Aeluma, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to ALUMA's Q4 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Moira Conlon, Investor Relations for ALUMA. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to Illuma's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. I'm here today with founder and CEO, Dr. Jonathan Klamkin, and CFO, Christopher Stewart. Today's discussions and responses to questions may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the earnings press release issued today along with the reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports along with today's earnings release and fourth quarter presentation that we will reference during this conference call can be found under the investor section of our website. Alluma assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call. Throughout the discussion, the company will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release and SEC filings. Now, I'll turn the call over to Illuma's CEO, Jonathan Klamkin.

Thank you, Moira, and thank you all for joining today's call. We are delighted to share a recap of our fiscal 2026 and to provide an outlook on Illuma's path to commercialization. The AI DataCom market opportunity has continued to become a priority for us. Demand for high-performance photonics is at an all-time high, with data center CapEx investments expected to reach $1.8 trillion in 2030, according to Del Oro Group, of which approximately 10% to 15% is for photonics. As illustrated in slide 4, we explicitly built our technology platform for this scale. Our proprietary heterogeneous integration with large diameter non-indium phosphide substrates combines high performance materials with mass market microelectronics manufacturing. To capitalize on the AI opportunity, in fiscal 2026, we prioritized resources to accelerate development and commercialization of our high-speed photodetectors and quantum dot lasers which are applicable across a broad range of data center connectivity including slow and wide short reach interconnects, fast and narrow interconnects, pluggable transceivers, near packaged optics or NPO, and co-packaged optics or CPO. Many traditional photonics components for data centers depend on indium phosphide substrates which have become a bottleneck for suppliers and their customers. Illumis technologies are manufactured with non-indium phosphide substrates that may range in size from 150 millimeter or six inch to 200 millimeter and up to 300 millimeter. Illumis photo detector and laser technologies have undergone significant foundational development, thanks in part to non-dilutive government funding. We have always been selective in bidding on government contracts that are synergistic with our commercial ambitions, An example is a Navy program that commenced in fiscal 2024 to develop high-speed photodetectors for short-reach links, a technology that is highly relevant to slow and wide data center interconnects for scale-up AI workloads. This Navy program has transitioned successfully into a second phase to focus on higher-speed operation and transceiver integration. We have also made considerable progress with customers evaluating our differentiated photonics platform, which eliminates the need for indium phosphide substrates, supports high-volume manufacturing, and provides a path to CMOS wafer-scale integration and packaging. These engagements have helped shape the development of our LINX S-series photodetectors, which target data rates from a few gigabits per second to 64 gigabits per second. Based on customer discussions and market forecasts, we believe these applications represent a substantial volume opportunity as deployment scale in 2028 through 2030. To support fast and narrow 200 gigabits per second per lane and future 400 gigabits per second per lane for scale of interconnects, We are developing our Lynx F-Series photo detectors. This represents another significant potential opportunity in the growing AI Datacom market. The non-dilutive government funding we secured played an important role in advancing our technology while also providing a potential long-term customer relationship with the U.S. Navy. As the AI Datacom market accelerates and demand grows over the next several years, We have prioritized our resources on the commercialization of our high-speed photodetectors to capture this opportunity. Another example is funding from the Office of Secretary of War and from NASA to advance our MOCDD quantum dot laser technology. Today, our Datacom customers are evaluating our non-indium phosphide quantum dot lasers for high temperature operation, reliability, and isolator-free packaging. Our quasar family of quantum dot lasers currently under development aims to address the demand for high power lasers in scale-up and scale-out networks. We believe we are uniquely positioned as the first company to offer quantum dot lasers using MOCVD, an industry standard for high throughput production. MOCVD, for example, is used exclusively for large volume Vixel manufacturing for facial recognition in mobile phones. Given the scale of investment and projects already underway for data center build outs, we are more commercially focused than ever before. We stated that fiscal 2026 would establish the foundation for transitioning to commercialization. We delivered on this objective by expanding our team, establishing manufacturing supply chain partners, bolstering cash, and focusing on our go-to-market strategy. At June 30, 2025, Illuma had 14 employees. As of today, we have more than 30 employees and we plan to recruit additional talent to execute our strategic priorities. In June, we announced the appointment of Dr. Brendan Moran as VP of Engineering, whose distinguished career at LumiLeds included leading product strategy and development for mobile photonics components that generated $300 million in annual revenue, eight consecutive design-ins for a high-profile mobile customer and shipping of billions of photonics chips. Brendan is driving Illuma's product development and commercialization efforts with an emphasis on photodetectors and lasers for AI Datacom. Along with Dr. Willie Rachmady, Illuma's VP of Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystem, and myself, Brendan is helping advance our engagements with customers and define technology and product development roadmaps. We believe our product-focused strategy will benefit our business and our shareholders. We also recently appointed Jason Taylor as Senior Director of Program and Project Management. Jason has nearly three decades of experience in program management at Intel, Kyocera, Lumileds, and other organizations. Jason is leading program management across Saluma, and is building out a program management system to ensure timely execution of priority programs, including high-speed photo detectors and quantum dot lasers for AI datacom. Such a system is key to delivering on our strategic priorities. I'm also proud to welcome Dr. Pramit Parikh as a strategic advisor. Pramit was VP and GM of the Gallium Nitride Business Division at Renesas following the acquisition of Transform, Inc. a pioneer in gallium nitride power semiconductors that Premit co-founded and led from inception through its public company listing and acquisition by Renesas. He also held leadership positions at Nitrous and Cree. Premit's expertise spans several areas important to Illuma, including high-performance semiconductors, AI data centers, manufacturing, IP strategy, and partnerships. He provides a strategic and operational perspective to Illuma as we position the company for commercial growth. We are again adding more office and meeting space to support our growing team. And while we continue to be stewards of capital, the time for making investments in growth is now. Moving through fiscal 2027 and beyond, we will be even more selective with government funding and more commercially focused. This may mean sacrificing year-term government contract revenue to focus resources toward achieving commercial revenue and growth opportunities, which is what matters in generating long-term shareholder value. In previous communications, we shared our intention to move away from early-stage government funding and instead focus on opportunities that accelerate manufacturing and commercialization. Consistent with that strategy, On July 29, we announced a letter of intent with the Department of Commerce CHIPS R&D office for up to $30 million to accelerate development and commercialization of our scalable photonics for AI and advanced computing. This is not for a specific Department of War or NASA or Department of Energy or other agency-driven application with technical metrics established by the government agency. For the Department of Commerce program, We proposed Aluma's own vision, that is to build the world's highest performance photonics with scalable manufacturing, leveraging domestic capabilities and advanced intellectual property to overcome supply chain constraints and to meet the demand for critically important AI and advanced compute infrastructure investments. These themes have been central to Aluma's strategy since our founding. The CHIPS Initiative is aimed at supporting semiconductor innovation across integrated photonics, compute architectures, advanced packaging, substrates, materials, and memory for the AI and advanced compute supply chain. This strategic government investment could accelerate our development and commercialization efforts. On scaling, I'm happy to announce that we recently executed an important agreement with Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies to strengthen our relationship, increase wafer production capacity, leveraging existing MOCBD tools that we can run our processes on, and provide a path for further increasing capacity in the future. We have been engaged with Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies for several years, and this new agreement will support commercialization efforts and will complement Illuma's in-house capability. The initial focus of this effort is on high-speed photodetectors for AI Datacom. For future scaling, we are procuring multiple Axtron G10 MOCVD systems. These types of tools are already in use by major Tier 1 photonics component manufacturers for lasers and other photonics components for AI Datacom. Alluma recently configured these tools to implement our proprietary non-Indian phosphide substrate processes, and we are planning for installation. While our precise strategy is confidential, we have communicated our multi-pronged approach to leverage different non-Indian phosphide substrate types and sizes to pair technology with market demand in the most economical and strategic way. As we shared on our Q3 earnings call, We work with several supply chain partners. These include both compound semiconductor fabs and silicon fabs whose capabilities range from 150 millimeter fabrication to 200 millimeter and some up to 300 millimeter. For many of our target markets, 150 millimeter wafers, either gallium arsenide or silicon, are appropriate. Illuma's use of non-indium phosphide substrates at this size and partnership with Volume Microelectronics Foundries provides a path to scale and meet demand while overcoming supply chain constraints and winning on cost. Illuma produces starting wafers in-house but also works with partners such as Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies for scaling, and we have recently strengthened this relationship with a new agreement. Following epitaxy wafer production, our proprietary wafers are sent to foundries and other supply chain partners and then returned to Illuma for test and validation. Like other photonics, IBMs, or integrated device manufacturers, Illuma has developed several key compound semiconductor technologies to address different uses and functions, such as wavelength specifications and market applications. As illustrated in slide five, while our technology platform is broadly applicable, our current commercialization focus is AI datacom. Referring to slide six, We are leveraging our large-diameter substrate platform to commercialize our LINX high-speed photo detectors and our Quasar quantum dot laser technologies. LINX is designed to address both scale-up and scale-out AI interconnects. Aluma's non-indium phosphide platform is attractive to customers who need to overcome supply chain constraints and enable scaling with a roadmap for wafer-scale integration with CMOS which is key for the slow and wide scale-up AI interconnects. And to cover the playing field, the LINX B series photodetectors are aimed at fast and narrow 224 and then 448 gigabits per second scale-out AI interconnects. Our MOCVD quantum dot technology is driving quasar product development. Current laser technology for AI interconnects is based on indium phosphide. And as we have continually messaged, indium phosphide substrates are in short supply, are small, expensive, and fragile. And the indium phosphide manufacturing doesn't scale to large volumes. Investment in 6-inch indium phosphide are being made, but this will take time to qualify, and costs of 6-inch indium phosphide substrates are increasing. Also, indications are that 6-inch indium phosphide is not sufficient for the AI infrastructure build-out. Our LINCS effort is focused on 6-inch gallium arsenide manufacturing initially, but will also leverage larger diameter silicon manufacturing in the future to enable further scaling and direct integration with silicon photonics. Our MOCDB approach is key to supporting this roadmap. Looking forward to fiscal 2027 and beyond, our enthusiasm continues to grow. The AI Datacom opportunity is driving our near-term and others. In addition to prospective capital from the CHIPS program that is under definitive agreement negotiations, we are negotiating several multi-million dollar NRE agreements with commercial customers. NRE programs with top tier manufacturers are an effective way to accelerate qualification and commercialization. We are ramping activities with our supply chain partners expanding MOCVD manufacturing capabilities, and we'll continue to build out our team to support commercialization. It is highly motivating to see Illuma's vision come to life as we execute our go-to-market strategy and the demand for high-performance photonics grows at unprecedented rates. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Chris Stewart, to discuss the financials.