into a foundational AI technology company. So without further ado, let me welcome Jack, and thank you for joining us today, for this Fireside Chat. It's good to speak with you again.
Good morning, Robert. Good to be back.
So Jack, let's start with this question. Since the middle of 2025, Ainos's expansion beyond healthcare and the growth of your industrial ecosystem have become more visible, shifting how some investors think about the company more as a technology platform than a traditional healthcare story. Before we dive into the specifics, how should investors frame AI Nose at the highest level today?
Yeah, thanks, Robert. So, at the highest level, AI Nose should be viewed as an emerging AI perception platform, enabling AI the sense of smell. So I will be saying this for a long time, AI has advanced by teaching machines to understand text, images, and sound. But what has largely been missing is smell, one of the most fundamental human senses and one of the richest signals in the physical world. So our product, our technology, AI Nose, adds that missing perception layer. What investors are seeing today is an AI platform beginning to scale by giving machines a new way to understand the physical environment through smell, in the industrial settings such as semiconductors and robotics, where the platform is scaling first, but they are not the endpoint of this platform.
Where does smell fit into the evolution of AI, and why does it matter now?
Yeah. So, smell is one of the last major, human senses that AI really hasn't learned to scale. In the real world, scent often provides early signals, of risk, change or quality or anomaly, before really visuals or mechanical indicators appear. So the challenge historically of sensing smell wasn't importance, but, structure. Smell data was inconsistent and very difficult for AI to learn from. Our AI Nose addresses this by converting scent into what we call a Smell ID. It's a standardized, machine-readable format. So on top of the Smell IDs, we build our smell language model, or we call it SLM for short, which learns patterns over time. In many ways, we see smell becoming AI's next token.
It's kind of like a new form of structured input that allows AI to better understand the physical world. So simply put, in one word, we're teaching AI the ability to smell.
Now, you describe AI Nose as a platform rather than a product. What's the distinction here?
Yeah. So most of the existing gas sensing solution in the market, they really just focus on detections, essentially acting like alert systems. The AI Nose is fundamentally different, in our opinion. It is a trainable platform designed to learn continuously from the real-world data, not a static detection system. This means the system gets smarter over time. Our goal is when a customer trains AI Nose in one environment, the new intelligence can be applied across their other AI Nose systems in the field. So we believe the design—this design allows the platform to scale very quick, more quickly and easier for our client. That's why the AI Nose platform has two complementary layers. On one end, AI Nose, Ainos, focus on sensing and data generations, ensuring accuracy and consistency across the environments.
You can kind of think of Ainos as the nose in the AI Nose platform. On the other hand, ScentAI, our 100% owned subsidiary, will focus on the intelligence part, which is the AI models and the analytics built on Smell IDs. So ScentAI doesn't build the hardware. You can simply think of ScentAI as the AI in the AI Nose platform. So what customer will get is they get access to intelligence through the platform services rather than owning the underlying models. We think this structure allows the intelligence layer to scale as deployments grow. Over time, I think we expect ScentAI to evolve into a smell intelligence operating layer, while Ainos controls the physical world data entry point.
Together, we think that positions Ainos, the company, as the gatekeeper of real-world smell data and supports a scalable, subscription-based, platform.
That's the dual engine architecture that your platform has?
Exactly.
So Ainos began in healthcare, including pneumonia, women's health, and senior care. So why was that the right place to start?
Yeah. So healthcare demands precisions, so pneumonia, women's health, and senior care, they involve subtle scent changes that develop over time. These use cases has allowed us to calibrate the AI Nose system, improve signal qualities, and validate that smell can be learned, not just detected. I think the work we did over the past 13 years created a strong foundation for the platform, enabling reliable expansion into more complex, larger-scale environments like the industrials.
... So how did the healthcare foundation lead to your expansion into industrial environments like factories and infrastructure?
Yeah, so at the end, we think the industrial environment, they operate continuously and generate repeatable patterns, so this kind of scenario is really ideal for Ainos. Factories, semiconductor fabs, infrastructure systems, they produce large amount of scent data tied directly to the processes, so that's ideal environment for scaling their perception platform like our Ainos. Pretty much since the back half of 2025, we've been building a strong ecosystem to support our industrial expansions. Our ecosystem partners now include paying customers, integration partners, and distribution partners. Each of them contribute specific capacities that help us scale Ainos efficiently.
Now, you've established a commercial traction in semiconductor back-end operations thus far, including work with the leading back-end player. What does that tell investors?
Yeah. So we think this agreement with the world's largest back-end player in the semiconductor field is really a clear and early validation of Ainos platform. It's a commercial platform in a highly automated industry. Our customer already operate large clusters of lights out, fully automated factories. That means the factories is completely run by machines, no humans involved. So you can imagine they put a lot of sensors into that, and smell is really one of the perception layers that has been missing in these kind of lights out, fully automated factories. So we have a multi-year order of approximately $2.1 million. That covers about 1,400 Ainos units, roughly, to be deployed across this customer's major facilities in Taiwan.
There is also an opportunity for us, together to further scale this relationship, if everything goes well, to a substantial bigger size.
So front-end wafer fabrication is a much larger part of the semiconductor value chain. So your recent agreement with Trusval, another Taiwanese company, basically moves you upstream. How does that change the opportunity for Ainos?
Yeah. So front-end fabs has always been one of our targets because, again, they are fully automated. They run 24/7, they use all kinds of sensors, and it's a very chemical-intensive process. So now we've had a really good opportunity to get into the front-end fabs. So for us, expanding from back-end to front-end fabs extends where the intelligence layer sits, not what it replaces. Front-end fabs, they already have many advanced sensing systems, so we're not replacing them. What they're really lacking is a continuous smell intelligence, kind of like a structured way to learn from the chemical signals they produce over time. By adding that layer into the manufacturing process, we think AI Nos complements the existing systems and fill a critical gap. So as the platform spans...
Our platform spans both from the front-end and the back-end environment. We think AI Nose can become a cross-stage intelligence layer within the semiconductor supply chains. I think once embedded into the chip maker's workflows, we believe AI Nose can build data depth, strengthen customer stickiness, and really contribute to competitive differentiation over time.
So in that partnership with Trusval Technology, which you recently announced, you have 600 sets of minimum committed orders of the Ainos. And a few months ago, you also announced an agreement with Topco Scientific. How should investors think about what these relationships mean for your access to front-end and semiconductor customers?
Yeah, that's a good question. We've been engaged with a front-end semiconductor company for several months, since sometime last year. And then through that process, one thing becomes very clear, right? These front-end fab environments, they're very, very highly complex. And then, they depend on multiple specialized relationships and capacities because each modules are kind of like their own ecosystem within the fabs. That's why partnerships matter so much in this part of the value chain. Our relationship with Topco and Trusval really strengthens our access because they both already operate deep inside the front-end semiconductor fabs. For example, Topco, they've been around for over 30 years now. They work closely with the chip makers on materials, on process-related solutions, and ongoing technical support.
So they give us a practical entry point into the front-end fabs operations. On the other hand, Trusval, they specialize in the front-end fab infrastructure and system integrations. You can kind of think of them as the provider of all those critical infrastructures that these fabs use every day, and they are very, very important, so they really get into the fabs. So they have direct responsibilities for deploying and ongoing operations inside these fabs. This minimum order commitment of 600 AI Nose sets really underscores a high level of competence in the commercial opportunity of AI Nose with the front-end environments. The use cases we are discussing with the front-end makers, they really range from environmental safety to production processes.
Now, because both partners already manage customer surveys and on-site integrations, they have a large workforce, so their teams effectively serve as a natural extension of our workforce, which means this allows us to scale efficiently while maintaining a capital-light operating models. So we're very excited to have them as our ecosystem partners. And also, importantly, Ainos retains full control over the core technology, over the data, and the platform's directions, while partners like Topco and Trusval they manage the customer-facing executions within their established relationships.
That's interesting. Thank you very much for that. So how do robotics fit into the AI NosE platform strategy?
Yeah. So robots is one of our key focus for 2026, besides semiconductor, semiconductors. So it's a natural extension of the AI Nose perception platforms. Most of the robots today, they see, they hear, they speak, but they generally lack the ability to smell. So we think adding scent really enables a new layer of awareness, improving the robot's capabilities in areas like, inspection, safety, and environmental monitoring, and really complements on what we're doing with the semiconductor fabs, whether it's back end and front end. So when you think about from the platform perspective, robotics is attractive to us because robots, they operate, again, continuously. They constantly generate data. So that creates a steady stream of real-world data that we can analyze and which strengthens the learning process and reinforces the data flywheels behind the AI Nose platforms.
I think robotics, to us, is a huge long-term opportunities, especially as the labor shortages continue to increase globally and automation becomes more and more critical. We have been working with a robot developer in Japan, with multiple pilot programs underway. But in addition to that, we are now also currently engaged in additional partnership discussions as we expand this part of the pipeline. So we're continuing to share updates, when we're ready.
And we look forward to hearing from you on that as well, later, really in the coming weeks, months. So based on what Ainos is executing on right now, what should investors focus on as they look forward to 2026?
Yeah. So 2025 versus 2026, I think the key point for 2026 is that execution has started. Over second half of 2025, we did a lot of deployment preparations, trying to understand how AI Nose fits into our semiconductor customers' workflows. So we've done most of that. Starting this year, beginning January, this month, we're starting light deployments tied to our $2.1 million semiconductor backend orders. And then, after several months of early engagement, we are now kicking off a pilot with a front-end semiconductor company, and that really marks our first step upstream in the chip value chain. And then on the robotics side, our pipeline continue to expand beyond our current relationship in Japan. All of this fits to the data flywheel.
More Smell ID data coming out, as we generate, we make the SLM stronger and a platform that continue to compound as it scales.
Right. So there's been quite a bit of volatility in the share price, but do you have any final thoughts for long-term investors?
Yeah. So, I think AI Nose, the platform, is about giving AI a new sense, which is the sense of smell. As this perception layer scales, we think AI Nose will enable smarter decisions across many environments. We believe smell intelligence, powered by our AI Nose platform, represents a significant long-term scaling opportunities, and that Ainos, the company, and ScentAI, our subsidiaries, are really positioned to lead these emerging multi-year cycles. I think 2026 will mark the beginning of a meaningful platform scale-up, driven by increasing tractions across industrials, semiconductors, and robotics environments.
Well, thank you for that. We'll, we'll wrap it up there. So definitely busy and exciting times ahead for Ainos and its Smelltech platform, and definitely looking forward to watching your progress. Also, thanks, to everybody for joining this chat. If you have any additional questions for Jack, please send them through to me, and I'll be sure to pass them on. For our analysis of, Ainos, please refer to our, open access website at www.watertowerresearch.com. This fireside chat will also be accessible on demand on our website. The views expressed in this fireside chat may not necessarily reflect the views of Water Tower Research and are provided for informational purposes only.
Just one more thing, forward-looking statements produced by Ainos can be found on their website and also in the SEC filings that they have filed. So with that, I wish you a very good rest of the day.
Thank you.