2/1/2024

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

and welcome to the next quarterly Weebit Meet the CEO conversation that I'm having today with Kobi Hanoch, CEO of Weebit Nano. Thank you for joining us. My name is Ron Betchler, for those that don't know. I will be hosting Kobi and moderating the Q&A. We have received some questions ahead of today, which I'll make sure we cover. And also, if you have any questions, please feel free to type them in the Q&A box. please identify who you are. We won't be asking anonymous questions. And I will make sure that we cover the questions off during this session. We've allowed 45 to 60 minutes max for the session. But as we have done in the past, maybe, Cobby, you can provide those shareholders and investors on the session today with an overview of the December quarter and where the company's now at, and then we can move into the Q&A. Thanks, Cobby.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Thanks, Ron. I think we had a really exciting quarter from so many aspects. We had, well, first of all, we signed the DB Hightech Agreement. So, you know, WeBit is now really on the path of working with the leaders in this world. DB HiTech is number 10 on the foundry list. I think everyone knows already we're engaged with the majority of the people on the top 10 foundry and top 10 IDM lists. And I came back from a trip to the US last week and we had very good meetings. So we're really feeling very bullish about where we are and moving forward. We had our first revenues, small numbers, not anything big or exciting. I think the shareholders, we've already been talking about it. The ramp up will be very slow. We're getting these initial trickle of payments, but it is happening. DB Hightech is already a big and important company. player. People might not know the DB HiTech name, but they know the names of customers, even big names like Samsung and Intel manufacture there and Sony and Toshiba and NXP and many other well-known companies. The relationship with DB Hightech is really good. They are very serious. We are moving forward very well. You know, we're already planning our next face-to-face meeting with them. Probably will happen in about a month or so and really Uh, I'm very excited with them. Uh, you know, they are very focused on bringing customers on board. So we're already working with, uh, I mean, initial contacts, right. We're, we're far from being qualified at DB high tech, but we are already engaged with customers who are interested in manufacturing and DB high tech with, um, our technology and, uh, overall, I think, uh, 2024 is going to be a really exciting year for WeBit. You know, I told the team the goal is by the end of this year to be recognized as the undisputed leader in the rerun space. And I think we're on track to get there. It's really, you know, I can see the path to getting to that point within a year, one, one and a half years, we're going to be there. You're muted, Ron.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Sorry, Kobi. I was trying to find the unmute button. So maybe we can start. It's a good update. Maybe we can just start. There's been a few questions around revenue. Obviously, this was the first quarter showing revenue. Can you provide? We've got one shareholder who's asked what the makeup of the $457,000 income is. Was it licensing or was there some NRE in there as well?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

So I think actually it's easy to do the math here since we had an announcement when the first payment came in of 100K US dollars and you can see the number is higher. So you can see that it actually was two payments. I can say it came from two different companies which is kind of a sign of where we're heading um you know the the it's uh it's basically combinations of uh of licensing and nre when you sign an agreement with these companies you know there's basically the payment that they pay uh for the license and uh for the nre for the technology transfer work um and uh you know In the future, we'll be pushing more and more to get these payments. Well, the license definitely normally is paid more upfront. NRE, of course, is paid as you go. In the initial deals, when you do them and people have less confidence and you need to really convince them that everything's working, they... insist that even the license will be paid based on milestones. The good news is we are making good progress and we did get these payments. And we will be getting more as we hit other milestones. I said in the past, and I'll repeat, you know, these initial revenues are small payments that are going to start coming in with these milestones. I really don't want people to think that, you know, next quarter it's already going to be millions and the following quarters it's going to be tens of millions. The ramp up is going to be slow. That's the nature of semiconductors. That's how it works. Everything takes time with DB Hightech. And at the AGM, I showed kind of the timescales of things. Getting to qualification is, you know, order of magnitude of a year and a half of work to get to that point and ramp up customers. I'm really excited that we already have customers that are uh, coming to us and, and we are talking to them about DB high tech at this very early stage. So that's a great sign. That's really, uh, an amazing sign that people already were, we haven't even taped out at, at DB high tech and people are already coming and interested and, and, and, you know, wanting to learn, uh, more about it. So, um, it's, uh, it's really, uh, a very good sign. And, um, Over the year, we do plan to get more payments. Again, it's important to set the expectations.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Maybe if we just stay on the quarterly for the moment, and then we can talk about customers and opportunities and growth that you're progressing. We had a couple of questions come in pre the webinar around the R&D expenses in the quarter and the more, I guess, the more general the cash burn that's going on. the R&D expenses went up significantly in the quarter relative to the previous quarter. Can you just explain to investors the spend profile for the company? It's not like it's a linear or a straight line or, you know, there are high quarters and low quarters. And, you know, I think there's a few shareholders or investors that are thinking maybe the company might run out of money in five or six quarters, which is not the case. Can you just talk through that? Why R&D was so high this quarter and the different profile of the quarters?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Yeah. So, you know, we're in the semiconductor business. And in this business, you know, a key element, and I think many people already know, you have to have a fab to manufacture in. And the fab is what really costs a lot of money. I think a lot of people on this call already know WeBit for more than a year, and they know that we have this cyclical type nature of some quarters where there's hardly any expenses and some quarters where there's suddenly a jump. A lot of our R&D, a major part is done at Letty. We pay them based on milestones. It's funny because three months ago people were asking me, you guys have no R&D expenses, how does the company work? We were reporting I think in the last two quarters before this one, we hardly had any R&D expenses. Leti always tries to push to close all of the milestones. before the end of the calendar year, which is their fiscal year. You look back over the years and you'll see that the fourth calendar year quarter is always the higher R&D expenditure. There's nothing special about last year. I'm very happy by the way that we hit these milestones. It's really very important progress that was made. But you need to look at WeBits expenses on a yearly basis, not on a quarterly basis. I think the previous quarter, we showed that we have money for more than 20 quarters. Now it's, I think it's six. You know, it's all moving around because we have more expenses in one quarter and less in the other, but we're definitely in a good position. We're not going to have expenses like we had in this past quarter over the next one, two quarters. It's going to even out.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Yeah, thanks for confirming that because I think there are a few investors that just looked at the one quarter and then tried to extrapolate, which gives the wrong picture given the cyclicality of activity and expenses within the company and the investments being made. So thanks a lot.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

I think those are mainly the shorters who have no clue who we are and what we're doing. And, you know, I've seen that some of them, you know, they don't understand anything about semiconductors, you know, despite the fact that I've been telling people for so long that we'll have just small revenues. Suddenly they're shocked about how little the revenues are and things like that. I think the people who do know WeBit know that the company is strong and moving forward on a steady pace and the same goes for our R&D expenses.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Well, and I think also the important point too is WeBit's balance sheet has never been stronger in terms of the cash on the balance sheet and the ability for you to accelerate some of the activities. You know, you're not running on one quarter's cash left or two quarters cash left. It's much, much more than that and gives you the ability to execute on the growth plans without having to go back to market in the near term.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Yes, and actually, we are doing a lot more in parallel. For quite a few years, Weebit was working more serially, doing one thing at a time with Leti. We just didn't have enough cash. I'm very happy. We had the recent raise. Well, not so recent. It's almost a year now. But we have the cash in the bank, so I'm not worried about cash and I can focus on work with Leti. We are doing multiple projects in parallel, so the progress now is much faster. The improvement in our reRAM technology is amazing. We're exploring all kinds of ideas on how to continue to improve it. And the progress that's been made over the past year is very significant and much more than we did in previous years.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

We've got a question from a shareholder given you mentioned about the milestones or the payments for Leti achieving certain milestones. Are you able to share what milestones, what those milestones were that were achieved and whether or not they'll be announced to the market going forward?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

I think, you know, they're very technical. It's very hard to explain. And a lot of them are actually confidential. I mean, that's where Webit's secret sauce is. So we don't really want to talk about those things very much. But I can say that some of these milestones have been around simplifying the manufacturing cycle so that it'll be even more appealing for different fabs to adopt 3RAM. Some of these advances are in the, I guess, the way or... you know, improving the actual technical parameters of the reRAM. And some of them have been around just helping us with dbhitek and Skywater and others. And, you know, with other foundries or fabs that we're working with. So it's different things, but they reflect, you know, very, very good progress.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

I might just remind everybody, some people might have come on late. If you have a question to ask, please don't put it through as an anonymous attendee. We will be covering off questions from people that identify who they are. Some of you have actually been lucky because some of the questions the anonymous have been asking was put in before anyway by some shareholders. But please identify yourself for the Q&A so I can make sure we know who's asking the question. Maybe just one last question on sort of the quarterly, and then we can touch on Skywater and DB Hitech. In terms of licensing fees, will they increase as we go further down the track? What does the profile of the revenues look like as you roll forward?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Yeah, yeah. You can imagine that when you close the first deals, the level of hesitation by the customer is high. Nobody wants to be the first one to jump in. And we talked about it in previous calls. So we had to be more flexible in the negotiations. In the first agreements, we had to agree to more payment terms and longer payment terms and be flexible to a certain level on some of the pricing issues and things like that. As we grow, as we get more foundries, IDMs, customers under our belt, we'll be in a much stronger situation and obviously we won't need to compromise on things and we'll be getting larger amounts, more upfront, etc. So this is a This is the process of ramping up. I think it's not even semiconductors. This is how business is done. You always, you know, to get the first deals, you're much more flexible than you are with the future ones. And by the way, we've been already, the discussions that we're having now with people are already, you know, different from what we had when we started off with Skywater.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

We've had a few people ask, sorry, one more question on the quarterly. In terms of staff costs, they were down and people were wondering what's going on with staffing levels, are people leaving? Can you give some background on that, please?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Well, I'm extremely proud, first of all, to say that we have such an amazing team and people are really happy a wee bit. And there hasn't been even a single employee that left. I'm sorry, except that one admin that left. But no engineer left WeBit. Actually, in the six years that I'm at WeBit, we only had one engineer that left. So nobody is leaving WeBit. Everyone, on the contrary, we're hiring, we're growing the team. at a steady pace. Again, I don't want to have crazy costs, but we've hired, I can tell you that over the past two, three quarters, we hired some phenomenal people. We hired a person who was the manager of a fab at Tower Semiconductor. She's phenomenal and she's now overlooking all of our relationships with the different fabs with IDMs and foundries. We've hired several additional PhDs in the last two quarters. I'll have to do the math, but we have several new additional PhDs that joined the company. So we're continuing to hire at a moderate pace. I don't want to expand too much, but definitely nobody's leaving. Right. Thanks for confirming.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

This has also come up a couple of times. Let's move into more of the strategic and operational side now. The Quarterly noted a re-interest in China. Can you discuss some background to that and whether there's a view on the board that that won't put the US relationships at risk?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

So China, we said it in the past and it hasn't changed. China is a very, very big market for semiconductors. And even the largest companies, you look at Intel, again, Intel, Qualcomm, Google, Nvidia, AMD, they're all selling in China. We just need to be careful about who we work with. Wevid is very conscious and doesn't get anywhere close to people on the blacklist, for example. But there are many... companies in China that are doing very good business with American companies. So for a while, we were totally focused only on the Western world. We've been receiving requests from very legitimate Chinese companies. So we're going in there with our eyes open.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Right. Maybe let's speak a little bit about Skywater. You've mentioned that there were some challenges in the last quarter. Where are things at with that? How are you finding that relationship going forward? What progress is being made on that front?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

So I remind everyone, we Uh, we, we started working with Skywater, uh, and, and they were a great partner for us to do, I'm sorry, to do the first technology transfer and ramp up and qualification. Um, you know, it was good to work with, uh, with a foundry, which was not a tier one so that we, we worked at, you know, we could look them in the eye. We worked together on it. Um, they, uh, you know, unfortunately you can't have only good news. And sometimes there are some things that don't work exactly like you want. Uh, they've received, um, you know, money from the chips act, uh, basically directed at a different process. They need to ramp up now, uh, a 90 nanometer red hard process. And there's a big focus there on that. So. the company is just not focused on the 130 nanometer right now. They have, you know, they have missing IPS in that process that, you know, we had customers. And when I talked to, half a year ago about us having big name uh product companies we did we actually even had uh already agreed on commercial terms with uh with one of them we were in negotiations with another uh but then when they went to skywater and they realized that they're missing some of these ips i was sure that skywater was gonna immediately go and take care of that you know and uh move forward but their priorities are different they don't control their priorities And so in terms of the product companies at Skywater, I think that's where we didn't make the progress that we wanted. It's disappointing, I know. We haven't given up, there are customers who still want to work with us on Skywater 130. They don't need these IPs or they manage to somehow deal with it in a different way. So we are working towards that. And even, you know, talking about the CHIPS Act, there are places where some of these customers are talking to us about filing joint contracts uh, proposals, uh, for projects under the CHIPS Act that will be done at Skywater. And we're, you know, we are in the process of already filing for those things. So there's, uh, there's good, uh, you know, we're still progressing at Skywater and there will be, uh, eventually some, uh, some deals with customers there. I'm very glad that right now WeBit has this relationship with DB Hightech, with other tier one foundries. And I think we'll be moving the focus to just making sure that we ramp up at these foundries that are looking for customers and where the big potential is.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

One of the investors has asked whether there's an update on the expected timing of resolving the IP issues at Skywater.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

You know, we're pushing them. We're working with them on it. At this point, you know, I think it's clear that they are focusing where the money is. They're getting a very significant amount of money from the U.S. government today. to focus on the Red Heart 90, and that's what they decided to do. So, you know, we'll be pushing as much as we can. We will be, I really hope, bringing customers despite this handicap. You know, but it's not what I was hoping for. I admit that.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

And just a qualification question from another investor. Was the missing IP at Skywater... required to be qualified there before it could be used? Or was it just a straight off the shelf, plug and play type scenario?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

So qualification is really a process where we focus on qualifying our reram. You know, we don't go to qualify the whole process of the fab. So we, you know, we have our test chip, which we did for our test chip. We worked and we didn't need those missing IPs. And so we qualified it. And, you know, so it wasn't a relevant question for us for the qualification.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Great. You mentioned the CHIPS Act in the US. Is that creating more opportunities for WeBit, more net opportunities? And there's obviously CHIPS Acts in other markets as well, or similar sorts of legislation. What's the impact on WeBit from that legislation? How do you think about it going forward?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

It's actually very exciting. There's a lot of money being poured into into semiconductors now by governments. And you're right, it's not just the US, it's Europe and it's other countries. It's steering up a lot of activity. And we were approached by Skywater customers that saw the potential of doing a project with us under the CHIPS Act. So as I mentioned, we are applying for projects under the CHIPS Act with some of these people to manufacture at Skywater. Under the limitations that we currently have with Skywater, we can still move forward and we are. Again, it's government. It takes the government time you file until they actually accept and let you know if you did win or didn't win and everything. they have a certain time schedule there. So we won't have news on that for, you know, in the next few months, but it's something that's also being done now.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Let's move on to DB HiTech and some of the other foundries. So on DB HiTech, do you see similar issues regarding IP and otherwise, or do you think things will be able to move more quickly with DB HiTech? Oh, it's a completely... Much larger fab, right?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

It's a completely different story. DB Hightech is a big, well-known foundry that's been around for a long time. You know, they've been, they have a very large customer base. You can imagine that people, you know, I mentioned some of their customers already, you know, the Sony's, Toshiba's and Samsung and other, NXP and Texas Instrument and other in the world. These guys wouldn't be getting anywhere close to DB HiTech if they didn't have a very solid IP library to provide them. So everything is really moving much faster, much smoother with DB HiTech. We're very happy with them. And I'm sure that I know that with the other foundries that we're already talking to and the IDMs, We're not going to have that issue.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Great. Also, you mentioned Samsung is one of BBI Tech's clients. And I think Samsung recently announced some new and improved DRAM technology. How are you seeing the competitive landscape change in terms of new and emerging tech and how does Weebit's DRAM stack up to it?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

I think the people on this call know memory is a very hot topic in semiconductors. And memory in the large sense. DRAM is a volatile memory, so it's not really a competitor for us. You know, there's DRAM and SRAM. By the way, you know, these are the type of things that, you know, we... We were struggling also with Skywater with some of these IPs that some of them were volatile memories and others. But in general, I would say it's very good news. The world is pushing for better memory technology in general. The world, as you know, is pushing for more advanced non-volatile technology. I think that people have realized that MRM And I remind everyone, MRAM has been around in the market in production mode for quite a few years already, for several years. It's not managing to ramp up. We're hearing more and more feedback. from customers. And again, even just on this last trip to the US, again, we've heard of situations where people, consumer companies are telling us, we don't know where our products are going to be, and they can be in places where there are magnetic fields. And, you know, we don't know what will happen to the MRAM and if it'll be erased or not. There are stories going around about products that had MRAM in them that needed to operate in places where there were magnetic fields and the memory was erased. So I think that's pushing everyone to re-RAM. In the re-RAM space, again, you have TSMC and UMC with their re-RAMs. Global Foundries is trying to make all the desktop CBRAM work in parallel to working with us, by the way. And all of the others, they really don't have a solution. And TSMC, UMC, and Global Foundries They are foundries. They will not give their technology to other foundries, to other IDMs. So in that sense, now you can understand why so many foundries and IDMs are talking to WeBit and we're feeling very bullish about it.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

You mentioned TSMC and Global Foundries, maybe on TSMC first. Are you hearing much about their re-ram and in particular the uptake of that product? Yeah.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

We know that some companies are working with them on re-ram. We also had more than one of the TSMC customers come to us and tell us, listen, TSMC has a really nice re-ram, but we want... a module which will be tailored for our system on a chip. When we talked to TSMC, and that wasn't a surprise for me, but they were saying TSMC said, you know, here are a few options. This is what you can have. We're not going to start. We're not a memory company. We're not going to start tailoring modules for for the different customers at that level and so on. So that's what triggered people to come to us and say, hey, can you provide us a reRAM which will be tailored for our specific needs? And that's a big, big advantage of Webit. Webit has a really, really strong analog design and digital design team. I think I can say second to none in the industry right now. People recognize that. That's one of our big strengths. It's not just about the device and the process. It's not just about chemistry, physics. The design has a key part in it, and WeBit has. very strong teams in all of these different disciplines. I mentioned we hired more PhDs for the device and the process side, an unbelievable team, but we also have a very, very strong analog and digital design team. and the test and characterization teams. I know it doesn't mean a lot to many people on the call, but we really have all of the disciplines covered now, working very well together, and the industry recognizes that.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Maybe we can just touch on global foundries. How are things progressing there? Do you expect customer traction to start from that partnership?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

You know, so GlobalFoundries, we have a good partnership with them. They are still trying to make up their mind on what they're doing. As you know, they did acquire the old ADESTO reRAM technology. They are running in parallel now with both of these technologies, you know, trying to decide what they do. You know, we didn't get the top priority, but we are progressing. We got the wafers. We have, you know, the initial testing is good. We have some very nice results. We tested, you know, the memory array and, you know, we're already at good, you know, I'm very happy with what we're seeing there. There still is more work to do when we'll have actual, you know, progress. We'll be notifying the market. So it's a very good work. And by the way, this shows that foundries don't have to have just one version of our ERAM or at least right now we're working with them on both and it's looking good. You were in discussions with other foundries. Definitely, definitely. You know, I've said it many times. Yeah, and you need to understand these negotiations are very long. You know, some of these guys and I'm talking about foundries, I'm talking about IDMs. We had one which I actually thought we were going to sign an agreement with already. And then they came back and they said, you know, this is even more strategic than we thought. We want to expand the agreement. We wanted to cover more ground and things. And suddenly, you know, we're back in negotiation on a much nicer deal, on a broader deal, which I hope will work out. But it's that kind of thing that these negotiations are just very, they take time because you need to cover a lot of things But we're clearly, you know, working and moving forward with these guys.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Just a question that's come in on sort of following up with Global Foundries. Following the scaling to 22 nanometers with Global Foundries, are you planning to test at even smaller geometries with any fab in the next year or so?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Um, we've, uh, by the way, I think I, I mentioned already in the past that we've, we've already been working at, uh, at the teens what's called, uh, so, uh, we, we, we know that we can operate, uh, and, and, and some of the foundries that we're talking to, and, uh, you know, the, the discussions have been on smaller geometries than 22, uh, I won't go into more detail on that, but there's definitely been work at, it's called the FinFET level. You know, we talked about FDSOI at 22 nanometer. When you go below 22, you start entering a different type of technology, which is called FinFET. And we've already worked with more than one FinFET technology.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

You mentioned that some of the conversations with the fabs have been taken a while, they take time. One of the shareholders of the company has come in with a question asking, has the time to close tier one fabs and IDMs been slower than you would have expected? And is it market related?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

No, it's not slower than I expected. Unfortunately, I'm proving my expectations to be correct. For these guys, they have these multi-billion dollar facilities. Everything is very, very sensitive for them. They want to be absolutely sure that we're not introducing any risk, any issues whatsoever. With some of them, it can even be, you know, they have issues sometimes. Yes, we're using standard tools, standard everything. And yet in their specific production line, they might not be using something that we need or they're using a different variant or their production floor is full and they need to see how they can reorganize things or make things work. I mean, there's a lot of... It kind of sounds stupid sometimes, the tactical things that we need to deal with, but it's all of these things that they need to go through and see how they incorporate this into this very big and complex machine that's called a fab.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

We've had a few questions about who's going to be the next sign-up. Do you see any sign-ups or new customers signings in the current year or next quarter? And is the next partnership more likely to be fab or product customer?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

I would say, first of all, you know, it's hard to predict when these deals close, but definitely in the, you know, in 2024, we plan to close agreements with significant names. You know, we're pushing very hard for it. It's not always in our hands, but I, you know, I believe we'll be making good progress with some of these big name companies. I think right now, WeBit's focus is on foundries and on IDMs. The reason is simple. When you talk to product companies, the first question that they ask is, well, where are we going to manufacture it? We know it's going to take you you know, a year and a half or maybe two years to qualify the technology in a fab, we can sign up if we don't know that you're qualified or being or close to being qualified. So we're engaged with many product companies. But in terms of actually signing an agreement, except for Skywater, where I still believe we will be eventually getting some customers as well. But, you know, with the other foundries, with other foundries, we first need to show the customers that we're making good progress and, you know, it's happening.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

We've had a few questions come in from various people on the selector. Can you provide an update on the progress with the selector and also discrete memory with

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Yeah. So I think, by the way, the fact that we are even discussing a selector shows you just how strong Weep it is. I dare say the number of commercial companies that are trying to develop a more advanced selector, not even close to a handful. It's very, very, very difficult to develop a new selector, and we really are one of the very, very few companies that even has the ability to work on it. Unfortunately, even we were limited in our resources, both manpower and financial resources, so we have to define priorities. At this point, our priority is to get the big name foundries and idms on board that's where we're really putting a lot of effort uh even you know on the r d side improving the the core our re-ram technology the the manufacturing process making it easier for these guys to decide on us so there is progress on the selector um i hope we'll be able to announce uh some progress uh Well, I won't say when, I won't jinx it, but we are working on that. It's just at a lower priority, but it's progressing.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

And also, can you talk a bit about Weebert's RERAM in the context of artificial intelligence? And there's been a lot of activity around AI and the growth in AI over the last six to 12 months.

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

How does RERAM fit into that? Oh, well, AI, I think that's one thing that in Australia, everyone understands. Semiconductor, many people don't understand, but I think many people know already AI is really, really hot. It's making huge progress. And AI... No matter how much memory you throw at it, they always need more. They always want more. That's one of the things that's pushing the market down to the very small geometries. You can just put so much more memory on a chip in the smaller geometries. And so WeBit is definitely in that, especially, and one of the things that the market has been understanding For a long time, people thought that you can work with dumb edge devices that just send everything up to the cloud. And then on the cloud, you have these huge machines that do all that computation and everything and send the results back. You know, the market has now realized, and I think it's very clearly understood, you need to have a lot of intelligence on the edge devices. You want to be able to do quite a bit. For example, you know, you might... If you want to do some image recognition or things like that, you might do all of the learning, the training on a big computer. But then when you just want to do what's called inference, just be able to... Excuse me. actually apply it and and just compare all of the the things that you see to what you have uh it's much more effective when you're doing it at the edge so and and at the edge uh people you know they want a lot of memory uh they need non-volatile memory because they need they don't want if power goes out to suddenly lose all of the stuff that they had so um So there's definitely a lot of interest in reramp for this market. Uh, we are involved in, we actually published a paper, uh, just recently, uh, on it. You can, you can see it on the website and on LinkedIn. Um, and we have, uh, we are doing a lot of research, uh, and working with research institutes on how to use our re-RAM efficiently in these different applications. So this is becoming a more central activity right now for us looking at how how to leverage uh the ai market remember flash cannot scale down below 40 or 28 nanometers these guys want to scale down to very small geometry so they can have more and more memory they want to have a very fast memory some of these guys are talking about you know we want really to when the machine turns on it needs to be immediately operating we don't want to waste time for it to wake up and

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

boot and and all of that so there's uh we have a lot of advantages in this market and we're going to capitalize on them um just a question uh from a shareholder um in terms of discrete without a selector that was something that had been noted as a use for a previous raise that occurred. Can you provide an update on where the discrete memory is and how it's taking shape?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Yes, we are working on that. There definitely is a market that we recognized last year that there is a market for the discrete even with the existing selector. We are working on this direction as well.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

I'm just conscious we've hit 45 minutes. We've covered almost every question that's come in, a few of them have overlapped and there's been a couple of questions which were not for this session around ASX 200 and around why Weebit doesn't do trading halts before sending announcements to ASX, given some of that history. They can be dealt with offline. But maybe just before we wrap up, it's a new year, already February now, 2024, but we all make resolutions on New Year's Eve. what are Weebit's resolutions for 2024? What can you tell us you'll be focusing on and what does Weebit want to achieve this year?

speaker
Kobi Hanoch
CEO of Weebit Nano

Well, if I try to put it in one sentence, I want by the end of 2024 to be recognized as the undisputed leader in the re-RAM space. That's really the bottom line I want to achieve. And I believe we will achieve agreements with leading foundries, with leading IDMs. The market will see the power of WeBit, the power of the WeBit team. And that's really, I was asked just earlier about all the shorting activity and stuff. And I think that the shorters right now don't understand semiconductors, they don't understand what we do. And they're trying to do analysis of WeBit as if it's, I don't know, whatever kind of other market or company that they know. But in our space, and I think our shareholders that have been with us for a long time, they know It might be taking some time to ramp up, but we've just gotten to the point where it is now engaged with many of the big players in the market. We will be during this calendar year, definitely closing agreements moving forward. We're also growing our team, the sales and marketing. team, you know, and all of that. So my resolution is I just want to be the undisputed leader of RERAM. You know, I believe the shorters will be in for a surprise during this year.

speaker
Ron Betchler
Host and Moderator

Kobi, thank you. Certainly over 2023, WeBit grew in leaps and bounds, including the very successful capital raising that has put the company in a extremely strong balance sheet, probably the strongest I ever recall the company being in over the last seven or eight years that I've been involved with Webit. And I'm really excited by what the year ahead can provide for the company in terms of the various paths you're going down with fabs and with IBMs and technology evolution that's coming also. So it will be great to see you and the team execute on your plans for 2024 and we'll look forward as all the shareholders will be to updates the regular updates you provide and hopefully seeing you out in australia soon off the back of the results fingers crossed all being well with travel and what's going on over in israel yeah thank you thanks ron and thanks uh to all of our loyal shareholders and um you know the feedback that i'm getting from them is is amazing and looking forward to a great year Thank you, Kobi, and thank you everyone for joining us today. And if you've missed part of the session or would like to re-watch, please be patient. We'll have it up online in the investor section of WeBit's website as quickly as we can. Have a good rest of the afternoon, Kobi. Have a great day. Thank you for joining us early in Israel. Thank you. Goodbye, everybody.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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