Weebit Nano Limited ($WBT)

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this investor update. Real pleasure to have with us today the CEO of Weebit Nano, Coby Hanoch. So thank you, and welcome, Coby.

Hi, Adrian. Thank you.

Good. So Coby is going to open up with some opening remarks. And I know there's a bunch of questions because you've sent a lot through to us. So we're going to try to work through those questions. And for those that are in the webinar now, by all means, please submit your questions, and we'll endeavor to get through most of them or all of them if we can. But with that, let me just throw it back to you, Coby, and get things underway.

Okay. Thanks, Adrian, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. We completed the first part of a raise last week. I'm very glad we did -- we raised $87 million, $80 million were underwritten in Australia with Macquarie and UCP and MST as the JLMs. We brought on board some new institutions that are good institutions from Australia, from Asia. We also had Israeli investors that came in. And now obviously, we're going to start an SPP. As everyone knows, I'm always committed to enable the existing shareholders to participate with the same terms. So we're very happy with that. I know there are a lot of questions, so I'll cut my intro and probably answer those questions, all of these issues in the questions. And Adrian, I know that you compiled the list of questions that you got from people. So maybe we can just start with the questions.

Sure. Okay. So some of these are pretty punchy questions and not surprisingly, Coby. So first one is Weebit had over $80 million in the bank. Why did you need to do this raise now?

Yes. That's a very good question and quite a few people have been asking it. Yes, we had $80 million, and we felt very good about it going forward. But I think that we really found ourselves in a very unique situation. And this really happens very rarely, if at all, to companies, where there's just so much potential and so many things that can be done and you really want to just run forward faster. We already have what I believe is the best ReRAM in the market, definitely a very, very competitive ReRAM. But we realized based on requests, demands from quite a few of the companies that we're working with, that they just came to us with things that initially seemed like insane impossible. I mean, what do these guys think? But then the team sat down and did a deep think and eventually found ways that we can make our ReRAM significantly better, twice as fast as any other ReRAM or twice as small in terms of bit size or much higher endurance and many other parameters. And right now, this market is growing rapidly. Everyone knows the slide that I showed from you all, the expected 45x growth in several years. The market is growing rapidly. Weebit wants to take the big, big chunk of that market. I want to have the biggest possible market share. And when a market is growing so fast, you really need to run fast. I believe that developing the technology and getting -- making -- building a big gap between us and the competition so that it's not just, yes, it's nice. It's better than the other ReRAMs. It's 10% better or whatever. I want it to be so much better that it's not even a question. Everyone knows that they come to Weebit. Everyone knows that they -- that they want the Weebit ReRAM. Other fabs that are trying to develop ReRAM will realize that their customers are telling them, "Hey, we want to manufacture here, but we want to use Weebit ReRAM. So that was the #1 thing that happened, and we really realized that potential. Number two, and you've been hearing me talk more about AI now, and we set up the new systems and AI team in Weebit. There are many companies calling us up and asking about AI. And again, there's a big potential here. Weebit is a great solution for in-memory compute. And we have a very big advantage here. Unlike most companies that are dealing with in-memory compute where they basically need to use standard memories, we actually control the process, and we can modify the memory bit that we use for in-memory compute to make it even more optimal for that. So there's a lot of things -- there are a lot of things that we can do to really improve the offering that we're developing now for AI. And of course, the third part of it is we need to scale up the sales and everything. We're now getting very close to the point of having many product companies, fabless companies. We already announced we have companies that are designing products with our ReRAM in them now that we did the qualification at DB HiTek. And we really need to give a strong push also on the commercial side. So those were the 3 main things that basically were behind the decision to go ahead with this raise.

Thanks, Coby. Nothing less than a very comprehensive answer. So the next one, and I know that we've shared a lot of this already in an investor presentation with the ASX, but it might be worth just touching back on it. So can you break down how the $87 million will be deployed and over what time frame?

So I mentioned already the 3 key elements: improving the technology, developing the AI solution that we want to bring to market and then strengthening the sales activities and everything around addressing the needs of the existing contracts that we already have. I would say it's roughly 1/3 on each one of these. And the plan is we're not going to take this money and now, oh, wow, we can go party. I think people know already. I'm very, very cautious about how I manage the budget. I'm very strict about it. We're not going to just go and hire 1 million people. It's going to be a gradual growth of the company. The use of funds is expected over 3 years. So this just gives us really the comfort that now we can go ahead, we can do these developments. We can come out with a very, very strong and leading ReRAM technology and AI technologies and grow the customer base and in a few years, be the undisputed leader in this market.

Thanks, Coby. Simple kind of market-related question. Why did Weebit give such a big discount on the raise?

I think everyone knows what's been going on in the markets more recently and share prices go up and down significantly. There's obviously many of the institutions had this reluctance to even look at taking these risks, et cetera. So I think that 10% discount is not something that is very unusual for raises of this size, especially in this kind of market. And we felt like we wanted to really make sure that this is a successful raise. I'm not allowed to use superlatives, et cetera, but it was oversubscribed, and there was a lot of interest by the different institutions. We were told by quite a few of them that they are planning to also buy on the market. So I think overall, it was a very good raise for us, and the terms were -- under all the circumstances, they were very reasonable.

Yes. Thank you, Coby. So I mean, you've already spoken broadly around this next question. I don't know if there's any additional comments you wanted to make. But -- and clearly, it's very important as part of the process. But can you talk about how the register has changed following the institutional participation?

Well, Weebit is ASX 300 company. We are growing. And again, I can't give predictions or anything, but I won't be surprised if we'll go up to ASX 200 and potentially even beyond in the near and the midterm, et cetera. And we are starting to grow also the institutional holding. We had Macquarie participate in this round and bring in some of those institutions that they work with. I think it's good. We still have a very, very strong retail base. I mean, last time I checked before the raise, it was 80% retail still, and we still have a lot of -- even after this raise, the retail is still going to be a big part. But it's good to see that we have some good, strong, solid institutions that are joining now. And I think it's very healthy for Weebit as it grows.

Yes. Thanks, Coby. Next question is around the SPP. And I know your views are really, really strong in terms of supporting that shareholder base that you've spoken about, and you've done that consistently. But -- so is the company still looking to the SPP and that's probably reflecting on the current price given where the price is now? And is there any consideration to extending the offer period as well?

So yes, first of all, I made a very strong commitment to the shareholders a long time ago that whenever we do a raise, I'm always going to give them the opportunity to participate in the same terms. Yes, right now, the share price has dropped after the raise. I expect, I believe that, again, I can't make predictions, but I hope, let's say it this way, share price will be going up. We never know what's happening with the geopolitical situation, which, again, that's part of when you ask me about the discount, et cetera, we are in a unique geopolitical situation. So many things can go to both directions. We could suddenly have something go wrong with this war and suddenly markets will plummet and we'll say, "Oh, wow, we managed to do the raise at such a great price and everything. And who knows something good might happen and share price will go up. We plan to do the SPP. I hope we'll see the share price also going back to the raise price and above. And I'll be very glad if people help us, help bring more money to enable us to achieve these goals that I just talked about. But my commitment always stands. I told people they will have the opportunity, and we definitely plan to do it. And we are considering -- again, we'll see the market conditions and everything, but we are considering that we might even extend it, yes.

That's great. I'm sure that will be well received. So just turning back to some more specific fundamental things. So how is the general situation in the semiconductor market impacting Weebit?

Well, the semiconductor market recently has been somewhat in a -- I don't want to use the word turmoil. It's not that extreme, but it's been going up and down. The AI demand has really pushed the discrete memory companies, especially very strongly upwards. On the other hand, there are all kinds of other news that have been causing companies to also go down significantly. We've seen even very big major companies have share price go up and down 10% or more. So it is definitely not a normal market right now. At the same time, the potential for Weebit is so big that it really isn't impacting us in a significant way, I would say. People know they need ReRAM. The market is really -- we were at embedded world, and we saw the demand. So many people came to us and talked about wanting to have ReRAM, wanting to use it for AI, wanting to use it for different things. And we're not a manufacturer. We supply the technology, the IP. So overall, I think we're in a good position. We're continuing to move forward. We've been having very good discussions with some of these companies that we really want to close deals with already. Yes, they have their distractions. Yes, sometimes it causes them to suddenly disappear for a month or 2 or something like that. But overall, I think we're were less impacted by all of these ups and downs and everything.

Thanks, Coby. Next one. Weebit has already qualified AEC-Q100. What else do you want to improve?

So AEC-Q100 is definitely a very, very important milestone, and it has established Weebit as a leader, as I said. I don't know if I can use already the term the best. I think I can say we have the best ReRAM or definitely on quite a few parameters, we're clearly a very strong leader in this market. At the same time, there is so much more to do and so many things that customers are asking us for. We've had customers come and say, we really need faster access time to the memory. We really -- that's critical. And even though originally, it sounded in saying the team figured out how they can basically get access time, which is about twice as fast as the best ReRAM we know out there. When we talk about AEC-Q100, most companies think that when you're doing automotive grade, you have to use what's called a 2T2R architecture, which basically means you need to have 2 bits per -- or 2 memory bits per bit, if you want to call it that way. We have shown and we've done the AEC-Q100 on a 1T1R. So that's half the size of the bit, and we achieved that. So many people think, oh, how could you ever do that? But we've achieved that. The endurance, today, many companies that are working on ReRAM are still stuck at 10,000 cycles, trying to go above that. We already qualified at 100,000, but we're not stopping there. We know that we can achieve or we strongly believe we can achieve 500,000 and even 1 million cycles, and we want to work on that, and we want to improve that. We've had customers who said, we work in extreme conditions. We actually need this ReRAM to work in such low power consumption that even if we work with energy harvesting, we won't even have a battery. We'll just sleep most of the time collecting battery -- conducting energy from the air. And then we'll wake up, we'll do something quickly, and we'll go back to sleep. And so we just -- we'll collect a little bit of energy, and we'll have to operate off of that. We believe that we know how to do that, and we can enable to work even with really low power. And it goes on and on. There are so many parameters in ReRAM. And for most of them, we believe we know how to improve them and the collective improvements will really put us at a completely different level than other ReRAMs and that's where I want to be. I wanted to be so obvious and so clear to everyone that our ReRAM is by far with a big gap, the best technology that, again, people will just have a no-brainer. They want ReRAM, they come to Weebit.

Thanks, Coby. On the same kind of area of interest, is there any formal proof that qualification was achieved by the -- by end of 2025? And could that be possibly demonstrated to the public?

I have to say I don't understand the question because I think qualification is something that is -- you meet the specifications, and we've been demonstrating it to the fabs and the customers. I mean we could put it on a website. Nobody would understand what they're seeing. But I mean there's a very clear and simple definition of what it means to achieve qualification. I mean you need to meet very specific demands. We did that. We demonstrated it to -- I mean, obviously, when we work with DB HiTek or others, the companies that are considering working with Weebit. We've been demonstrating the AEC-Q100 and other qualifications that we did. So I mean, that's -- it's something you can't say that you achieved qualification without actually having the results of all these tests that you can show people.

Coby, next one. There was an announcement from GlobalFoundries on the 9th of March regarding the use of eMRAM for advanced automotive applications. The announcement reveals that GF GlobalFoundries has solved the problem with their eMRAM and the known magnetic field effects. Now that the known magnetic field effects have been solved by GF, I'm interested to know if GF's eMRAM is now considered a superior technology compared to Weebit's ReRAM. Additionally, are you able to provide more information about GF's eMRAM technology and its potential impact on Weebit's ReRAM moving forward?

So the situation with GF is very interesting. I think, first of all, the fact that you see them focusing on MRAM gives you -- implies to a certain extent, what's happening with their ReRAM efforts. You need to remember, GF had MRAM in mass production already many years. It's not something new. They've been -- they already made a huge investment in MRAM. And obviously, there is demand for MRAM. I think the fact that they're pushing so much on the MRAM side implies what's going on with the ReRAM. MRAM is much more expensive. Let's start off with the basics. MRAM is way more expensive than ReRAM. And at the end of the day, we all know you can talk about technical parameters all day long. People always will look at the bottom line and the price. And that's the thing they'll focus on. So -- by the way, MRAM is not a bad technology. And it has its uses and maybe -- again, I think that ReRAM, when you can qualify it for automotive is much more attractive. It's just simpler to manufacture, cheaper, et cetera. You don't need to go for such an expensive technology like MRAM unless you can't qualify your ReRAM for automotive.

Thanks, Coby. That's all the pre-submitted ones. Now we'll just turn to the questions. Apologies for those that have submitted them online since you've been chatting, Coby. So the first one, and some of these are pretty quick, I think, in answering them. But without going into specifics, is there a lot of discussion with some of the local Israeli fabs?

Well, that would kind of disclose a lot of things. I can't talk about specific fabs and people ask me, don't say whatever name, say the biggest Korean fab or something like that. So I don't go into those kinds of things. We are continuing to be engaged with many, many fabs. Those discussions are progressing. The TI deal took 3 years to close. These deals are long. I think everyone's already learned that by now. We do expect to close more deals this year, and that's the goal. And I said it with an "S" at the end. So I really want to see more than one deal this year. I believe we should be able to do that, and that's our goal. And I can't go into the specifics of which ones, et cetera. The number of big foundries and IDMs in the world is not that big. And if I start giving all kinds of indications, it's almost like naming them.

Thanks, Coby. The next one is a little ambitious, but I think I know what your answer will be. For the next cap raise, would we please try to raise at a premium above the share price. I've seen it done before. I think you'll say that you'll actually agree if those circumstances are [indiscernible].

We proved that it can be done, and we did it before, although I think that was a big exception, and I doubt you see a lot of raises with premium in the market. We'll see. Right now, we have -- we definitely have a lot of money in the bank. And so we have what to work with. I'm clearly not thinking about the next raise right now.

No, fair enough. Coby, next one, with respect to the fab that slipped into 2026 yet to be announced. Is this still ongoing? Or has it fallen over? If not, what is the best guess around the time line for them to sign on?

So first of all, I will say it wasn't one fab. It's -- when I take commitments, I normally try to have some security bands around it and have -- it's very difficult. It's really so difficult to predict when these kinds of deals will close. I think people know that I originally was quite confident we'll close TI already in 2023. Everything was set up for that, and then it dragged for 2 more years before we ended up closing it. So we are engaged with definitely more than one, with quite a few of them. There's progress going on. It's just so hard for me to predict on who and when, I guess. But as I said in the previous question, we do plan to close additional fab deals this year.

Sure. Next one, very approximately, what are the relative market sizes of between embedded ReRAM and in-memory compute?

To be honest, I've been challenging the marketing team to give me good numbers today, especially on the in-memory compute side, it's a new market. There is so much hype around it. There are so many analysts, each one looking at it differently. And their analysis gets them to quite a wide range of numbers. The numbers are always big, but there's -- I'm still struggling to get good numbers. So when we show the slide of -- on the embedded side that when you start looking at all of those potential application areas for embedded ReRAM, you look at markets that total hundreds of billions of dollars and you look at that and you say ReRAM, even if, let's say, it just has half market share and maybe not even all of those use ReRAM, but then you do the quick math of a few percent royalties, et cetera, you still get to big numbers. The same thing goes with in-memory compute. The numbers are huge. Everyone is using very big numbers. Weebit is still defining how it wants to address that market. There are different ways to do it with different business models, and we haven't really decided how we want to do it. So we will be presenting initial solutions to the market this year. We already said that we expect to have as I said, the first AI customer this year. So -- but it's still in the making. So I can't really give -- unfortunately, I can't give a good answer to this yet.

That's fine. Next one, there are other firms also developing new nonvolatile technologies, including other implementation of RRAM. What makes the Weebit technology better? And what might make the Weebit solution more attractive to a major, say, Samsung than proceeding with their own development?

Well, the first thing is the team. I think that's really -- if you want to have the honest answer, Weebit just has, by far, the best team on this planet working on this right now. You can see there were other companies developing ReRAM. They raised actually much more than Weebit. Crossbar raised, I think, USD 200 million and eventually went under. Adesto raised more than USD 150 million, and their technology never got anywhere and it's basically gone. I think that the key secret of success of Weebit is our team. We have people on the team that are so unique. I was just talking to someone and I said some of the people on our team are such that there are maybe -- it's really in the very few dozens worldwide that have that level of understanding and expertise in the domain. They are really very, very unique. And that's the key secret to success, and that's what enabled us to be. I mean, at the end of the day, there are only 2 ReRAMs today that are qualified for mass production. Weebit is the only one that announced AEC-Q100. Referring back to the question about GF and the fact that they're suddenly pushing MRAM as a solution for automotive, I think that kind of gives you a hint on what's going on. It's not easy to develop ReRAM, but we do have that unique team that knows how to overcome the obstacles. We hit so many obstacles every day. That's like everyone. The thing is you need to have the team that knows how to overcome them, and that's what we have. We've already achieved AEC-Q100. We've demonstrated that the ReRAM is very strong with the different fabs that we're negotiating, we've been demonstrating much more advanced things. And I think we definitely have a very strong solution. It's much cheaper. That's obvious. So when you compare it to other technologies that sometimes people are still trying to develop. At the end of the day, money talks, everyone knows that. And we are very attractive in terms of the cost of manufacturing, the simplicity of manufacturing. So I think that's what's really the secret of success.

Thanks, Coby. This is a good little follow-on question with respect to that. So Coby, there are -- there seems to be a lot of mention from you on momentum and reasons behind the capital raise. A more broader question in relation to the industry. From your perspective, does everyone in the industry know who Weebit are and the advantages of the product? And why are we not at the point where we have new signed contracts with fabs, IDMs and product companies weekly or monthly, given how superior we are to the competition?

So I would say, first of all, I'm glad to say that more and more people today in the industry know Weebit. So I think we're getting to the point where I can say Weebit is already a recognized name throughout the industry. By the way, I mentioned 1/3 of the proceeds are going to go into sales and marketing and pushing the brand and really growing the understanding of Weebit. Many -- I think many people know of Weebit. They've heard of it. They have a good feeling about it, but we still need to do more work in really showing just how good we are and how strong we are. And that's part of improving the technology. So we are giving this a big push right now to do that. There was a second part of the question that I don't...

Yes. So just let me go back. So why we're not at the point we've signed new contracts [indiscernible] which way?

Yes, that's right. Well, first of all, the total number of companies that have fabs in the world are -- if we would sign a week, we finish the whole industry in less than a year, I think. But you can understand these deals are just so difficult. And when I say it takes years, not a year, years with us at the end to close these deals. These companies are very cautious. They -- each one of them has their own demands and requests and wants checks and the timing, different companies have different timings for schedules. Many companies are at full capacity and sometimes it takes them time to move forward. So we are moving -- I think in the industry, people consider Weebit is moving very fast forward. I know that for people in Australia, it seems like, oh my God, this is taking forever. But in reality, in the semiconductor industry, Weebit is moving very, very fast and achieving a lot of things that -- again, look at a big company like GF trying to develop the ReRAM, and we're still waiting for announcements. They're not just GF, and I don't want to pick on them. They're a good company. But it's not easy. It's not easy. This is a very difficult market.

I think you've actually put the perfect context for this next question by probably one of those Aussie investors a little bit impatient, but we understand that. So who now are our ReRAM competitors and that we can double down and put daylight between them and Weebit?

So I guess there's only one other company that's right now in mass production or ready for mass production, and that's TSMC. So TSMC has a ReRAM that they are manufacturing in mass production. I always give TSMC credit and respect. But at the end of the day, for them, the ReRAM is an enabler, and there's just so much they invest in it. You have GF, we already mentioned. You have UMC that is trying to get a ReRAM to production. Again, we're not really hearing much from them. We -- I have indications from all kinds of sources, but I won't go into that on what their status is. I believe that with the work that we're going to be doing to keep improving our ReRAM, we will basically show that it just doesn't make any sense for a foundry to keep developing a ReRAM technology. The investment is so big. Weebit can do it because it's going to have many customers that are going to cover the costs. A foundry that develops ReRAM just for itself, it has one customer. They have to justify the ROI just by themselves. And Weebit will continue, as I said, we're going to open a big gap showing that our ReRAM is much better and the foundries are going to be getting requests from customers saying, we want to use Weebit ReRAM. Weebit ReRAM is double the speed in terms of access time or is half the size of the bit that we wanted or it's much lower power or all these other parameters. And for our specific application, this parameter is critical and Weebit is so much better. We want to use Weebit. The first customer, the second customer, the foundries can ignore when they start getting more, especially if it's some of their big customers, they will have to take notice, and I'm counting on that. So that's really the landscape. There are 2 Chinese providers of ReRAM. From what we see, they're only managing to do very basic applications. We're not seeing them, and I don't think anyone outside China will consider them. Even in China, we're getting a lot of people from China telling us those technologies aren't real. We want to use Weebit. And of course, we have the whole issue of how do we deal with China. I can go into that separately. But -- so we're feeling very bullish in this market. We're already today in a very good position. We're already today only 1 of 2 qualified ReRAMs. Let's even give GF and UMC the benefit of the doubt and say they might manage to get their ReRAM to work and even in a good way. Still, we're the only independent provider, and I don't see anyone in sight right now. So I mean, I'm paranoid. I'm always looking. I don't want to just sit here and oh, wow, it's so great. The world is wonderful. That's why actually I have the sense of urgency. That's why I have the sense of urgency that I just want to keep running as fast as I can forward to open that gap. You never know when something will somehow pop from somewhere.

Thanks, Coby. Next one, back to kind of market and market participants. In the IMC market, TetraMem is already shipping product-ready 22 newton meter ReRAM-based chips, which appear to be to utilize standard materials and production processes. Given the competition is already shipping IMC solutions to the market, how do you plan to catch up? And what will be your point of difference?

So in-memory compute is a very new market. There are many companies trying to develop solutions for this market. And I think we're going to see new markets like this. In the beginning, you have a lot of players and a lot of attempts, even in ReRAM, by the way, there were a lot of attempts at ReRAM and a lot of players originally and then it dwindled down or it was filtered out. The same thing goes for in-memory compute. Right now, there are a lot of companies that are trying to do all kinds of things. We'll need to see how that goes. I think that Weebit has a very strong team. I think that we have this advantage that we can tailor the memory bit because we have the process team, the device and the process teams, we can modify the memory bit to be more optimal for in-memory compute. And we are still looking at all of the things that are going on in the market to define our solution so that we can demonstrate that we are a leading provider. And yes, we're confident that we can stand out in this market.

Thanks, Coby. Next one, as foundries and IBMs move to smaller nodes, do you see a risk that they may skip traditional ReRAM [ NYM ] (sic) [ NVM ] integration entirely in favor of jumping straight to a ReRAM-based IMC solution?

Well, first of all, I don't see that as a risk. I see that as an opportunity for Weebit. Weebit ReRAM can go down to the small geometries. We've already demonstrated in the evaluations that we've been doing with different companies, we've already had quite a few demonstrations that we can operate in the FinFET level, in the teens. And we believe we can go down below that. So as we progress, obviously, going down to the smaller geometries is a very big challenge, and there's such a big market even if you look at above the 10-nanometer level. So we go step by step. Weebit doesn't just try to take this huge leap forward and not be sure where it's going to land. We are growing in an organized and methodic manner. That's what you're seeing also with what we're planning to do now with this raise. But if you ask me in the future, yes, I definitely see ReRAM going -- our ReRAM going down below 10-nanometer and going to the smaller geometries. And of course, in-memory compute, that's where we want to go. By the way, when we talk about in-memory compute, I realize that some people -- in the past, we focused on inference at the edge, and that's our initial big focus. So I talked about that a lot. But in reality, in-memory compute is very, very relevant for the data centers. And we clearly don't rule out going to the data centers. Again, we work in an organized and methodic way. So there's a very big market in the inference at the edge. And once we do that, we'll continue, and we definitely have plans to look at the data center market as well.

Thanks, Coby. Next one is, I think I know what your answer is going to be. It's very difficult to answer this one, but are there any details available regarding whether the fund managers who participated in the institutional capital raising have a clause where they cannot lend the shares to shorters?

Well, first of all, the brokers who participated don't have the shares. They broker the deal and then it's the institutions and whoever else joins the deal that has the shares. I would say a few things. First of all, legally, you cannot force anyone to do one thing or another with the shares that they have. It's their property and they can do what they want. I think that, a, normally, when people buy the shares, buying the -- it doesn't make any sense for them to buy the shares and then lend them to someone who lower the value of the share. So the people who normally lend shares are more the index funds and others. And I think that the people that came on board, I believe most of them are such that they believe in the shares. Some of them might want to sell in the market, but not short -- not lend it to shorters. I don't believe that so much. But I can't guarantee anything. And we definitely focused. And because it was oversubscribed and we needed to scale back, we took into consideration in the scaling back our policy is to look at who the people are and to give advantage to the people that we know are long-term shareholders.

Yes. Coby, next one, are [ Ion Lattice ] and Crossbar part of the future competitive landscape, particularly in AI and in-memory compute? Or are they complementary technologies?

Who is the one before Crossbar?

So Ion Lattice.

Okay. I would say Crossbar, first of all, doesn't really exist anymore. So that's an easy one to answer. Crossbar, as I mentioned, they raised USD 200 million. And then when their investors realize that it's not really going very far, they sold whatever technology they had to one of those 2 Chinese that I mentioned. And Crossbar basically is not there. I don't know, legally, but technically, they're not there. I would say there are a lot of IMC competitors and going into specific this name or another doesn't really make sense. There are many companies trying to develop IMC solutions. This is going to be a big market, as I mentioned earlier. As we move forward, the better solutions will gain traction, and we'll see the smaller players that don't have a strong solution slowly filtered out.

That's good. I don't mind this next question, and it's a fair one to ask. In the announcement, you mentioned that this raise significantly strengthens the balance sheet as you progress negotiations with leading foundries and IDMs. Is a certain level of cash on hand, a formal requirement or a gatekeeper condition for these Tier 1 partners before they commit to a long-term technology transfer? Or does the raise specifically clear that hurdle for the next major deal?

None of them had a requirement of cash in the bank. I would say one of the concerns, which I'm glad to say that today is already a much smaller concern. In the past, a big concern that these guys had was Weebit is a smaller company and how do we know that it survives. I said many times, the deals that we signed with them are deals for decades, literally decades. They make a commitment for decades, and they want to know that Weebit will be around for decades. So in the past, this concern was a much bigger one and actually one of the big challenges we had to close deals, convincing people that we are a strong, solid company. Today, as we move forward and especially as we sign deals with DB HiTek and then onsemi and then TI, that concern is relieved. And I guess in an indirect way, this raise will also enable to show that we are a strong and solid company. So the answer is there isn't a direct request, but it is good to show people that you have a strong backbone.

Yes, sure. Good answer. So last year, there were some clear measurable targets set. Why have no targets been set for 2026?

First of all, we do have targets. We said that we're expecting revenue to be above $10 million for the fiscal year of '26. We said that we expect to have a first product customer tape-out. And I believe we said that we're expecting a first AI customer. So we do have some targets that were made public. And I think that as we progress, we will be setting targets, but not every year, it's going to be so detailed.

Okay. How is the onsemi qualification going as it was expected to be completed by now? Is there an issue? Or is it just taking longer than we expected?

Actually, onsemi is moving faster than planned, not slower than planned. So I guess there's a misunderstanding there. I think I always said that getting to qualification from the moment that you sign an agreement with a fab, you go through roughly 9 to 12 months of technology transfer, then you need to go through another 4 to 6 months of manufacturing the first prototypes, then you do the testing. And then eventually, you get to the qualification and the overall process is roughly 2 years. We signed with Onsemi 15 months ago. So we're actually -- today, if anything, we're ahead of plan and definitely not behind plan.

Thanks Coby. Do you anticipate any royalties in 2026 calendar year and however small the amount?

I don't think I can answer that. I mentioned we are working with product companies. We do expect to see at least one already taping out this year. It's going to be extremely tight to see royalties before the end of this year, but I think it's -- right now, it's too tough to actually make any estimate.

Could you envisage dealing with TSMC and getting Weebit's ReRAM on their list alongside their own offering?

Definitely. It's going to take us time. It's not going to be tomorrow. It's not going to be next year. But I -- for me, that is a very clear target for Weebit as we move forward. Again, the goal is to use these proceeds to have in at least several parameters and overall, to have such better results than what they have with their ReRAM that their customers will basically push them to work with us. So TSMC, I don't think they have anything against working with Weebit. They have their own ReRAM. Obviously, they'll prefer to use it, and they'll continue to use it until there's enough customer pressure, but there will be. I'm planning to build that customer pressure proactively. And I believe that eventually, there will be that pressure. And eventually, it will even be from some of their bigger customers. So that's my plan.

Yes. Actually, on pressure. So when do you expect major product companies to put pressure on foundries to provide access to the Weebit ReRAM?

By the way, it's already starting. I have to say we have several cases now where some of these foundries that are hesitating and that are still sitting on the fence and do we move forward now? Do we move forward later? We want to check this. We still don't -- all kinds of things. Now there are more than one case. I mean there are a few cases already where -- yes, I think I can say there's definitely several cases of companies, big name companies that are going to the fabs and saying, "Hey, guys, we need Weebit ReRAM. And even I would go further and say there's already a situation where big name customers are moving away from a fab because they are not offering Weebit ReRAM yet. So clearly, the pressure is building.

Thanks, Coby. How far away would Weebit be in achieving 16 newton meters FinFET level to challenge TSMC's 16 newton meters tech?

Yes. So yes, it's 16-nanometer FinFET. As I mentioned, we've already simulated several FinFET levels at different levels, so not just at 16. And we've demonstrated that our ReRAM can work there. It's a matter of closing the deals with these fabs and moving forward. But we already demonstrated good results on multiple FinFET levels. So what I call the teens.

Does it worry you competitors like dorsaVi, who has the ReRAM IP preparing to work on 20-nanometer technology at TSMC. They have Israeli Institute of Technology IP for neuromorphic algorithm and transfer it to a working model already.

We're aware of dorsaVi. We've seen their announcements. I don't know enough. I just -- from everything that we see, they are more or less where Weebit was, I think, in 2018 or 2019 or so. So I think they still -- again, and I might not know well, but from everything that I'm seeing, they still have quite a way to go.

Yes. We're getting down to the last couple, Coby, so I'll read these get through these. Is Dr. James Tour ferroelectric superlattice IP, a competitor to Weebit's Nano in the AI in-memory compute offering?

So technologies that are developed in universities, it's like Weebit's ReRAM that, as people know, started with James Tour in Rice University. Many, many research institutes, universities, et cetera, are developing all kinds of solutions for in-memory compute, really a lot of things. There is such a big gap and going back also to the comment about dorsaVi and the Israeli Institute of Technology, et cetera, there is such a big gap between what happens in a research institute and then taking that technology and making it actually work and making it commercial. So just like Weebit went through a huge transformation from the days that we started off with Professor Tour's technology. Right now, things that are done in institutes in research institutes, they have so much more to go through before they can become commercial.

Thank you, Coby. Next one, how many production lines are operating?

So I guess in mass production, I think the answer is unfortunately, at this point, still zero, but that should be changing as we move forward with DB HiTek and with onsemi and of course, later with TI and others. So right now, we're not in mass production. But we are -- I mean, ReRAM is running on quite a few production lines in terms of research and development in these companies and in SkyWater and in Leti, et cetera.

Is the market ready to integrate in memory compute now? Or is this something which is a new tech and so like our ReRAM offering? Or will it take many years before it is adopted?

It's going to take a few years. I mean the market really wants such a solution. But again, this technology is just really in its infancy, and there's so much to do. And I think we're going to see a lot of developments in all kinds of directions before things start converging.

Thanks, Coby. I'm just conscious of everybody's time. We're coming up to another the hour now. Just a couple more. In regards to product customers who have already signed with Weebit ReRAM, can we assume that they are significant companies given they have signed directly with Weebit rather than having signed through a foundry?

I think at the end of the day, most of the product companies will sign with -- directly with Weebit. But it's really up to the foundries as well how much they want to kind of be the intermediary. So for us, it isn't a major consideration. We'll go either way. But I believe that most companies will be signing directly with Weebit.

Thanks, Coby. Somebody has been spending a bit of time on the new product section on the website. So -- and noticed that there's lots of new products. Do you anticipate making new product announcements this year?

I'm not sure what they refer to as products. First of all, Weebit doesn't have products. We develop the technology, and we have the ReRAM technology. Today, it's basically the embedded technology and now what we're doing in the in-memory compute space. So those are the 2 technologies that we're focused on right now.

And just a final one, e-mail through. We're focusing on product -- further product development. Will that push expected revenues back?

No. Actually, it will accelerate revenues. That's the whole idea. We are pushing and part of the proceeds are also going to be used to accelerate the push on the sales and marketing and branding and trade shows and things like that and the support of customers, all of these evaluations. We're doing so many evaluations in parallel, and we need the team to do that. And we need the team to support more and more product customers that will be coming on board. So I think it's actually going to be the other way.

That's great. Coby, we've exhausted the group. We've gone through a bunch of questions. So back to you for any kind of closing remarks for the group.

Well, first of all, thanks for organizing this, and thanks to all of the people who joined to all our shareholders who actually care and have been asking questions. I think it's important that everyone ask questions, and I try to do my best to be as transparent as I can to answer. Weebit is facing this really great opportunity of a massive growth this -- both on the embedded side and on the in-memory compute. The funds that we raised are very important to enable us to make that push. And I also hope, of course, that people will participate in the SPP. Obviously, I hope the share price will also go up, but irrespective of that, just support the company and participate. So that's it. And yes, we're going to have a lot of fun together, and we'll be talking more.

Thank you, Coby. That ends the webinar. Thank you all for joining. You can now disconnect.