5/23/2022

speaker
Operator

Thank you everyone for joining us today. Welcome to Arba's first quarter of 2022 Financial Results Fireside Chat, Imaging Automotive in 2030. My name is Mor Asya and I will be moderating today's events. I am a director on Arba's board and the founding partner of iAngels, one of Israel's most active VC firms. Arbez is one of our largest investments. We've been supporters of Arbez since the beginning, where we led their seed financing round, and have invested in each of Arbez's financing rounds since. The automotive industry is progressing quickly and ultra-high resolution imaging radars are going to be critical for achieving truly safe driver assist systems and hands-free driving. ARBE is driving this revolution. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain information provided on this call may contain forward-looking statements and the safe harbor statement outlined in today's earnings release also pertains to this call. Please also note that this event is being recorded. Today, we are joined by Kobi Morenko, Arbez co-founder and CEO, who will begin the call with the business update. Then we will turn the call over to Karim Pinto Flomenboim, Arbez CFO, who will review the financial statements, followed by an insightful fireside chat with industry experts from Arbez leadership team and board of directors about the promises and challenges of automotive autonomy over the next decade. We will conclude with a question and answer session. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Kobi Marenko. Kobi, please go ahead.

speaker
Arba

Thank you, Mor, and hello, everyone. It is great to have you with us. Today, we are going to discuss the future of autonomy in 2030 and the leading role that Arbe will play in this world. But first, I would like to go over some of our recent business highlights. We made great progress in the first quarter, particularly with our Tier 1 relationships and OEM customers. Hyundai, a leading car manufacturer and one of our early investors, held a POC testing the safety announcement introduced by our next generation radar. Just yesterday, they showcased our joint pilot at the Ecomotion event. Working closely with world leading car manufacturers like Hyundai is important for us as it allows us to evaluate how our technology addresses their safety and autonomy needs in real time. Let's view some highlights from the pilot.

speaker
Mor

Our best developed the first ultra high resolution imaging radar, 100 times more details than any other radar on the market.

speaker
spk08

We have been tracking Arbe technology for a very long time and even invested in the company in the early stage. We believe in Arbe advanced radar technology offering to enable our advanced safety and autonomy which required by our customers.

speaker
Mor

As part of the evaluation process for this new technology, we work closely with the car manufacturers such as Hyundai to really evaluate and really test the technology in the limits.

speaker
spk08

We have tested the solution's ability to work in challenging use cases. For example, to separate objects by elevation. We have seen how the radar detects a bike rider in an angle of 100 degrees. We were easily able to see pedestrians and bike riders between vehicles from a distance. We demonstrated that the radar can detect an object in a distance of more than 300 meters.

speaker
Mor

Due to our high-resolution advanced processing capabilities, we are able to complement the camera in a perfect way that is resilient to any weather conditions and really allow true redundancy for the perception systems, for tracking objects and mapping the environments using advanced algorithms like SLAM.

speaker
spk08

We will continue to work with Arbe and our internal technology groups, supporting their need to re-evaluate Arbe technology.

speaker
Arba

During the first quarter, Arbe engaged with five new customers, including OEMs who are leaders in level 2 plus passenger vehicles, design and new mobility players focusing on level 4 applications. Part of our business progress during the first quarter is attributed to our first tier 1 relationships who develop radar systems based on our chipset. The success and commitment of our partners is critical to our ability to scale in terms of production, unit sales, and market reach. In the first quarter, our tier one relationships submitted five RFPs and RFQs with R-based chipset to major OEMs, committing to supply the customer with volume of 400,000 systems to one million systems per year. In the first quarter, Arbe secured a wealth of knowledge and experience with the addition of several new members to our leadership team. Joining our board of directors is Tilo Koslovski, a renowned TOTE leader and visionary in automotive and digital technology, who previously served as the founder and CEO of Porsche Digital. Thilo also founded the Automotive and Smart Mobility Practice at Gartner, where we advise global automakers, technology companies and governments on harnessing new technologies and innovation. Alex Itzinger, who also joined our board of directors, is the former Volkswagen Group Senior Vice President of Autonomous Driving and a member of the Management Board of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. Additionally, Halex held the position of Head of Product Design for Autonomous Transportation at Apple, where we led the automotive team. Finally, Gonen Barkan, who joined Arbez Management as our new Chief Radar Officer, will head our best technological strategy. Gonen came to us from General Motors, where we led a global team and was responsible for all aspects of radar technology, development, radar product development, and radar integration into GM vehicles. We are proud that Gunen, Alex and Tilo choose to join Arbe, demonstrating their confidence in our vision. Their knowledge and expertise will strengthen our strategy, tighten our relationships in the auto industry and expedite our progress. Alex and Gunen will join our fireside chat today. On the product front, back in January at CES, we introduced the addition of free space mapping to our imaging radar perception stack. This is the first time an automotive radar is able to perform free space mapping, a critical function of autonomous driving that requires great accuracy and redundancy. Last week, we were happy to announce the launch of our latest RF chipset in the final production configuration. The new chipset increases range, allowing radars to detect vehicles at 800 meters or about half a mile. This functionality will make our radar extremely viable across customer verticals, including trucks, a key vertical for Arabe, as the truck industry will be one of the first to introduce autonomous driving on mass scale. Our new chipset offers the industry's first combination of system design flexibility with ultra-high resolution, providing optimal performance across challenging driving scenarios, such as putting a flat tire on the highway, enabling delivery robots to drive safely on the sidewalk, and developing forward and backward free space mapping, particularly for unprotected left turns, T-junctions, merging into the highway, and more. Now I'd like to highlight some of the exciting news that we shared, demonstrating the market recognition of Arabe's innovation technology. We are honored to be recognized for our product innovation, recently winning some of the most prestigious awards in our industry. Back in January, ARBIS Perception Imaging Radar was recognized for revolutionizing autonomous vehicle and sensing to support advanced perception capabilities at an affordable cost for the mass market by CES 2022. Additionally, we were proud to have won first place at the 2022 TechAD conference in the category of sensor perception, which highlights the superiority of our advanced perception radar designed to create ultimate safety in the autonomous vehicle industry. This meaningful validation combined with three industry executives choosing to join our management team and our board are all important signals that we are on the right path. We are extremely pleased to be progressing according to plan. We are confident in our leadership role in the evolution of the industry and we look forward to continuing to achieve major milestones. I'd like now to turn it over to our CFO, Karin. Hey, Karim.

speaker
Arbe

Hey, Kobi. Thank you. Thank you, Kobi, and hello, everyone. I would like to review our financial results for Q1 2022 in more details. Total revenue in the first quarter was $0.9 million compared to $0.6 million in the first quarter of 2021. Backlog as of March 31st, 2022 was $2.8 million, consisting mainly of chipsets and samples orders and service from several leading car manufacturers and tier ones. Gross margin for Q1 2022 was 56.1% compared to 44.3% in the same period in 2021. The gross margin increase was primarily related to a lower cost per unit as we expand toward production. Moving on to expenses. In Q1 2022, we reported total operating expenses of $11.1 million, an increase from $4.5 million in the first quarter of 2021. The increase in operating expenses was primarily driven by labor cost uptick, non-cash shared base compensation expenses, and additional general overhead costs related to our status as a public company. Research and development expenses increased from $3.7 million in Q1 2021 to $7.8 million in Q1 2022, reflecting growing investment in labor and moving toward production. Net loss in the first quarter of 2022 decreased significantly and was $7.9 million, which included $2.8 million of financial income, compared to a net loss of $18.4 million in the first quarter of 2021, which included $14.1 million of financial expenses. Both years' financial expenses and income related to the revaluation of convertible loans and warrants. Looking at adjusted EBITDA in Q1 of 2022, a non-GAAP measurement, which excludes expenses for non-cash share-based compensation and for non-reoccurring items, was a loss of $8.6 million compared to a loss of $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2021. Moving to our balance sheet, as of March 31st, 2022, Arbe had 87.3 million in cash and cash equivalents. Total debt of March 31st, 2022 was 5.1 million, which we expect to pay by July 1st, 2022. With respect to our guidance for 2022, we would like to reiterate what we previously shared. Revenue is expected to be in the range of $7 to $11 million, heavily weighted toward the end of the year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be a loss in the range of $34 million to $38 million. Additionally, we believe that we are on track to reach our $312 million revenue goal for 2025. Now I will turn it back over to Mor to open the fireside chat with the rest of our team.

speaker
Operator

Thanks, Karim. This is a pivotal time in the automotive industry, with changes occurring faster than ever before. At the heart of these changes is technology innovation, and at the heart of this technology innovation is ARBE. With us today, we have several industry experts, Alex, Kobi, and Gonen. Thank you all for joining us today. Let's discuss the promises and challenges of automotive autonomy over the next decade. Some questions to pose to the group. When we think about books and movies, what we expected for 2030 might be very different from what we anticipate today. Whereas we once might have imagined flying cars, today I think we can all agree that 2030 will likely look much closer to our daily lives today than what we once might have thought. That being said, there are so many new advances and improvements in the space, and I'm excited to talk about some of them with you today. Alex, why won't you start us off? What will a day in 2030 look like? In terms of mobility, how will it be? The same or different from today?

speaker
Alex , Kobi

I hope you can hear me well. I think mobility will be safer, it will be cleaner, and it will be more convenient. I mean, it will be safer because there will be a widespread use of ADA systems in the cars and in trucks. It will be cleaner because I think electrification will have gone really mainstream and the majority of vehicles sold, new vehicles sold will be electric. And it will be also more convenient because... The overall spectrum of transportation, I think, will be expanded. So micromobility will play a much bigger role for the short distance travel. Then we'll have vehicles which will have ADAS systems which will make driving more enjoyable, even in higher traffic conditions. And then we will also start to see things like eVTOL in the early stage. So overall, the spectrum of transportation will be much broader and therefore will make it more convenient to get from A to B. Kobi, anything to add?

speaker
Arba

So first of all, I agree with Alex that this is the main change and the main difference is that everything will be safer. So I think that autonomous driving is like the ambitious to reach to the moon. So it's a 10-year plan. It will take time. It will take a lot of effort. But in the middle, there is a lot of byproducts from this ambitious that will play a large role in our lives. So first of all, safety above all. And I think that the majority of the car manufacturers today put the safety as their first goal and safety anywhere. Safety in every weather, safety in every lighting condition. And I think this is going to be a major change. Also, I think that the fact that you can get a delivery from a delivery robot to your home easily without a human being is also a great change. It will dramatically reduce the time of the delivery and the ability to get deliveries home. I think also the fact that trucks will drive more and more in a safer way and in almost automated way will change also our lives and the ability to bring things to our home in a better price and even in better timing.

speaker
Operator

Excellent.

speaker
Gonen

Yeah, thanks. So I agree with you both. And I'll add that also a lot of driving functions that today we are used to do, I think will start to become much more automatic and autonomous, but step by step.

speaker
Operator

Right. Well, I believe that by 2030, it's safe to expect that Level 2 Plus will become an industry standard with approximately 70% penetration and an emphasis, as previously mentioned, on safety rather than comfort, driven by both consumer demand and regulation. Gonen, what new technologies will be available in 2030?

speaker
Gonen

Yeah, thank you. So as we said, to get to this safety level, especially when you want to get much more complex driving tasks, but on a safe level, which is not what L2 Plus today, I think technology, especially sensing, will have to step up. L4 I don't think will be as widespread, and I think the mass market will require safe and widely available driving features. So we see the radar as the major driving force in getting there. Because you get some higher resolution cameras, you get some lighters in the front probably. But to get to this safety level and performance, you need a new generation, a new scale of radars. And I think that will be the major change in technology.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Alex?

speaker
Alex , Kobi

So I think generally, it will be a phased approach. There won't be any big bang when you say, okay, now autonomy is available or something. There will be level four will start to appear in premium products, I think. So there will be... level four functionality available on the highway in specific routes, which will make traveling, especially long distance traveling, a lot more convenient, as I mentioned earlier on. And so the technology will penetrate first the premium products, where people are a bit less cost sensitive. Also, as Kobi just mentioned, I totally agree, long-haul tracking, where you have a very good business case and an easier use case, I think it's a perfect way of rolling out level four functionality. We will see that in the next years until 2030. And as the technology penetrates these areas and therefore volume of components go up and therefore costs come down, then this technology will get more and more into mainstream products. So level four will sort of start to happen slowly and will penetrate the other areas over time. And this is really quite natural for new technologies. And it will also help to sort of raise awareness in the public and make people accept these technologies. and will basically then drive the adoption over time.

speaker
Operator

Thanks. Kobi, anything to add?

speaker
Arba

I would like to add maybe two points. One, I'm confident about it. So the car, as the car will become more and more autonomous, it will be more and more entertainment area. So the screens will be bigger. Maybe there will be commercials inside our car. We will be able to see video, maybe to play games, maybe to see a movie. So I think that the car in 2030 will be part of the ecosystem of the entertainment and advertising. Second thing which is, I think, questionable is how much of this industry will become service-oriented. How many people will abandon the car, will decide that they don't need a car, and they can just take a car for hire? I think especially in big cities where there's no parking and it's crowded and you don't want to look for parking, This kind of car as a service that is coming more and more natural to the market will take more and more market share. And I think this is... The way that it should work is if you can get the service of Level 3, Level 4 on the highway at least, this makes sense that on the weekend, instead of using your car, you will hire a car, even if it's a bit premium, that can drive you all of this weekend without you needing to hold the wheel.

speaker
Operator

Excellent. Thank you. So we all understand that in order for technology to be car and road ready, the model specification cutoff is approximately three years prior. Given that timeframe, what technologies will not be available in 2030? Either because they'll be phased out or because 2030 will still be too early for them. Alex, what do you think?

speaker
Alex , Kobi

So I think... One of the hardest problems, really, technology problems out there is full autonomy in urban areas. And I think we will not see a really widespread adoption of this until 2030, just because you have such a long tail in terms of edge cases. And At the moment, there's still some people that believe that this is just around the corner. I don't think so. I think the problem is, like I said, too hard for that. But we will move towards that, right? So we will see more and more commercial pilots of the robo-taxi use case. And... We will potentially see first routes in existing networks which will drive with sort of pilot robotaxis. It will increase the usage of it, but it won't be mainstream. It won't be a real big commercial business or something like that.

speaker
Operator

Okay. Anything to add, Kobi?

speaker
Arba

I agree that a robot taxi right now looks more like a hobby than a business. There are technology challenges there that we are far from solving. Even the processors, the central processors, need an order of magnitude or even two orders of magnitude more powerful. performing and more processing power in order to support what is really needed for a full autonomous driving in scale, in a price that is achievable. So we will have this, maybe this some micro mobility, maybe something that drives in 20, 30 kilometers per hour, very slowly in the city, like the delivery robots, Something like, you know, all the people are using. Something like this for autonomous driving that will replace urban driving. Excellent.

speaker
Operator

Okay, so what do you think will be the role of imaging radars in ARBE in achieving your predictions for 2030? Honen?

speaker
Gonen

Thank you. So first and foremost, the readers can and will provide the required redundancy to bring those features to a safety level customers can trust. I think readers today are far from it still, and there needs to be a leap, and I think this is where R replaces itself. in getting the entire sensing suite to the level it can be available anywhere, every time of the day, and on a safety level and not as an assist system. And that's a huge step that without the radars I don't believe can happen.

speaker
Arba

I think that the industry begins to understand that the focus in the last 10 years was how to pass the test. There was an NCAP test. There is a minimal requirements for this test. So the car manufacturers were focusing on how to pass the test. And now there is a major shift in the paradigm and they understand that passing the test is not enough. and driving fully safe solution to the customer is the real goal. And if we are moving to a full safe solution, I think that the only solution is by having a radar that can work in any weather and any lighting condition up to a very long range in a safe way without false targets and without missing anything. And this is our mission since we started.

speaker
Operator

Perfect. In other sectors, 2030 feels like nearly a decade from now. So why are we as investors are discussing 2030 now? I can say for me personally, as an investor, on the one hand, we have seen a lot of activity in the automotive space with several companies going public. While Arbe has established a unique position within the market, mass adoption of autonomous driving is still, as we understand, very much ahead of us. And it's exciting to see what is yet to come in the latter part of this decade. Now, it's my opinion that Arbe is becoming a public company, is a stepping stone, and this is really only the beginning. So, Kobi, why do you feel we're talking about 2030 now? Can you also elaborate on what will happen over the next three years, for example?

speaker
Arba

Yeah, so first of all, we are talking about 2030 because we believe that 2030 will be the year where Level 2 Plus will be a mass product. So you won't get into a car that doesn't have real safety features and a real... Highway autopilot and driving assist on traffic jam and those kinds of solutions. So everything that we see today as a kind of a pilot version in the cars will be mainstream. In 2030. But it takes time. It takes time because the cycles of the automotive industry are long. They are selecting now radars for a year model 2025, some of them even for year model 2026. And then you start ramping up and you're ramping up on the high-end cars. And there is another three years until it's going to the mainstream. So, basically, the decisions that are taking today are really influencing 2030. So, it takes a technology to reach to the mainstream in automotive since, you know, you're thinking of an ID, more than 10 years to get there. to the mainstream. But we have a very bright future also next year and the year after. So first of all, if we are talking about year model 2025, it means that the radar should start shipped to the car manufacturer from the tier one by the end of 24, which means that the tier one needs to get from us chips in early 24. So we are, even a car that will start production In September 25, we will start to see the revenues in early 24. Also, it's important to understand what is happening in the Chinese market. The Chinese market is running faster, and everything in the West takes five years, takes three years in China. Everything that takes three years takes two years in China. So from China, we expect revenues earlier. And also we are engaged in a lot of the activity around delivery robots and around the trucks. And all of those things don't require this three-year cycle of designing a car. It's a new bot or a truck. Basically, it's an aftermarket product. And this is why we believe that... We will start ramping up our revenues dramatically in 2023 towards 2024 and reach a break-even around this time stage.

speaker
Operator

Excellent. So now we would like to start and kick off the questions and answers session. Thank you for all of our panelists for the thought-provoking discussion. We're now ready to take questions from our audience.

speaker
Arbe

Welcome to the Q&A session. We'll be starting with analyst question, and following that, we'll answer questions submitted by the audience. Our first question comes from Josh.

speaker
Josh

Hey, Gary, how are we doing? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. So, you know, Colby, you talked about sort of a sharper revenue increase in 2023 ahead of the larger OEMs in North America and Europe in 24, 25. Anything you can share on the contribution of the ramp you would expect from customers like AutoX and BAIC versus, I guess, pre-production wins and other verticals that we might not be, that you haven't been able to name, basically. Thank you.

speaker
Arba

So we cannot really disclose the actual revenues from AutoX in 2023 because this is basically saying how many cars they will have in the market in 2023. But I think that overall, if we are looking on our 2023 revenues, there is a start of production that we believe is going to be for Chinese OEMs. On the second half of 2023, that will basically be responsible for something like 30% of our revenues, 20 to 20 something million dollars. The sector of robotaxi, not just AutoX, we believe will be responsible for around 15, 20 million more. And the rest is going to be in delivery robots and non-automotive applications. All of all, we are predicting around $70 million in 2023. Majority of it is going to be basically in chipset selling and not on NREs or those kinds of one-time payments.

speaker
Josh

Thank you. And then for my follow up, the press release didn't mention the longer term top three OEM that you pre-production when you discussed before everything on track there, which I assume so given you reiterated the $312 million target for 25. Thank you and congrats on all the progress, guys.

speaker
Arba

Yeah, I think we are in line of the plan, give or take a week here, a week there. Yes, and we are engaged with the right tier ones for those projects. And what is more important is that we increased our engagement with OEMs for another five companies during this quarter. Part of them even already installed our radar in their projects. testing calls. So overall, I think this is why we feel comfortable with our $300 million in revenue. So we increased the amount of engagements and we feel comfortable with our target.

speaker
Josh

Thank you.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you, Josh. Next, we have Suji.

speaker
Josh

Hey, Suji. Hey, guys, can you hear me?

speaker
Arbe

Yes.

speaker
Josh

Yep. Excellent. It's working great. So hi, Kobi, Karin, and Conan. Thanks for the informative presentations today, certainly. Kobi and Karin, the 400,000 to a million annual type of range you talked about, can you characterize that for us? Is that for a customer, a single model, or is that a platform number? Are some wins smaller and some potentially larger? Just give us some characterization of where that range kind of derives from.

speaker
Arba

Where's the volume coming from? So I think all of the OEMs, maybe except of the new ones, has the same strategy of starting of production with the high-end models. And, of course, it means that this is an OEM that should have enough capacity premium cars to support it. And then the technology is going to the regular cars, to the regular SUVs. So the start of production first year is hundreds of thousands of units. Then it goes to a million and millions when it's getting to the mass production.

speaker
Josh

That's really helpful color coding. And perhaps a question for Gonen. We hear about this sort of camera, LIDAR, radar cost calculus of maybe $500 each bucket as kind of a rule of thumb. I'm just wondering how the OEMs think about the overall cost structure and balancing the cost between the radar footprint versus camera and LIDAR. Any insight you could provide there if those numbers flex or whether, because we're hearing LIDAR is costing as much as a thousand. So any insight there would be helpful.

speaker
Gonen

Yeah. So first, I think the major shift that happened, and you've seen the announcements on the software-defined vehicles, not just GM, for example. I think the idea is to look across the platform, across the entire enterprise. So it's not just how much does it cost to put the sensors on a specific program, but if you're able to amortize the same technology, the same architecture across your entire portfolio, then usually it makes more sense. It enables a higher cost on a specific platform. But for the breakdown, I think it's... The cameras are, the challenge is usually the processor, not the camera itself. LiDAR usually, at least on this stage, is mostly for the front tracing. So everybody are targeting sub $1,000, I guess. And for radars, again, it's flexible because you need 360 coverage. And again, as we mentioned before, there's a trend to get safety as standard to the mass market. And this allows more flexibility on the cost. So probably, I don't have the numbers, but probably about the same order of magnitude as LiDAR.

speaker
Arba

All of the radars together.

speaker
Gonen

All of the radars together.

speaker
Arba

All of the radars together is the order of magnitude of one LIDAR. Understood. Great. Thank you, everybody.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you, Suji. Now next is Gary.

speaker
Arba

Hey, Gary. How are you?

speaker
Gary

Hey, how are you? Can you hear me okay?

speaker
Arba

Yes.

speaker
Gary

Thanks for allowing me to ask a question. To try to figure out what the attach rate of your technology to some of your automotive OEM customers' products, how should we think about the use cases or how they're going to market this specific technology? Will it be a default safety feature that is spread across all of their various models? Or is this sort of an OEM ad on kind of like the Tesla Autopilot and requires sort of a $15,000 upgrade?

speaker
Gonen

You take it? Yeah. I'd say that the first description is more accurate. I think it's more like, especially on the OEM side, a set of features. Some of them are very complex, like GM announced the Ultra Cruise or the Super Cruise before. But it's going to be features you can... You can, I wouldn't say upgrade, but purchase on a common platform. And, of course, and again, as I mentioned before, the idea is to get to common platforms. You can upgrade and improve your vehicle during its lifecycle.

speaker
Gary

Great. Appreciate the cover. And then my final question, I just wanted to ask about any sort of, I guess, volatility in R&D expense, given maybe the tape out of some specific products. How should we think about the trajectory of R&D for the balance of the year? And that's it for me. Thank you.

speaker
Arbe

So the projection, we expect to increase our R&D expenses, of course. The mix will probably change because now we are in production and we are investing in that, and then our labor costs will be more investing in that part in coming years. We assume that on a percentage basis it will not change so dramatically out of revenue, but it will increase year over year.

speaker
Gary

Thank you.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you. Hi, we have Matthew from Maxine Group. Hi, Matthew.

speaker
Matthew

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe firstly, it wouldn't be a 2022 call if someone didn't ask about the supply chain. You were talking about starting to come towards material revenue. So what are you seeing and how do you feel about your ability to source to get towards the production levels you need?

speaker
Arba

So I think the fact that we choose Global Founders as our partner and 22nm as our process and being the first company to go to production in this process in automotive and the support that we are getting from global funders is really helping us to have the supply. We have the supply for this year, we have the supply for 2023, and of course we now need to work on 2024-25. As time goes by, we all understand that the shortage of semiconductors is here to stay. And it's here to stay at least until 2025, maybe even 2026. And we are working to make sure that our customers will be able to get their chips. Global Founders are aware exactly to our projections. They have our projections until 2025. And we are working together to make sure that our customers will get it. For 22, 23, we don't see any problem. For 24, we are now beginning to secure it. We have two years. It's enough, and we feel comfortable with the supply chain problem.

speaker
Matthew

Thanks. And then maybe if we could touch on just where competition is. have gone in the last, let's say, two or three quarters as you've become a little more public in your mission, and you're clearly gaining some traction in the automotive market. So are you hearing more noise? Is there more inertia coming behind competitors that are looking to rival you in imagery radar? Or how far ahead do you think you are today?

speaker
Arba

I think that the fact that by the end of the day it's a semiconductors issue is really helping us. So it takes to the large companies five to seven years to produce new chips. So for example, NXP, that were, I think, the pioneers in radar, they are just going to production by the end of this year with a processor that is order of magnitude lower than the performance that we have today and that we are going to production. So they are neck to neck with us in terms of production time, but their processor is going to be more expensive and 10% of the performance of our processor. What we see in the last two quarters is Intel Mobileye aggressively trying to get into the imaging radar market, they are working, but again, they will have a product in 2025, even with this aggressive approach, and we believe that this product won't be in the level of our product today, and we're already in the stages of advanced R&D for our 2025 product that will be much more advanced.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you. Thank you. Now we'll turn the call to Jamie. Jamie Perez.

speaker
Jamie

Good day, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. On the press release, we noted a few executive board members. Any potential more members to the executive staff that you're looking to add? Basically, I'm asking, what's your sort of A team for the company you want to Jamie, it's a little bit hard to hear you.

speaker
Arbe

Can you repeat the question?

speaker
Jamie

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sorry about that. We have a little problem over here. You added a few board members. Any more board members with expertise in the markets you want to have? How about Bill? Are you going to build out your management team even further? I just want to see if you have any color. I'm just... Just imagine, what would be your dream team at August?

speaker
Arba

I think, so as you mentioned, we added to our board members two automotive executives. They are helping us with the strategy and with focusing the company on where the opportunities are and also helping us to approach the OEMs in a high level, not on the level of the radar, but on the level of the decision makers. Gonen, that recently joined us, brings a lot of experience in taking radar into production. And I think this is exactly what we need at this stage. Someone from the industry, understand radar, understand where are the challenges, what should be the next generation, where we should lead the company. And we feel comfortable that with the head of Gonen, our management team can really deliver our targets for the next decade.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you, Kobi. So the first question is, how has the automotive imaging radar market evolved over the past quarter?

speaker
Arba

I think we definitely see in the market a shift towards imaging radar. So if last year it was nice to have for a high level of autonomy, every car manufacturer almost has a program of adapting imaging radar for his front-facing radar, and this is why we see many RFPs, RFQs in the market. And we are engaged with the leading tier ones for that and with very good partners for radar. And they are submitting RFPs, RFQs, proposals based on our chipset. And I think what we see now is only... We mentioned earlier that every RFP, RFQ is something like 400,000 to a million units per year. This is per car manufacturer. So if you're trying to look on the entire market, we are talking about tens of millions of radar chipset from Arbe as a potential market for the next three to five years.

speaker
Arbe

Great. Next question comes from David Green. Please comment on Inoviz for $4 billion deal. Doesn't LiDAR have disadvantages in comparison to imaging radar? Can it affect ARBEC?

speaker
Arba

So, first of all, we are really excited to hear our Israeli friends from Innoviz winning such an amazing deal. I think it's a great sign of excellency for the Israeli auto tech industry. And we are really proud to be in the same industry with Innoviz. Basically, every car manufacturer that chooses a front-facing LiDAR chooses also at least a front-facing radar. But on top of it, between four to five, even sometimes six, other radars get the full 360 coverage. So you can be sure that every car company that has one LiDAR will have also a very strong imaging radar. You don't choose the LiDAR like this without also adding a radar. LiDAR has a lot of advantages, especially on the azimuth resolution, but a lot of disadvantages in weather, lighting condition, and long range. It's a complementary product, and we feel comfortable with that. I think even... The great supporters of vision-only approach in the past, like Mobileye, understand today that in order to have the functionality of level 2+, level 3, you need also imaging radar and sometimes even LiDAR.

speaker
Arbe

Next question. Will radar and LiDAR compete against Tesla version of vision-only? Who will capture greater market share?

speaker
Gonen

Yeah, I can comment to this. I think vision only can get you that far. I'm not sure it will be the same market. As we said, the leap to get from comfort and assist to limited availability to a safer driving function across the board will include vision and radars. So I don't think that will be a competition eventually. It's different grades of performance and safety.

speaker
Arba

I agree. I think Tesla will find a way to bring in imaging radar in the future.

speaker
Gonen

At some point.

speaker
Arba

At some point, at least if they want to achieve also safety and not just a nice-to-have feature.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you. Another question. Could you give some color on the customer engagement stage, time frame, potential orders?

speaker
Arba

So as I mentioned earlier, the potential order of each one of our OEM clients is between half a million to a million units per year, which represent something like a $50 to $100 million opportunity in revenues for Arbe. We have today two large OEMs that we are in a pre-production stage with them. We have, you've seen the video of Hyundai, together with Hyundai Mobis, their tier one. We finished POC and basically, as you can understand from the movie, this is waiting for final decision on adopting the technology. And also worth mentioning, Bike, one of our shareholders and one of the largest car manufacturers in China that stated that they will use our radar for level 2 plus level 3. We are in around 20 different stages of engagements, RFP, RFQ, or early volume with other clients. And we also announced that we won AutoX, the largest Robotaxi player in China and one of the leading players in the States.

speaker
Arbe

Thank you, Corby. Now we are turning to our last question for today's call. We will be answering the rest of your question via email if you choose to do so. So last question comes from Scott. It looks like you have enough cash to execute plan. Does this exclude acquisition? So the cash raised in the business combination is enough to get us through our break-even point, which is expected one year after our production, our full production, end of 23, beginning of early 24. And again, as we previously stated about acquisitions, we currently do not plan anything, but if an interesting opportunity will raise itself... we will of course consider.

speaker
Operator

Thank you everyone again for being with us today. We look forward to continuing to update you on Arba's progress in the upcoming months. Until then, you are invited to reach out to the team with any questions or comments. Thank you and goodbye for now.

Disclaimer

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