Good morning, everybody, and welcome to poLight's first quarter presentation. Together with me today is board chair, Grete Viksveen, as usual, and my CFO, Alf Henning Bekkevik. The agenda of today is key events, a quick introduction to poLight for newcomers, update on the market side, financial review by the CFO, and outlook, and in the end, Q&A. So, since this is webcasted, when you leave your questions through the portal, please leave your contact details in case there is no time to reply. And also, if there's question from the audience, please wait for the microphone so that people also in the webcast can hear your question. Okay, key events. Another barcode customer, step by step, they are becoming more and more of these cases, and also, as you will see, the pipeline is increasing.
So this company released two products using TLens. Interesting, this Mini2P is developing in a very interesting direction, where commercial companies are taking this design, commercialize it, and are selling a turnkey solution to labs and universities. This is kind of for the labs and universities to buy turnkey system instead of themselves doing the development of these kind of systems. This was all started by Kavli, Mosers', team, but, of course, they are not a company to supply this solution, so now we can see commercial companies coming and supplying the market. So, this is interesting. Of course, the volumes will be small, but the value of these, each order is quite significant. Another kind of, you can say, similar case, Thorlabs, which is very well-recognized.
If you go to labs, you will see a lot of Thorlabs equipment around the world, so they're quite known and respected. So they have made an optical cage system, which is used for scientific purposes, for engineers and researchers to test different equipment, and they then also have released TLens-based test equipment. Again, it will be, I would say, more for the, for the niche market, but of course, in those niche markets, there are engineers and professors and PhDs, which will, in the end of the day, go out in the industry, many of them, and bring along the experience with TLens. So I think for a long term, this is super important activity. Yeah, and then, as mentioned last time, 5th of January, we had changes in the board.
Marianne Bøe , who is heading IR at IDEX, joined in, and Jean-Christophe from Yole joined, whereas Ann-Tove decided to had to leave us due to workload. She was the acting CEO in Investinor, been that for a long time, so she had to step down. Just want to mention that, specifically Jean-Christophe, he started a company called Yole and is the chairman and the CEO of that company, and they are very well recognized for market analysis for this, the ecosystem we are in. So the fact that he is willing to join poLight is a kind of interesting signal in itself. Okay, so post Q1, Q1 is delayed due to the share issue, so post Q1, we had finally design win from Vuzix Shield.
Super nice glasses. For those who will be at the Capital Markets Day tomorrow in Horten, you will see the real glasses, and hopefully we can demonstrate them in a good way. And then they were used in the two RGB cameras, facing the world. We have also, interestingly now, more and more activity around TWedge. And by the way, TWedge will also, we're planning to demonstrate tomorrow for those coming to Horten. And we are now receiving orders. Lately, we have several of the big OEMs who's buying technical samples of TWedge. So the interest in this technology is, I would say, very high.
Wooptix, another, I would say, scientific-type example compared to like, like Thorlabs and, and, and others. Again, small volumes, they are still in a, I would say, eval kit stage, but, we're gonna release the real product later this year. It's a wavefront phase camera, very compact, nice, device. There are papers out in the, in the public, describing this development and this product. Then we had rights issue, which resulted in NOK 124 million in net proceeds. Thanks to all of you who participated. A great, great support, and a very important for the company to be strongly financed in all the project we are doing with, with big names.
Okay, very quickly, I will try today to be a little bit shorter since we're going to spend half a day together tomorrow, but a global player, tunable optics, many application areas. We've been there since 2005. Developed, I would say, a very advanced technology in tunable optics. We claim the best. We have a strong IP platform. We are now 46 in head count, and slightly increasing still. We are headquartered in Horten, as you know, and distributed all over the world, as you can see from the map. The latest addition we have is one person in Berlin, who is addressing the German-speaking countries, with particular focus on the industrial application areas, including some barcodes and machine vision, and what have you.
Listed since 2018, and the attributes of our technology is extremely fast, very compact, constant field of view, and extremely low power consumption. The product you see animated on the left side, so we have the lens material, which is the blue-white field in the middle there, which is being bent, shaped by a membrane. The membrane is being bent by applying a voltage through a driver we have developed, and by doing that, bending, you change the optical power, changing the focus from infinity to close. When you bend and you apply, say, 50 volt, you're focusing very close. When you're a flat surface, you're focusing in infinity. So, replicating, as we said, the human eye.
Here you can see the implementation on the left side, and you can see a picture on the top right, where you see the picture of the TLens itself compared to a tip of a pen. So it's a really compact, small device. Our technology likes to go small, and the limitation we have today is the size of aperture, which we are currently addressing in new development projects. Supply chain. We are doing the gel, the lens material, ourselves at the headquarters. Then we don't have to share the recipe with anybody. It's the heart of our technology. We master that very much so. We can tune it, depending on application, et cetera.
The eye muscle, the membrane being bent, is produced at the MEMS fab, so one 8-in wafer is a couple thousand dice. So, we are shipping this components to assembly partner, which is assembling to complete TLens, either with or without a package. We sell to camera module partners who integrate this TLens in different ways, like on top, like you see in the upper camera module, or as a integrated part of the lens stack, which you see on the bottom there. And then we, of course, sell to OEMs, and as I mentioned many times before, we are, we are spending a lot of our sales resources and tech resources in convincing the OEMs, and they kind of instruct the camera module player which kind of AF technology they would like to use. Okay?
So, as I mentioned in the beginning, it's a technology which I have to say, it's amazing for me to see how many different applications we can facilitate. If you ask me about this, wavefront sensor from Wooptix, as an example, it's coming, it's coming like. And also you see this Thorlabs-type activity. This will generate new type of application, which we didn't think about. So, it's, it's very, very interesting to see, to see this. Also, if you think about, the display solution, laser beam steering application, which we are also involved in. We didn't really think about that initially when we developed this technology. So it's interesting to see how kind of application is coming into us, and finding new use cases.
Anyway, market side, consumer, is definitely key for us due to the volumes. AR, MR is becoming more and more important, and mind you, this market, AR/MR, will sooner or later become a significant consumer market also. You can see it already now. You see Apple Vision Pro, when they start to address these markets, we know that what that means. So, so this is, in a way, a new market. I've said it before, the innovation happening is really much in that area. Whereas in the, say, in the smartphone, which is a very mature market and flattening market, it's more about cost. So, being early in the AR/MR space is, we see as a key, for success for the company.
Industrial, barcode, machine vision, and as I said, those are the three main activities we are supporting, but we have half an eye on other applications such as automotive and healthcare. So this is starting to be a busy slide, which we like. You can see here on the right side, you see the industrial. So the latest one is the Axon, which has two products on the bottom there. So here you can see the Honeywell, SuperLead have four, Hikrobot 1, Seuic, and then Teledyne 2, Axon 2. So there is starting to be a significant number of products out in the market, and the pipeline will show us that there are more to come. Then also finally, Vuzix was released.
So here you see the picture of the Vuzix Shield. So there are three AR applications here, and one MR, where we use for the video see-through camera. And then the consumer products you know from before is the webcam, the watches, and the smartphone. Smartphone is still selling. They have released new Meizu 21, but no one of Meizu 21 versions, there's no Meizu 21 Infinity. So the Meizu 20 Infinity is still shipping, and the Meizu 21, as far as I know, do not have any AF. So the Meizu 20 Infinity is the flagship when it comes to that respect. Let's go into consumer. I would say still a relatively challenging sentiment.
I was just back from Asia, and you can see still people are extremely careful with spending. Focus on the quarter was definitely Augmented Mixed Reality. Most of the consumer activity we are preparing for now is actually related to that, which is interesting, and of course, smartphone. Other application, webcams, laptops, smartphone, wearable is also, are also in our kind of POC and planning POC list. Not much new to say on the market side of smartphone, other than that, it's still kind of relatively challenging. They are kind of putting priority on cost optimization. Selfie camera is still kind of having a low budget compared to the main camera. So that is still the case. VCM is also being starting to be used with some of the OEMs on the selfie camera.
So even though they admit that we have a better solution, they are so concerned about cost that they stick with that for now. But of course, we are knocking the door on a regular basis. And also, as we mentioned before, we have initiated R&D activity, which hopefully will make our solution on system level easier to do for more camera module makers, reducing the cost of the total cost of a camera module using TLens. That will be an extremely important activity to increase the chances, and this is currently ongoing. Then also in addition to that, to be able to fit the bigger image sensor on the back, we have started a project related to a bigger TLens.
And that bigger TLens is, that project was started end of last year and has progressed quite well during the quarter. So we are being very persistent. This is a market we will continue to explore. We will continue to push. It is important because of the volumes is there today, whereas the AR/MR is kind of volumes tomorrow, so we will keep on pushing it. But it's important also to say that whatever we do for this market is highly relevant for other markets, e.g., AR/MR. For design win, 38 completed POC, 1 ongoing POC, and 7 planning POC. So a bit quite increase in the, in the planning side. Okay. So here we can see another way of presenting it.
Here you can see the same numbers, but here we take in the AR/MR consumer-related activity. So as you can see, a lot of POCs and planning POCs related to AR/MR, related to consumer AR/MR. So this, I feel it's a very nice illustration, how important AR/MR consumer is for the company. Actually, in as far as we know, the AF solution from poLight is the only solution used in AR/MR devices. So, I think that speaks for itself. Yeah, AR, again, we have seen this before. Key selling points: compactness, low power consumption, fast focusing speed, constant field of view, no gravity impact when you move your head, athermalization, meaning when the temperature drifts, the TLens by design is compensating for that. So, many different type of use cases.
This is basically fast focusing to capture image regardless of situation around you. Replicates the human eye in see-through cameras. You see-through cameras is the display you are not seeing through it. It's kind of you have a video see-through on the screen, and you can imagine if you had a AF technology there, which was slow, and if the field of view was changing and pumping, you can imagine how dizzy you would feel. So, here we have a unique proposition in this application. Barcode object recognition for AI and focus and tuning of laser projection display. So there are several use cases. As I said, we are in four products. We have built an extremely strong position in becoming the preferred AF solution.
As far as we know, we are the only one being used in this kind of application. I would say that the potential consumer-related activities are maturing and also increasing in numbers. So, in that sense, I think the quarter has been really good to see how things are getting from POC to actually concrete discussing project with the customer. And we are talking about many interesting names. Another thing, as I've been mentioning, TWedge, which is kind of this enhancing a solution for AR, Micro-LED AR display, I would say it's receiving very good interest. And, major, as I said, consumer OEMs in AR/MR is now ordering technical samples, and they are not cheap. We are basically resolving a showstopping trade-off between resolution and brightness.
So for the user, it will be an impressive improvement with or without TWedge. You will see that picture so much nicer, and as I said, we will try to demonstrate that tomorrow at the headquarters. Now, I'm sure there are going to be 100 people at the headquarters tomorrow, which there will not be space for, sorry. So, yeah, so this is a super, super interesting development. You can see here we have four design wins, four design-ins. We have 18 POC completed. We have 11 ongoing POC, and 18 planning POC. Yeah, again, you can see the distribution between the consumer part and the enterprise part. So it's a good mix. Consumer, of course, more important for the volume.
Industrial, barcode, and other things, I should say. So here, you know, we have two, three, seven, nine, 10, 11 barcode products using TLens. Axon Pro , the latest one. So six companies using in 11 products, all cases still shipping. It will take time to develop this market. I've been saying this again and again, and again, and it is true, because many of these cases kind of 5K, 10K, 20K yearly volumes. So it takes, it takes time. Our hope is that the customer, sooner or later, will bring us into more closer to the point of sales, where the volumes is higher. This will, of course, take time to develop.
Of course, they, they need to establish kind of confidence, and we need to break into the right companies, so we're keeping pushing for that. And by the way, tomorrow at Capital Markets Day, our VP Business Development in the North America and Global Marketing guy, Tristan Yeo, he will be giving you an in-depth presentation of all market segment and our opportunities and our tactics in that area. So that's worthwhile following. We're also doing a Teams live webcast, so you can follow if you cannot be there. So he will explain more about the details. I would say that the barcode industrial, even though it's take time, it we can see a trend of pipeline increasing.
As I said, we talked about Thorlabs, we talked about Wooptix, which is kind of completely different thing, but still, things which can sooner or later trigger new markets for us. Seven design wins, two design-ins, 34 completed POC, 14 ongoing POC, and 16 planning POC. So 16 up from eight. Yeah, again, just an illustration. Try to show you the difference between the different markets. You have the barcode, and then the eye is more the machine vision, so then you see approximately the distribution on these different phases. Healthcare. Yeah, mainly related to Mini2P. The Mini2P has become super famous, to be honest. PhenoSys is the first one coming out with a commercial system. There will be other coming.
I think before we leave the year, there will probably be three companies selling these systems. And in addition to that, we are directly also engaging with universities and labs. And as I said before, I think it's an extremely important brand building. These guys are doing research. Look at Moser, he got a Nobel Prize for his brain research, which wouldn't be possible, if we understand it correct, without research and experimentation with the Mini2P. They have tried other tunable optics, it couldn't do it. And when they get a Nobel Prize, they're publishing, they're getting worldwide attention. All the labs in the world would like to do something similar, to do similar research.
And of course, this will, sooner or later, will be very well known in related also industry, which we hope can bring us into new cases and new products. We are also involved in even though we have said before, is that we don't really have any short-term breakthrough in endoscope or laparoscope, which we did hope we had. We had this, you remember the Xenocor, which ended up with a due to time-to-market issues and problems in manufacturing. They ended up with low-megapixel standard camera with no AF, and that's a little bit we see that the trend still is, they are using standard fixed focus cameras, 2 megapixel, which really doesn't gain so much using AF due to low resolution.
But we also see that, when we talk to the players, that there is a roadmap towards, like, 5-megapixel cameras, and then the answer will be they probably need AF. So I think we keep an eye on it. We still have quite a few POCs ongoing, actually. Some long-term, some more, yeah, medium-term. So this is, but I wouldn't be kind of... I would expectation management a little bit. There's nothing kind of short-term coming in, in that area, but longer term, we believe. Okay, 2 design wins, which are both Mini2P. 2 design-ins, which also in that area. 14 ongoing POC and 8 planning POC. I describe more about the details in the quarter report itself, if you are interested. Automotive, yeah.
This is really one of my wet dreams also. We have a clear signal that there is a need for AF sooner or later in this industry. We also have a clear signal that they don't believe that the mechanical moving a lens stack is a good way to go, so they are considering other technologies, and as far as we understand, we are one of the technologies. It's gonna be a tough process and tough qualification process, which will take a long time, and it was also likely they will need a bigger aperture TLens. And what I said about TLens and aperture TLens for back camera smartphone, which we are targeting, we are also having this kind of application in mind when we are doing that TLens.
So that not only for the smartphone, but even for AR/MR and even for automotive will... and industrial. So, so that is kind of whatever we do on the product portfolio has really a, I would say, cross, cross, market segments, relevance. There are current, ongoing POCs. There are no new POCs during the quarter. But they are all, and they are all based on existing products. Yeah, as you see, on the pipeline, 17 design wins, eight design-ins, 100 completed POC, 143 ongoing POC, and 54 planning POC. And this is Øyvind's patent. Here you can see the graph, how this is, nicely developing, in the quarter. We have a up in the quarter. Alf Henning, financial review.
Thank you. Good morning to you guys. Deliveries of TLens and ASICs gave NOK 900,000 in the quarter, and NOK 400,000 was invoiced when it comes to NRE for development projects. In the quarter, we have an EBITDA loss of NOK 18.8 million, compared with NOK 14 million in Q1 last year. The main drivers for the increased loss is an increased provision for inventory obsolescence of NOK 2.3 million, which is reflected in the cost of sales. We also have increased the number of employees and consultants of approximately nine, offset by NOK 3.6 million in reversed share option expense. Due to the decline in the share price, the accrued employer's national insurance contribution was kind of reduced in the quarter.
When it comes to the balance sheet, cash position of NOK 95.3 million, and that's before we take the share issue into account, compared with NOK 114 million at year-end last year. Inventory stands at NOK 67.8 million, compared with NOK 70.1 million at the end of last year, and the decrease is due to the inventory provision for obsolescence. On the cash flow, we started the quarter with NOK 114.8 million in cash.
We used NOK 19.2 million in operating activities, compared with NOK 30.6 million in the first quarter last year. And the reason for the less spending in cash is we haven't purchased any wafers this quarter, which we kind of purchased for NOK 11 million last year. We used NOK 600,000 in investing activities. We received NOK 200,000 in financing activities and NOK 100,000 due to FX. So at the end of the quarter, we had NOK 95.3 million in cash. Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Alf Henning. One slide to go, and then Q&A. Yeah, as hopefully you have seen from this overview, AR market, MR market, both for our AF solution and following, I would say, successful technology demonstration, TWedge, is making us feel very good about this development and this market. As I said, AR market is now AR/MR market. Our solution is the only solution used so far. And meaning that we have already established a very strong foundation for this market. I'm not saying that there are never going to be a competitor, but at least we are in at a very early stage. The current assignments in AR/MR is directed at the professional market/enterprise market, which is why the current volumes are low.
If you say take Magic Leap, as you know, we are in, Magic Leap is constantly reducing the forecast because the ecosystem around them is not mature enough. It's a matter of time. On the good side, the potential consumer-oriented customer cases are increasing in number and becoming increasingly mature. When I say increasingly mature, I mean, we are getting from a tech assessment-only discussion to more real discussion on which product we fit in. Okay? When it comes to TWedge, repeating myself, but it's important, major consumer OEMs are showing a high interest in our technical sample for review, and this activity, I think it's not unlikely to see AR glasses/MR glasses with multiple TLens products in. So AR/MR market, super promising. The consumer market is challenging still, I would say.
Regardless, we are extremely persistent, we are very stubborn, and we continue pushing that, and using actively our first smartphone reference. We have been initiating, we feel, key action to improve our chances in this market, and we feel that they are progressing quite well. The industrial market, step by step, coming in, new applications, also showing us new opportunities. In general statement, I will say poLight and its technology and products is becoming increasingly known and respected, and key references has been established in all key markets. Yes, it has taken time. Yes, it's taken a lot of investment from you as a shareholder and employees, but there is no reason to not even stronger believe on what we are on this way to, to manage and create.
As I said, further initiative to strengthen further our position has been taken so that we have a future-proof portfolio. Thank you. Alf Henning, do you want to join me for Q&A? Should we start with which has been submitted, Alf Henning?
Yes. Okay. Are you ready?
Yes.
The AR vertical is super exciting at the moment, but perhaps most interesting is the incredible functionality we see in Varjo's headset, where the camera externally focus on the ROI, the area that the user turns his eyes towards. Is this a function you think could become more widespread, and can poLight possibly supply something for such functionality?
Yeah, you have many creative ways to try to trick me, but, without referring to Varjo, I would say that video see-through function is something we think we have the solution for, really the solution a nd that's what I can say.
poLight now has approximately 200 projects that you are involved in. What proportion of these can contribute projects where a possible positive outcome with a choice of poLight in the product launch could result in sales of significant volume?
I would say every cases on consumer AR/MR, and also other, sorry, all consumer-related project, like, all the OEMs which has been doing POC with us on the smartphone, all the POCs we are doing and have been doing on more, should I say, IoT or wearables. I think all these markets have that significant potential.
Which of the projects you are involved in now would you rank as top three when it comes to potential? It can be about both sales volume and technology, interesting solutions, not necessarily just economics.
I would say that in the short, medium/long term, I would say that without being specific on project, I would say it is the AR/MR, and it's the consumer. Those are the big, big things which can happen. And then, of course, longer term, you have automotive, which also is a significant market, of course, but that's, yeah, that's long, long, long term.
Can you say something about, more about the possibilities for passive athermalization and the use of TLens for this? Is it an area of activity?
Yeah, in a way, you can say yes. Some of the designs we have was initially triggered by that fact. If you have a fixed-focus camera and you have a change in temperature, that fixed-focus camera, which will be at focus at certain temperature, will be drift out of focus at another temperature. That triggered that we have to have AF. But there is actually the TLens, it has in by design, even without actuation, it actually compensates, not perfectly, but somewhat. So we have talked about releasing that athermalization TLens as a standard product, without actuation, which of course mean a much cheaper product. So far we have not started that, but it's something which we have on our mind.
Can you say something about how the work with CMMs or camera module makers is going now? I'm thinking in particular of the work to reduce cost for complete modules with TLens.
Yeah. Now, we are engaging with many camera module players. And one of the things which I said, some of the initiatives we have started to cost reduce the system-level cost of a selfie camera, as an example, is to make not only the high-end camera module players able to make this happen in an add-in design, as they would like to have, because of the nose size. But we then try to make an integration of the TLens, an extremely small package around the TLens, which makes it easier to integrate it inside the lens stack without needing all the processes other high-end players have. That is one of the initiatives we have been kicking off.
T hat is clearly one thing which can help to reduce the cost on system level. Then also, I would say that definitely one of the cost elements in what they call active alignment, which is you have two different lens groups, and you align them relative to each other and the sensor, a nd that is needed because they are making so extremely compact cameras with so high resolution and low F-number. So this is meaning that they need to be super, super tight tolerances. This is what they do. This is a very expensive process today, but more and more cameras is moving in that direction due to the spec. And of course, when more and more camera and more and more volumes are moving through that process, that process will become cheaper. It's also time will help.
One of the camera module makers, Sony Optical, seems to value the competence in active alignment highly. How can poLight help to bypass active alignment in other camera module players' production?
Yeah, I think I answered to-
Is it possible?
I think I answered to that in the last question.
How many have ready-made camera modules with TLens in design-in?
Shipping today is two. Looking into solution and doing POC, maybe another three. Yeah. So step by step more.
Can you say something about how many projects are taking place with TWedge now?
I think I have that in the report, but I think there is five ongoing PUCs, and I think seven on planning PUCs, b ut check the report, it's there.
Have you laid out a roadmap for TWedge, possibly decided whether you want to go for engineering alone or together with others?
Yeah, good question. So we have really been trying to sample a potential customer, and I said we have major consumer OEMs who are now doing review evaluation of the technical samples. So we really like to have a lead customer or lead customers, so that we don't do a kind of full-fledged product development without having a strong signal that this is something we want. So that we prefer, but when together with somebody, what does that mean? It still would mean that it would be a TWedge product from poLight, but there will hopefully be a lead customer who is enabling this to happen all the way into the market, and also potentially do finance it partly through NRE.
You have an ongoing AR project developing a display solution with a custom package design. How is this project progressing?
Very good.
Will the new automotive TLens revision you are developing feature a larger aperture? Is this the same larger aperture revision being developed for smartphone rear cameras and other market segments?
Yeah, that's the plan.
Sharp has previously promoted TLens as the eyes of the AI. Does Sharp still show the same level of engagement in their interest for TLens as before?
I think Sharp is quite, Sharp is quite active, and, and, Kantatsu, I would say they are. Of course, it's up and down always, but I would say still there is a high interaction between Sharp and poLight. So yes, I would say so. Then it's of course, the question, is then when will they be able to- because Sharp is, Sharp is also selling cameras, and they are having own product. So, so where it will end up, where TLens will end up first, in own product or them selling camera modules, that we don't know. But yes, high activity with Sharp.
Which industry are Thorlabs products ... containing TLens aimed at? And is Thorlabs increasing their product portfolio containing TLens?
I had one comment, the other day, because we constantly receive POs from Thorlabs, and I was asking if they are eating TLenses for lunch and breakfast. But, yes, there is constantly coming in something from Thorlabs, and, there seem to be an activity inside Thorlabs in many, many different departments, so quite interesting. But it is more the scientific area. Not anything big volumes initially, but, quite interesting activity. It's difficult for us to see, where this could lead to, but, we definitely are very keen to support them.
Does poLight expect to have enough funds for, to operate until the first purchase order of significant financial importance?
Super good question, and I think I need to stick to what I said when we started the share issue, is that this share issue will bring us into 2026 when it come to cash. Then, of course, the rest of the answer relies on what's going to happen on the sales side. I think I need to stick to that. I fully understand the question, of course, but that's what I need to... That's what we were communicated before, and that we need to stick to.
poLight has unique technology and has been featured in their first smartphone. However, there is a very limited available data for tech enthusiasts who want to see what this technology is capable of. Could poLight create some promotional videos that can be shared on various platforms?
Again, a good comment. I think we can definitely do more here, to be honest. We did some movies just related to the design win, didn't we? Where we produced some videos, which we did share in the social media. But yeah, we likely could do more. So we can take that as an input.
What would you say is the estimated project lifetime in the market for projects like Magic Leap 2 and Vuzix Shield ?
We don't know the details, but, of course, we are in dialogue with this customer, and, they are typically longer lifetime than consumer products and typically less lifetime than a barcode. I think there's something in between there.
Do you see potential improvement in the build configuration to the current TLens modules for AR/MR models going forward, or will improvement mostly happen on the software side of things?
A little bit uncertain what you mean, but, I think there will be constant push from the market, including AR/MR market, to improve the performance of the TLens. We talked about better coating to have higher transmission. We talked about bigger TLens, smaller TLens. So this will be a constant battle, and that's how this industry is. There's no time for relax. It's pushing, pushing, more, more performance, cheaper. So, this will never stop. So, I think the simple answer is, yes, there will be a big push on this.
What are the developments regarding software that enable focus bracketing, stereo vision, HDR, and other use cases that take advantage of speed and constant field of view, like robotics, automotive, AR, et cetera?
Yeah, again, a super good question. And of course, this is where poLight is weak. We do not have our own capability to do these kind of software development. We have been talking about it in many strategy session, and we did establish that capability, but it was difficult to maintain. But this is something which we are trying to do through partners. Wooptix, remember? They did this all-in focus, touch and refocus, and bokeh. We did our own demonstration at our Tampere office. So this is something we currently had to rely on partners.
In a way, if you take the AR/MR side of it, the video see-through and the ecosystem and the software and the algorithm to make that a good product is super advanced, and that's over the capability and resources that we can afford to do. So then here we need to rely on our end customer or partners, b ut really good question.
You mentioned Internet of Things. Can you say something, anything more about the outlook for that market area?
Then I would refer to Capital Markets Day tomorrow, because Tristan Yeo, he will go through all the market segments we are addressing, with size, how we address it. So if I could please do that.
Are the new headcount in Berlin handling OEM customers only, like Bosch and Fraunhofer? ... or are the person also doing active sales activities in different markets there? Typical automotive, VW, only automotive and other?
Yeah, it's the starting point is more the industrial barcode machine vision. That is the starting point. T hen that will develop from there.
It is very good that you agree with the shareholders that things have taken time and investment. But going on, the development still shows cash burn and no signs of high volume case, which can give more liquidity. How do you assess this ongoing development after 10+ years?
Let me just read that question once more. But go on. Yeah, but I think that, as we have been saying, we are positioning ourselves for certain markets, and we are trying to very transparently mention and explain our position, what we do, and what we think is possible. Then time will show. I don't know how more to, how specifically to answer that question better, to be honest.
Will the new CFO take over the Q&A for current CFO, or we'll still see him on Q&A?
At least one more quarter.
Will AI become a competitor or a coworker to TLens? Does Polight have any projects using integrating AI?
I'm hoping to see you here today, Kjell Olav, but anyway, I will answer your question. No, I think actually TLens is something they need to enable AI. We see many of these use cases as very much AI related. They need AL because of AI.
That was the last one.
Okay. Super good. Is there any question from the audience? Happy. Okay. So, thank you, all for participating. Hope that I will see some of you also in, Capital Markets Day tomorrow. There is limited seats, but are still some available. And as I said, there will be a very much a deep dive into the sales and marketing side. It will be a deep dive into the R&D and roadmap and, and more into the showing the new concepts. COO will talk about, our operational readiness and why that is important. We will, I will talk more and together with Grete to talk more the, the, the bigger picture and, the strategic direction.
We have, luckily, a person from Yole, who will talk about relevant market trends and external presenter. We have a Q&A session in the end, and then in the end, while we're having some snack, we will show you products, OEM products, the TLenses, and hopefully a demonstration of TWedge by the man who is in charge of that development from Oxford office of poLight. So I really hope to see you there. Then we have a Q2 report, 15th of August. So that will be the next time we will see you in Oslo. Super good. Thanks for you following the webcast. Thanks for your coming. Thanks to Alf Henning and for Grete, and have a nice day.