Okay, so welcome to the Sidoti Virtual Investor Conference, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Anja Soderstrom, a Senior Equity Analyst here at Sidoti. As I mentioned, next up we have SEALSQ, and this will start with a presentation by the management team, followed by Q&A. If you would like to submit a question, you can do so in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. I have John O'Hara, he's the CFO with me today, and Bernard Vian, he's the General Manager. They're going to go over the presentation, and I'm happy to hand it over to you, John.
Thank you very much, Anja. Good morning, everybody. Hope you are all keeping well. I'd like to provide a brief presentation of SEALSQ. I will cover a brief introduction and the history of the company, then I'll pass over to Bernard Vian to go more into the detail of the technology, what we do, and what makes us special. At the end, we've got a bit of financial information to recap and then open for a Q&A. Bernard, if you could just flick to the first slide, please.
All right.
Thank you very much. First of all, a brief history about SEALSQ and the origins of the company. We started out life, there are two routes to our history. We started out life in 1999, as when WISeKey was founded by our CEO and Chairman Carlos Moreira. That was originally focused very much on digital identity and the protection of digital identities. At the same time, SEALSQ itself was formed in 1998 in France as a part of a bigger company called Inside Secure, which went for a couple of different identities. In 2016, when WISeKey had been listed on the Swiss stock exchange, it acquired the secure semiconductor segment of Inside Secure and rebranded that as WISeKey Semiconductors in 2016. Very much then, SEALSQ was focused on protecting objects.
The classic example I like to use is if you look around your office, you've probably got a router in there somewhere. A lot of these routers are protected by SEALSQ technology with a secure semiconductor contained in the router, which stops people from hacking in and from getting into your network. If we fast forward a couple of years, in 2021, our Head of R&D was conducting some research into where we felt the next big threats were coming from and what we felt was the next monster lurking on the horizon and identified that the forthcoming threat, the biggest threat coming down the line was quantum computing. In 2021, we decided to undertake the project to develop a secure semiconductor capable of resisting an attack by a quantum computer.
The project obviously takes quite a lot of time to do, and people far cleverer than me and Bernard himself will be able to tell you how that is possible when quantum computers themselves were still in a very nascent stage back in 2021. As we undertook this project, we then felt that WISeKey, its market valuation was not truly reflecting the value of its own assets. In particular, we felt that the valuation of SEALSQ was being underrepresented by the market. Therefore, that was the point at which we decided to rebrand from WISeKey to being SEALSQ. In particular, the SQ there standing for semiconductor quantum, reflecting the fact that we were very much focusing ourselves and pivoting towards the next generation of cryptography threats.
Following that, we then undertook a project to do a partial spinoff and list SEALSQ separately on the Nasdaq under the ticker LAES. That took place in May 2023. To sort of finalize this story, as I'm sure many people on this presentation are already aware, in roundabout December last year, when Google announced the development of the Willow chip, the Willow quantum computer, that obviously created a lot more focus on quantum companies and quantum-adjacent companies with something that previously had been seen very much as almost science fiction was suddenly becoming science reality.
At that point, the valuation of our company and our share price exploded, which enabled us to raise a significant amount of cash through our shell offering and to strengthen our balance sheet and allow us to shore up the future of the business with knowing that we now have the funds capable of finalizing the development of our quantum projects and also looking now into future investments. Just to highlight, as we stand today, we have roughly 70 employees with our operational headquarters being situated in France. We have a patent base that's over 118 patents, and we hope to continue adding to that, particularly with the new post-quantum chip. Just click forward there, now, please. Just to give a brief highlight here. As I said, we obviously successfully raised a very strong cash balance.
As at the year-end last year, we were sitting on $85 million in cash. This has enabled us to really look towards future investments and where we are heading. We announced recently that we have signed an SPA to acquire a company called IC'Alps, based in Grenoble, France, and they specialize in ASIC design. We feel that gives us a much more significant end-to-end product proposition for going to market and is expanding our offerings there. We do have four major strategic initiatives that Bernard will go into a bit more detail on, but just to highlight, obviously, the first one foremost is launching the post-quantum chips, the ones that are capable of resisting a quantum attack. We are currently on target to complete the commercial launch of that at the end of this year.
We'll review that revenue should start to come in next year. We're also looking into developing open semiconductor test and personalization centers. Again, Bernard will go into more detail on what one of these is, but we have in particular a project that we feel is imminently going to be signed in conjunction with the Spanish Department for Technological Transformation and benefiting from some EU funding to allow us to develop a center in Spain that will overall have an investment requirement of about $40 million, and we will be partially towards that. We also announced a $20 million investment fund allocated towards quantum companies and investing to strengthen our quantum roadmap. We're also working hard on our satellite connectivity in collaboration with WISeSat to enable the continued verification, monitoring, and communication of connected devices via WISeSat's own constellation of secure satellites and an independent satellite constellation.
On that overview, I will hand over to Bernard to continue the presentation.
Yeah, thank you, John. Good morning, everybody. I'm Bernard Vian, I'm the Managing Director of SEALSQ. It's a world, as John said, we're based in France, as I'm sure you can hear. Just a few words about what we're delivering to our customer. We are a cybersecurity company, which is unique in our model in a way that we are delivering both semiconductor as well as the digital identity services to our customer. We are a semiconductor company. We are designing chips. We are fabless, everything. We are doing the design. Everything else is contracted. I will come back to that because we have an initiative in that to internalize a piece of that. Doing the design of our semiconductor. At the same time, we are a trust services company.
We are capable to generate the digital identities to sell those identities that we call also certificates. We are also capable to inject in our supply chain to inject those digital identities in the chips that we are delivering to our customers. With that, we are serving a different purpose for our customer. We are helping them to comply with a standard that would be in the U.S., FIPS. There are FIPS standards. There are U.S. Cyber Trust Mark standards. There is Matter. This is in the home automation space. There are fields where devices have to be to comply with regulation, extremely strict regulation in terms of security. Our technology is doing that job for our customer. We are also helping our customer to control the supply.
When a lot of our customers are contracting their supply chain in different geographies, with our technology, they can monitor and track and verify that the product that their contractors are delivering is genuine, and that there are no counterfeited parts of the goods they have been producing. In terms of technology, our technology, if I had to put it in a nutshell, acts a bit like a digital passport for the objects, for the devices where our technology is implemented. Everything we are delivering and developing is about security resistance to a cyber attack. It is a journey. It is a constant evolution. This technology started basically with the smart card industry 40 years ago, and it has been a constant evolution of new possibility to hack and to tamper with the digital identity of the chips that we are delivering.
In that journey, I would say the last revolution and threat is the quantum computer. All devices that could be your Visa card, your passport, but that can be as well your internet SSL connection. All of that, they have in common they are protected by very old crypto technology that we call RSA that have been proven so far to be extremely secure, but they would not resist to the quantum computer. We have seen recently a lot of progress on this new generation of computer. A lot of the R&D that we are doing is about introducing to the market a new generation of secure chip capable to resist to the quantum computer type of attacks. For that, we have been developing a new generation of chips.
They are onboarding a new algorithm that the U.S. NIST, so that's the standardization body of the U.S. government, has standardized. We have onboarded this new algorithm, and we have secured them in our chip. We have started to sample lead customers with this new generation of secure chip. Here again, we're based on the same model that we are deploying. We are developing both the chip, the secure chip that we are delivering to the customer, but we are also developing a new generation of digital identities that we are injecting into our chip to comply with this new crypto engine. A lot of efforts have been put on that, and we are, again, starting to sample that to our customer. Here, this just gives you a few examples of the use cases and the sort of customers that we are serving with our technology.
I mentioned Cisco. They are a big majority share of the server, I mean, the devices, server switch box they are delivering to our customer, to their customers, are protected with our technology. With that, Cisco can control their supply chain. They are also, when they are delivering, let's say, a router to the Department of Defense, when they have to make an upgrade, a firmware upgrade of their devices, they are very checking, verifying with our chip that the server they are upgrading is genuine. That's the sort of use case we are helping. We are in factories in robots are connected. We are using Siemens, for example, is using our technology to protect the connectivity of their robots. In the healthcare space, we are a customer like Medtronic in the U.S. They are delivering a glucose meter. They are also connected device.
They are protecting the communication flow of the devices with our chip. We are in drones with Parrot. We are in the EV charging system with an ODM in Turkey. Another example that's in the smart meter space, where there are a lot of regulations, especially in Europe, smart meters are communicating real-time information. Our technology is used in this use case for the energy provider to verify that they are communicating with genuine meters and they are verifying that the communication is not tampered. An example you were given, John, in your home, you have a lot of connecting devices. It could be your box, but it could be a thermostat. It could be a protocol in that space that we call Matter that is deployed for the interoperability of all those devices. We are a supplier of the digital identities for this protocol.
Yeah, just I will be quick on this one. We have a whole family of microcontrollers with different crypto engine, with different size, different memory technology. The last one, as I was mentioning before, the last version of our chip is the one that is embedding a new processor to run quantum-resistant type of cryptography. Here in terms of value proposition, to recap, we are so quantum post-quantum technology is or quantum-resistance technology is really where we are putting all the R&D efforts. Digital security, we are both so digital security pure player as well as the semiconductor player. With the acquisition that we are about to close, we are also to enter in what we call the ASIC market. We are a product today with the product supplier. With this acquisition, we'll be able to develop tailor-made type of products.
We are, as I said, fabless, meaning that we are using fabs, the usual fabs that are based in Taiwan and Singapore. In terms of competition, we have two kinds of competitors. We have the semiconductor players that would be Infineon, NXP, ST. They are generalist chip makers with divisions specialized in secure chip, whereas we are really focusing only on secure chip. We have this type of competition, but we have also, on the trusted services aspect of our technology, we are competing with a bunch of providers that would be DigiCert, Entrust, Keyfactor. We are a pure player in the digital identities. We are the only player combining both aspects, both edges of the technologies. In terms of roadmap, Quasar, that's the program about this new generation of secure quantum-resistant chip. I mentioned it.
This initiative we call OSPT, this is about internalizing a portion of our supply chain. We'll have soon in Spain first facilities where we'll do what we call wafer tests. There are pieces of the supply chain where we are injecting the digital identities. They are extremely strategic steps in our supply and that we want to internalize. We have started to invest into pure quantum company. We have also an initiative in the satellite space. We are starting to have a constellation that is secure with our technology. This is another branch of the group, but we are participating to the roadmap with our secure chip. In terms of investments, we mentioned it before. IC'Alps is the company, what we call ASIC company that we are in the process of acquiring.
We've made also an investment in a quantum company called Colibri TD. They are a quantum provider with a platform where they are offering quantum computing as a service. I will give it back to you by the mic to you, John.
Thank you very much, Bernard. Yes, just to finish off, we'll briefly cover off some of our current financial information. First and foremost, brief recap of where we were in 2024 with $11 million being our final revenue for the year, which we did anticipate was going to be a transitional year. The end of the shortage combined with a general downturn in the global semiconductor economy led to a lot of our clients having excess inventories, some of them having situations of stock of product in excess of 18 months at some stage.
We knew 2024 was going to be a transitional year. Additionally, we obviously have customers now who are awaiting availability of the next generation chips to bring into their products. However, the run at the end of the year did mean we finished the year with an $85 million cash reserve at the end of the year. We have subsequently grown that a little bit further. We are sitting on over $100 million at the moment, which is very much enabling us to fulfill our quantum roadmap and our strategic goals. As I will hear as well at the end of the year, we have an entirely clean balance sheet. We had previously had some convertible debts on there with warrants attributed to them. The spike in the valuation at the end of the year and the subsequent volumes of shares traded meant that that all got cleared.
Now we are in a position where we no longer have the need to revert back to those situations. Just to highlight our business strategy, we did spend even during 2024 when we were on sort of limited cash resources at the time. We invested $5 million in the development of the post-quantum chip. We are planning at least $7.2 million in 2025 in the same R&D roadmap and continue to develop our products. Just flick again, please, Bernard. The 2025 outlook, we have not currently issued formal guidance. We are intending to issue, obviously, with our half-year results, we will intend to issue some further information. However, the positive momentum that has started to come back is we have seen that bookings are up 80% against the same time prior year, which does give us comfort that there is a return of demand in the market.
We do have a pipeline of opportunities and potential clients that we have valued at $93 million and over 80 active engagements and discussions ongoing with potential clients and current clients for the post-quantum TPM product opportunities. Finally, we do anticipate signing at least one of our personalization center agreements in the first half of 2025. Despite the fact that we are almost at the end of the first half of 2025, we remain optimistic that that will be the case. However, it might drift into July, but every indication we are receiving, this is the project relating to the Spanish government, and every indication we are receiving is that this will be given the go-ahead within the next matter of weeks, one or two weeks. If you could just click to the final slide, Bernard.
As Bernard highlighted earlier, our strategy for 2025 and beyond is really to focus on our quantum roadmap to fulfill the $20 million investment in quantum companies and to essentially strengthen our offering and really reinforce our status as a quantum cryptography company. Within subdivisions of that, there is a goal to also expand our U.S. presence, whether that is through the development of the personalization center, whether that is through organic or acquisitive growth in the U.S. Certainly, we believe that is a market where currently there is a significant opportunity for us to continue to strengthen our position. That finishes my pre-prepared presentation. I will now hand back to Anja to come in with the Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you so much, John and Bernard. That was a good overview. We have a few questions here and we have a few minutes.
One question here. Have you completed any studies of the resiliency of your chips against quantum-based decryption attempts?
I'm sorry. Can you say that again, Anja, please?
Yes. Have you completed any studies of the resiliency of your chips against quantum-based decryption attempts?
Okay. Yeah. I understand the question. How to put it? No, strictly speaking, I will run tests. It's not the way, but sorry, it's not the way it works. The cryptography that we know today would not, for mathematical reason. Everything is about, it's a mathematical model. We know for long that RSA that we use today would not, the crypto engine that we're using would not resist to the quantum computer.
What the crypto mathematician has invented is a completely new generation of algorithm using a completely different mathematical model that we know would resist to the quantum computer because even if the quantum computer is not available at the right scale, we perfectly know how they behave, how they are computing. We know from a mathematical model that the new algorithm that we have implemented, the quantum computer would have no benefit to hack them. That's the best answer I can provide.
Okay. Thank you. We're kind of out of time. We're going to squeeze in another one because your stock has had a really nice run. What are the next sort of catalysts that investors are looking for now, you think?
It's always difficult to predict the markets and what investors are looking for.
Certainly, we feel the run of the stock was triggered particularly by the announcement from Google with the Willow chip. You sort of saw a lot of companies, everyone such as Rigetti and D-Wave, all followed a similar pattern of reacting to pronouncements regarding the development of quantum computers. I think key factors for us and something that we hope we will be able to announce is as we progress with the development of our post-quantum resistant chip, I think we feel that's going to be something that the market will take very seriously. Like I say, you can never predict, but we would hope that there would be a very positive reaction to any announcements, particularly around when we get certifications. There is a process that can take 12-18 months depending on the speed of the agencies and how quickly they can respond.
We feel as we progress down that route and as we are able to announce commercialization and launch, those should be key moments. As we start to announce clients, that obviously will be another key factor.
Sorry. That's a helpful answer. We're actually out of time. I'm going to thank you for joining us today and everyone who participated. There are some questions left in the Q&A. Whoever still has questions that you did not get answered, I know the management team has a pretty full one-on-one schedule, but I'm sure we can get you in touch with them and set up meetings outside of the conference if needed. You can either reach out to us at Sidoti, or you can reach out to the company directly, and you have the information there on the last slide.
With that, I'll hand it over to you, John, for some closing remarks.
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Anja. Yeah, I'll just reiterate that if anyone does want to reach out and get in touch, the coordinates of Lana Aati, our investor relation, is on the screen. We feel we're in a very exciting market, a very exciting situation, and we're looking forward to the next years ahead as we develop our product. Yeah, we thank you for your attention. Have a nice day, everybody, and look forward to hearing from you. Great. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.