Hello and welcome to Stocks on Under. Today we're talking to Coby Hanoch, the CEO of Weebit Nano. Good morning, Coby.
We've had a lot of interviews like this over the last, I think, seven or eight years. And this one today is special, and we'll get to that, but it's special in a way that I think what we announced last week is actually pretty pivotal. We'll talk about that in a minute, but let's go back about six, seven months ago when you signed the onsemi deal. I know a lot of people are waiting to hear what's happened since. And I know, of course, it's all confidential, but in general terms maybe you can update us on what's happened with that deal and more generally about what sort of the initial work is involved. You know, once you sign a foundry like that, what's happening in the first couple of months and say the first 12 months of such a deal?
So first of all, onsemi is not a foundry, it's an IDM, which is a big difference. An IDM not only manufactures semiconductors, it actually designs its own product. So it's also the customer of the fab, and that makes a big difference. And with onsemi we can clearly feel it. First of all, to answer your question, things are moving really, really well with onsemi. They are very serious. They put in place quite a team that's working with us, and we have many meetings per week and really pushing this forward very fast. And you know, there are the two sides of it. So there's the side of manufacturing where, like with other fabs, like with DB Hi-Tech or previously with SkyWater, we need to teach them how to manufacture our technology, the technology transfer, what we call, and that's been going very well. We've been working with them. You know, there's always the adapting our technology and the way that we did things at Leti or elsewhere to the specific environment that onsemi has, to their specific machines and so on. And that's been going really well. There's also the work with, you know, since it is a product company and I can't go into confidential information of onsemi, but obviously they didn't sign this just so that they can manufacture, and they are also looking at using this in products. And so we have been talking to their product teams and explaining to them how our ReRAM can fit into their designs, etc. So overall, it's really very, very good cooperation, very close. They have an amazing team, we're very impressed with their team and making good progress there.
Right. And so in general terms, if you look at deals like this, it's about sort of, you know, starting to work together with these teams. Are there any sort of specifics in the initial stages of deals like that?
It's pretty much straightforward. Well, straightforward. It's so complex and everything. Working with them on the technology transfer requires quite a team on our side, quite a team on their side, and analyzing every step of the manufacturing process and making sure that it works. And in the beginning you start off by just testing things, trying to manufacture just the resistive layer. Then you go and you do, you know, one memory bit you try to manufacture and check it out. So there are a lot of little steps on the way. It's really, I mean, you know, if you look at the Gantt, it has like an unbelievable number of steps and all the activities that need to go on. But basically, you know, I think the high-level summary is we go through the full manufacturing cycle, we explain to them, we show them how it's done. We check what their machines are and how we need to maybe make some modifications or changes or updates, and of course getting close now to having it ready and to being able to get the test chip out.
All right. You mentioned DB Hi-Tech before, which is a foundry, of course. That earlier was my mistake on onsemi, but yeah, DB Hi is a foundry. Can you update us on what's going on there because you're obviously sort of further down the line in terms of the progress with DB Hi-Tech, and also what the next steps would be with this one?
So overall things with DB Hi-Tech are going well. You know, we again have a very good team cooperating well with us. We're very happy with them. Over there, of course, we already finished the technology transfer. We manufactured initial wafers. We saw that they're working. DB Hi-Tech actually demonstrated them in a big conference in Germany and in their booth and showed it to customers. So they started now to talk to customers also about this technology. So overall things in that sense are looking good. We did have one, I guess, I don't know if to call it a hiccup or a challenge. They use a different kind of machine than what we used in the past in Leti or in SkyWater, and that caused some challenges and some delays in the work. So we actually had to do some modifications and changes and make this work with their machine. At that time there was also a customer that came and actually added some requirement that after discussions we decided we will also address that need. So a few things came in the middle that actually made the schedule longer, and that's why the qualification, I initially was hoping that we would already be after qualification or at the end of qualification by now. It is somewhat delayed, I think, you know, for a good reason when it's requests that they're basically, DB Hi-Tech is reflecting requests that they see from customers. So we still are on plan to close this qualification before the end of the year. Meanwhile we are already talking to product companies, both companies that Weebit is bringing to the table and also companies that DB Hi-Tech is already talking to and from their customer base or the people that they knew. So this is really moving forward and that's of course the big thing. The big thing is to get the qualification done and then start going out to the many companies that will manufacture at DB Hi-Tech.
Yeah, that was one of the questions I had, Coby. So the next step in terms of DB Hi-Tech, it would be once you do the qualification, you move on to commercialization. How does that work? And you alluded to it already a bit. So DB Hi-Tech's got clients that will want ReRAM in their products. You may have a few, but can you talk us through how that works? It's as you've explained in the past, you know, it's a sort of a chicken and egg thing with foundries. They need to have this in place before customers can actually sort of order into their or design it into their product. But maybe you can enlighten us a little bit in terms of the commercialization steps from here on in with DB Hi-Tech.
Yeah. So I think in previous calls that we had, I used to refer to this golden triangle. You know, there's Weebit that's supplying the technology, there's the foundry that manufactures it, and there's the product company that embeds our technology into their device and then they go to the foundry to manufacture. So you really need to get all three players to work together. Weebit and DB Hi-Tech are working very closely together. Both sides are looking for customers, product companies that will use this. Obviously DB Hi-Tech wouldn't have entered this whole project if they didn't know in advance that they have customers that want to use this. So there are people already in the background that are waiting to see this move forward. You know, a lot of companies want to see the qualification done. They just, you know, they say, we'll just wait. We want to see the qualification and then we'll go in. But there are quite a few who can see already the potential, who can see that we have working chips and they can see the demo chip and so on. So with those guys we are progressing and of course we need to get a design license with them. So with the fabs and IDMs we sign manufacturing license agreements. With a product company, it's a design license agreement, and we are working now with several of the potential product companies that want to manufacture at DB Hi-Tech.
