really swamped with so much. I would say the analog power management is a very hot domain. You know, that's where onsemi is, and that's where, to a certain extent, most of DB HiTek's customers are. That's kind of in the immediate phase. There's a lot of work around AI. Our ReRAM is really such a great solution for AI, and many, many companies are calling on us for the AI side of things. I cannot announce anything or talk about anything yet, but we clearly have a lot of interest from small and big AI companies. You know, even companies that I think in Australia you would recognize the name, you know, talking about that. There's really a lot of work going on around that. I think automotive is probably the third one that I would put on the list.
Automotive is just such a hot topic today in the world, and the requirements of automotive are so extreme. The fact that we did the AEC-Q100 qualification, and we showed that we are robust enough for it, that's been a game changer. Again, there's a lot of discussion there. Obviously, the automotive space is a space that moves very slowly. When human lives are at stake, everyone is so much more cautious. Everyone needs to go through so much more regulation and things like that.
Okay, there's a couple of questions on the tornado you've talked about previously. Coby, can you maybe just give a weather update on where we are in that cycle and what's happening?
The tsunami is on its way. Seriously, yes, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it stronger every day. I was talking in the analogy of the Crossing the Chasm book, that we are in the bowling alley now. You just saw another pinfall with the product company that I was talking about. We are still in the bowling alley. We still need to knock down a few more pins to really get things moving, but it's happening. It's happening. I think that towards the end of the year, we will start sensing the wind, and next year is going to be a very exciting year in that sense.
Okay. Moving to bit error rates. How do the bit error rates for Weebit's chips compare to flash and MRAM?
Bit error rate is something that you constantly improve. Now, obviously, flash has been around for so many decades that there have been a lot of improvements on bit error rate. I have to say that we're in a good position. We're in a good position. We're in a place where customers, you know, they always want more. Right? I mean, they'll never tell us, "Oh, this bit error rate is good enough. Don't improve it." They always will want us to improve it. On the other hand, I think they're happy with what they see. The results that we have today are already good. We're constantly improving it. Without going into the specific details, there's significant improvement as we progress and we continue all the time to improve it.
We're getting to the levels of flash, and I think, when you compare us to other emerging memories, we don't know the details, by the way. Manufacturers don't go and publish this, so we need to find out here and there, but I think we're in a very good position.
Excellent. The next question is pretty interesting. Can any inferences be made from the relationship between the Weebit Chairman and the CEO of NVIDIA, i.e., could NVIDIA use Weebit technology?
It’s true that Dadi and Jensen are good friends, for many years already. However, I guess that's where I'll stop right now, and I won't go into details of that. You know, NVIDIA, to be honest, NVIDIA is stronger on the learning side of things when you talk about AI, which is what you do in the big data centers. Our big strength is in the inference side of things. You know, having said that, there is use of Weebit ReRAM. There is definitely potential use of Weebit ReRAM in the data centers. There are applications in the data center that need even our embedded. Of course, once we get to the discrete side of things, that'll change the picture completely. Even with the embedded, it's important that people know it's not just for inference.
There are things in the data centers, or there are functions in the data center where ReRAM can be a very good solution for them as well.
Excuse me. There are a couple of questions around competitors, Coby. If I was to pull it, I would ask, are there any competitors providing ReRAM that are emerging, and who would you compare Weebit to most closely?
I think right now, if I try to look at the ReRAM scheme, you know, the ReRAM market, I think everyone already knows there are three qualified ReRAMs. There's TSMC, UMC, and Weebit. TSMC, you know, they have what seems to be a good ReRAM. It's in mass production. People are using it. It's out there, and I'll never say anything bad about TSMC. No, seriously, from what we know, from what we see, and we don't know everything, it looks like a good ReRAM. UMC has the ReRAM that was developed by Panasonic at the time, which Panasonic sold that division to Nuvoton. Nuvoton is not really a memory company. I mean, they got that as part of the big package of Panasonic semiconductor.
To the best of my knowledge, the team that developed that technology isn't there anymore, and UMC has been struggling to really get customers for it. Again, to the best of my knowledge, I'm not aware of any customer using it, and I'm not aware of them qualifying it in advanced temperatures and so on. We'll need to see what happens with that. By the way, Nuvoton announced that they have MCU with ReRAM in it, and when you check, you find out that it was the TSMC ReRAM. UMC is technically, they are qualified. I mentioned GF that they're trying to do something. We don't know where that stands. In terms of independent ReRAM companies, Weebit is really it. I don't know of anyone who's close to qualifying a ReRAM that's an independent company. That's why I'm so bullish. Yes, it is hard.
Even when you're kind of the only one, it still is very hard to get into this market and to convince people that you're the right one, the good one, etcetera. You need to go through all of that. We're feeling very bullish about it. I'm not seeing right now any other ReRAM company out there that is anywhere near qualifying. If I'm talking about independent providers, some people are trying to do all kinds of things internally or whatever, like GF. We're feeling very, very bullish about where we stand right now and moving forward.
Okay. There are a few questions around the Middle East war. Can you maybe just talk about the impact of the war in Israel and the region and how it's impacted Weebit or otherwise?
As I think we released a couple of times in the last two years, you know, the war here and the whole situation is obviously very unfortunate, and nobody likes being in a place where people are trying to bomb you and all of that. At the same time, when it comes to the actual industry, etcetera, and that's part of Weebit already preparing for growth. We've already prepared in advance, business continuity plan, a risk analysis, etcetera, etcetera. We went through the different scenarios and prepared ourselves for this. I can say with full confidence, the situation here in Israel has not impacted our timelines at all. The team continued to work. I think people know our lab is in a shelter room, so in a room that's kind of protected from bombs even and so on.
It can continue to run, and the team is set up to work from home or from remotely. Bottom line is there has been no impact on Weebit in that sense.
Excellent. Going back to the product customers, there's a couple of questions here. Is there a consistent size request with product customers, or is it varied? Has Weebit not being qualified to smaller geometries delayed any customer engagements? Can you maybe talk about are they singular products or possibly multi-product companies that you're talking to?
Let's see. The variety of customers that we talk to is unbelievable. I mean, we're talking to people in different application spaces, different memory size needs, each one of them really has different requirements. Some of them focus more on the voltages, some of them on the power, some of them on the speed, some of them on the area. We need to see how we can answer all these needs. In that sense, there's a big variety. Obviously, the ones that we make the most progress with are the ones that we can address their needs right now where we are working with fabs, like DB HiTek, or SkyWater, or onsemi, or others that I can't mention yet.
The fact that we're not qualified, for example, at the FinFET level yet, obviously, that means that people that need FinFET level, we're keeping in touch with them, but we can't really progress until we'll have a qualified FinFET geometry.
Okay. The next question is from Jonathan Higgins at UCP. Noting you've now got foundries, IDMs, and product cash flows are doing really nicely, can you maybe just talk us through the timeline from customer signing through to licensing and into market?
Customers is a tricky word because we have the fabs and, you know, the foundries, the IDMs on the one side, and we have the product companies. I think in terms of the fabs, people already know pretty well the process of, you know, we need to do the technology process transfer, then we need to do the manufacturing of the first prototypes, then we need to do the testing, and then we finally do the qualification. Overall, it's, you know, roughly, can be 18 months- 24 months, order of magnitude. With the product companies, that really varies, actually, because it really depends on what the product is, how complex it is, where they stand with the fab. It varies significantly. Some products are rather simple, and you can do the design in a few months and be ready.
Sometimes it's products that are like, you know, like you talked about NVIDIA or Intel, processors that take years to design. There's a big variance at that level.
Okay. We've got about 10 minutes, and we've got over 10 questions. We'll try and rush through these. I'll compound the following one. There's a couple of questions around your listing, Coby. Do you intend to list on the Nasdaq, for example, or any other exchange? Do you think customers have a reluctance dealing with an Aussie-based company in that respect?
The customers, I don't think they really care. When we talk to the fabs, when we talk to the product companies, I don't think it really matters to them if we are Nasdaq or Aussie or whatever, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange based. They are impressed, or it's important for them to know, for example, that we're a public company, but that's about the level of it, and even that isn't really very important. That's not the big thing. In terms of Nasdaq in general, I joke that if I would get a dollar for every time I'm asked the question, I'd never have to raise money. Everyone constantly asks me about it. It's obvious that kind of the natural place for a company like Weebit Nano would be Nasdaq. Having said that, we are in the ASX.
ASX, with all of my complaints about regulation and everything, it has been good to us. We have an amazing, amazing shareholder base, and I think I'm really thankful to our shareholders and their support and all. We don't have any urgent need to move to Nasdaq. At this point, I don't really see it as something that we have to do or whatever, and we're happy. We raised a year ago, less than a year ago, we raised $50 million, kind of in very good terms. It's not something that is anywhere urgent or anything that's really right now. I'm focused on commercializing. I'm focused on building the company. I'm focused on building the revenues. That's what I'm focused on. I'm not focused on Nasdaq or not Nasdaq.
Okay. Going to your original guidance, are you still on track to meet or exceed the targets of signing customer and fabs in calendar year 2025, and is that next signing likely to be a customer or a fab?
We committed to sign three fabs and three product companies. We basically announced onsemi, and now we have a product company. We still have at least four to go. There's a lot happening. I don't know which one will happen first. It's really unbelievable, the dynamics sometimes of these discussions and negotiations. The goal is always to exceed, you know, not just to meet, but to exceed. It's very tough. Some of these negotiations, there are surprises that have nothing to do with us that cause delays. We've seen that so many times already in the past. I think we're very bullish. We believe that we can meet these goals, and not only these goals of the agreements, but beyond that, we have internal goals of improving the quality of, we talked about bit error rate and things like that.
We have internal goals, and the team is measured on it. By the way, their yearly bonuses, or what's called variable pay, depends on achieving these milestones, and we're all set to achieve the milestones. We're on track.
Okay. Moving to some personal associations. Does Dr. James Tour still have an association with the company?
Dr. Tour is still one of the top, I believe, 20 shareholders of the company. He believes in the company very much. Obviously, we've gone such a long way since we started off with his technology. He's not involved in any of the technical work here or anything like that, but he's a very big believer in Weebit and, you know, holding to his shares and always proud to have him on the register.
Okay. The next one is around your shareholder. Have they still maintained their shareholding in Weebit?
Definitely. They are holding, and, you know, I keep communicating and updating them, and they are still our number one shareholder, and I'm very proud of it.
Great. Okay. We've probably only got time for two more questions. The second last one is, are the future customers of Weebit Nano, are they coming to you, or are you still out there knocking?
We're getting more and more companies coming to us. That's part of the change that we're seeing, and that's a good question. I think that's a very good question. We are now at the mode where, yes, we're still knocking on people's doors, but there are more and more that are calling on us and coming to us, and that's part of the change that we're seeing.
Okay. The final question, Coby, are there any plans to collaborate with companies in neuromorphic computing, edge AI, or NPU development?
I think people know that Weebit Nano is very active in this space. Weebit Nano is, I mean, I'm in the company almost 8 years now, and one of the very first things that we did was, we had some announcements with neuromorphic research institutes, and we announced at the time that we work with LETI, with the Technion, IIT Delhi, and so on. We've been involved in this all along. We've been working with companies in this space. Even, you know, to a certain extent, the work with Nano view was kind of in relation to that. It's ongoing, and I think I mentioned several times, our ReRAM is a really, really good solution for near-memory compute and in-memory compute. In both cases, and people are calling us, you know, referring to the previous question, in these domains, people are calling on us. We don't call on them so much.
We call on them, but mostly they call on us, actually. We have more people calling on us in that space.
Okay. That concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand back to Coby for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Danny, for this session. As I said, things are moving steadily forward. People know already in semiconductors, things don't just happen overnight, but I hope that you can see the steady progress. I hope that everyone can see we're moving forward. We're signing more agreements. We have more to do. We're achieving our milestones. In Weebit, it's all about just keeping the work going forward, progressing, and we will get these additional agreements. The cash, the revenue, and everything, you'll be seeing them as a side effect of that.
Okay. Thank you, Coby. Thank you to all the participants on the call. You may now disconnect.
Thank you.