$KOPN Earnings Call Live

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning to everyone and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. The first quarter and subsequent weeks marks one of the most exciting stretches in Kopin's history. We continue to grow our defense order book across the United States and Europe. We also advanced our microLED technology platforms and announced a strategic collaboration with Fabric AI that we believe meaningfully expands the long-term opportunity set and sustainable acceleration of revenue growth for Kopin. Today I'll walk you through three areas. First, the Fabric AI collaboration and the launch of our jointly developed Neural IO optical interconnect technology for AI infrastructure. Second, our continued momentum across all global defense markets, including new orders, our entry into first-person viewer drone technologies, and the major thermal imaging follow-on contract awarded subsequent to quarter end. And third, our strategic investments, including bringing OLED micro display manufacturing in-house at our Westboro headquarters facility here in Massachusetts, and how we're positioning the defense business for the long-term exponential and sustainable revenue growth at higher profit margins.

First, let me start with the most consequential announcement we've made this year. Recently, we announced a strategic collaboration with Fabric AI, an AI infrastructure development company building the advanced core capabilities for AI factories that power large-scale artificial intelligence workloads. Together, Kopin and Fabric AI are joint in development of a new product family we call Neural IO that is designed to dramatically increase bandwidth speeds, decrease power consumption, and importantly lower overall operational costs of currently operating data centers and new data centers alike. Neural IO is built on Kopin's proprietary microLED technology and our patented bidirectional neural display architecture. What we've done is repurpose programmable microLED pixels as ultra-high-speed optical transceivers. Devices that move data at extremely high bandwidth using photons of light instead of electrons traveling through copper wires. This matters for one simple reason. Today, data center equipment and GPUs relies on dense copper interconnections to talk to each other. And those copper interconnections are now the binding constraint on AI data center performance and power consumption. AI factories are running into the limits of what copper can do both in terms of bandwidth and in terms of the energy required to push data and cool the systems. Neural IO is designed to break through those limits by using each microLED pixel as a high-speed optical transmitter. We are designing chip-to-chip, board-to-board, and rack-to-rack communications that target the same functional outcome as copper while consuming a fraction of the power. To use the words of Matt Kimell, principal analyst at Moore Insights and Strategy, quote, 'The ability to enable connectivity that delivers the full throughput of an accelerator without taxing the power budget has been a persistent challenge in the industry. Kopin's LED technology presents a unique and compelling value proposition. Moreover, this marks a completely new era in data transmission, bandwidth, and designing of electronic systems.' End quote.

Several recent articles estimate that the AI infrastructure optical transceiver market is expected to reach between 69 to 90 billion by 2030. Of that total spending, the United States Department of Defense and Government Systems is the second largest consumer of this technology behind the traditional hyperscaler markets. This is why Kopin and Fabric AI decided to focus on each of these individual markets separately. This relationship was forged with a clear intent of relentless focus on addressing this massive market in the right ways with the right people to promote exponential and profitable growth with the proper resources required. Kopin will support the absolute and clear requirements of the United States government and Department of War for US production of AI chips and chipsets with our US-based microLED production line we are installing as part of our Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Act award or IBAS award. This custom-designed production line will support the Neural IO family of chipsets for the United States Department of War and government customers. Fabric AI chipsets and our new color microLED products for programs like Soldier Born Mission Command and many others will also be produced on this production line and I will expand on that more later. Under our agreement with Fabric AI and in addition to the 15 million initial purchase order to fund the demonstrable chipset, which we expect to be completed by the end of 2026, Kopin owns 19.9% of Fabric AI and Kopin is their exclusive manufacturer of Neural IO chipsets. The collaboration combines our deep expertise in microLED material process development, yield optimization and manufacturing with Fabric AI's system-level design and go-to-market focus on hyperscaler AI infrastructure. We believe this is a true technology partnership. Kopin brings the enabling hardware and together we are building an infrastructure layer that AI data centers will require to scale for years to come. In addition to our 19.9% equity stake in Fabric AI, Kopin's shareholders have direct exposure to the upside of this opportunity beyond the manufacturing economics. Fabric AI has raised the required capital to fund this development and staff the business appropriately as Kopin completes the Neural IO prototypes. We will share more on the development roadmap and customer engagements as it advances in later calls. Infrastructure is being deployed at an unprecedented pace and the bottlenecks created by traditional copper interconnects are precisely the kind of problem our technology is well suited to solving. We believe this collaboration dramatically expands Kopin's market opportunity and positions us as a strategic enabler in the next wave of AI acceleration. And it fits very well within our core skill sets and capabilities leading microLED development and manufacturing here in the United States. While there are competitors attempting to develop their own solutions like Kopin's, most are startups and have never produced this technology previously. Others are established firms in the copper or fiber optic transceiver markets which have not produced this technology previously either, which provides Kopin a significant market advantage from a timing, yield, and quality perspective since we are actively producing this technology today.

Now, turning to defense, our first quarter and the period defense reflects continued strong order momentum across our core programs and meaningful expansion into new ones. Let me walk through the highlights chronologically. In January, our strategic partnership with Theon International produced its first order on Darkwave platform, a $1 million development order to bring the 960P OLED Darkwave module to production readiness. This is a significant opportunity and milestone because Darkwave enables users of traditional monochrome night vision goggles to upgrade them as a retrofit with full color augmented reality enabled symbology and full motion digital interface and interlacing feeds including drone imagery. Our Darkwave module is the foundation of Theon's upcoming Dark Eye product with more than 2 million estimated NVGs in use globally and a global NVG market projected to grow from 8.6 billion in 2025 to 12.9 billion in 2030. Darkwave targets a very large aftermarket opportunity. And because the system is ITAR free, it opens up a new global market for both companies. In February, we announced two new European helmet mounted display orders. First, a $2 million micro display production order from a tier 1 European defense contractor for a rotary wing helmet mounted display system. And second, a $3.6 million purchase order from an advanced avionic helmet mounted display system to be integrated into a rotary wing military aircraft from yet another European defense customer. Together, these awards bring our pilot helmet mounted display order book above $10 million and underscore the strength of our display solutions across both US and European defense aviation. Indeed, our European business plan and focus is starting to provide new customers and applications, which will only increase our order book, provide more global business independence and stability while increasing our European facility absorption rates. In March, we were awarded a phase one SBIR contract from the United States government to advance new full color yet smaller form factor microLED display technology purpose designed for soldier born and weapons sight application. This is the second microLED focused US Army award we've received in the past six months and it builds directly on the existing $15.4 million IBAS contract awarded in September of 2025 which is focused on developing domestic production capabilities for our microLED displays. The microLED architecture under development is engineered to deliver the brightness, ruggedness and power efficiency required for next generation weapon sights, helmet mounted visual information systems and other precise targeting devices. The kind of capability that scales across multiple defense programs. In April, we announced our entry into the first-person viewer drone market with the launch of our Sentinel FPV product. Drone pilots need high resolution headsets connected to the cameras on the drones to control it as if they were in quote unquote the pilot seat of the drone. We received an initial $3.2 million order with potential delivery of up to 40,000 goggles by the end of 2028. What makes Sentinel unique is something we call dual situational awareness or dual SA. Unlike traditional FPV goggles that fully block out the operator's peripheral view, Sentinel is engineered to deliver high-definition drone imagery while preserving the user's peripheral awareness of their surroundings. No other FPV goggle on the market provides this level of hands-free integration awareness. In field trials, drone pilots love the demonstrated dramatic improvements in survivability, mission effectiveness, pilot dexterity, and safety that Sentinel provides. We believe this technology has potential to redefine what a tactical FPV system looks like. And we're actively engaged with additional drone and FPV companies to integrate Sentinel into their platforms. Further, this technology is built in the United States which is mandated by the FMS and the Department of War. Also subsequent to quarter end, we announced a $21.5 million follow-on production contract from a major US prime to manufacture custom thermal imaging eyepieces and assemblies for a man-portable thermal weapon system. This award expands our growing backlog and reinforces Kopin's role as a trusted US-based supplier of mission-critical vision systems for the warfighter. With more than 400,000 mission-critical solutions delivered across multiple generations of defense programs, this contract is a strong vote of confidence in our manufacturing capability and our ability to deliver American-made technology that performs in the harshest of environments. Taken together, the orders we've announced over the last several months, Darkwave with the European HMD awards, the SBIR for soldier-born microLEDs, Sentinel FPV, and the 21 million thermal imaging follow-on award reflect both the durability of recurring order rates of our existing defense business and the confidence of our government, North American, and new European prime contractor customers have in the new product lines we're bringing to market. As a reminder, many of our defense programs have congressional budget demands through 2030 and several of our contracts are sole sourced indefinite demand and indefinite delivery or IDIQ which provides additional upside flexibility above what is currently on order, recurring revenue and forecastability and sustainability for several years.

Now I want to spend a few minutes in the third area as I mentioned at the top of the call on our strategic investments and what they tell you about how we are deploying our cash. After quarter end, we announced the purchase of a state-of-the-art OLED deposition system and related equipment to establish full-scale OLED micro display production at our Westboro headquartered facility. For the past several years, Kopin has operated under a fabless OLED production model, leveraging external partners. The reason we are bringing this capability in-house now is straightforward. We are experiencing a substantial, quantifiable and qualified surge in customer demand for fully US-built OLED micro displays, particularly for systems like Sentinel, thermal weapon sights and other soldier born mission critical defense applications. Bringing OLED manufacturing capability in-house gives us greater speed, flexibility, and cost efficiency to respond to that demand. We will continue to leverage our established Asian manufacturing partners for consumer and medical applications that do not have a domestic production requirement. And we will continue to use our European OLED deposition partner for NATO aligned defense programs as well. The US OLED capability is additive, designed specifically to support the US defense market. I want to be very clear about the message this investment is intended to send which is that we are comfortable with our cash position and our facility footprint to deliver this increased demand. The capital we raised in 2025 was raised with this level of growth and investment in mind. The OLED deposition decision is exactly the kind of investment that strengthens our defense business going forward. It expands sovereign supply chain options for our defense customers. It improves our control over quality, lead times, and pricing. And it complements our existing US manufacturing capabilities for AMLCD, FLOS, microLED and now OLED. Kopin remains the only company in the United States manufacturing four types of micro displays, optics and soon photonics for the US defense customers who are increasingly demanding and in some cases must by law purchase from trusted domestic producers for critical components. Clearly Kopin is answering that call. Turning to the operational side, our investments in automation continue to deliver meaningful improvements in throughput, quality, consistency, and cost efficiencies. Both phases of our optical automation program are now operational, and we expect these investments to deliver about $1 million in annual operating expense savings and add to overall production capacity as they reach full utilization. From an advanced technology perspective, our neural display technology continues to advance and as noted earlier has now extended beyond defense and industrial display applications into AI infrastructure through our collaboration with Fabric AI and our Neural IO initiatives. The neural display platform leverages advanced processing and AI enabled backplane and offers display optimization to enhance image quality, reduce power consumption and improve overall user experience across the markets we serve. This display technology has several of the largest consumer companies interested in it for AI enabled smart glasses and we are now working to create a partnership to deliver neural display as a microLED device rather than an OLED device which is the current demonstrable device as it stands today. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, Neural IO transceiver is not just a single chip strategy. It will be a family of devices focused on application specific solutions within the AI GPU, CPU and memory architecture of an existing data center and new data centers alike. These new chipsets will be developed with several of the largest semiconductor and AI infrastructure companies in the world. Several of whom are actively engaged with Kopin to work on these solutions. And one of the only manufacturers in the world capable of producing four types of micro displays and now AI interconnection chipset solutions within the United States, Kopin maintains a unique competitive advantage that enables us to deliver the right technology for the customer specific application in defense, industrial, medical and now AI infrastructure applications.

So to summarize, the first quarter of 2026 together with the events we've announced subsequent to quarter end represent a meaningful inflection point for Kopin. We extended our microLED and neural display platforms into AI infrastructure through our Fabric AI collaboration. We have launched several new products and received initial orders with Darkwave to bring full color to the enormous monochrome night vision goggle market and with Sentinel FPV for the massively expanding global drone goggle market as well. These new activities speak to the disciplined productivity of our internal research and development spending as these new technologies are attracting new customers and new market segments for Kopin. These new platforms enable Kopin to sell these products to multiple customers globally and are not just a custom product for just a single customer, making our forward-looking recurring revenue more balanced and forecastable. Within the quarter, we grew our defense backlog with a $21.5 million thermal imaging follow-on order, a $3.2 million initial Sentinel FPV order, over $5 million of new European HMD awards, a phase one SBIR for soldier-born microLEDs, and the first Darkwave order from Theon. We invested in our strategic priorities by committing to bringing full-scale OLED micro display manufacturing in-house in Westboro. And we did all of this while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Consequently, we reiterate our 2026 revenue guidance range of 52 million to 60 million, which we believe remains appropriate and conservative given the order momentum we are seeing across both our existing defense business and our newer growth programs. As more programs and awards are converted into shippable orders and as our newer programs ramp, we expect to provide further updates throughout the year. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO Eric Mans to review our first quarter 2026 financial results in further detail. Eric,

Before we open up for questions, I want to leave you with this. Our progress in 2026 here today represents a meaningful step forward in Kopin's strategic evolution, the second phase of our transformation plan. We extended our core microLED and neural display platform into AI infrastructure through our collaboration with Fabric AI. We grew our defense order book across the US and Europe and entered into the high growth FPV drone market. We grew our defense order book and clearly have differentiated products like Sentinel FPV. We invested behind our defense business with a major commitment to US OLED micro display manufacturing and we did so while maintaining a strong balance sheet. What sets Kopin apart is very straightforward. We are the only company in the world manufacturing four types of micro displays, the inventors of the bidirectional AI enabled micro display, and we are the sole source provider on several Department of War programs of record that have many years of sustained production ahead of us. And our technology platform is now being deployed across some of the fastest growing market segments in defense and soon AI infrastructure. We believe 2026 is the year this company begins to demonstrate the full potential of everything we have built and we are just getting started. And with that, operator, I'll open the call for some questions.

It does. Yes, we're being very conservative on the forecast, Jason. We want to make sure that we're able to support the current order book as well as the new AI infrastructure chipset. So that's a very conservative forecast for this year.

Sure. So, I can't go into too much detail. As folks are aware, Kopin has a customer in a fixed-wing application that we've been supporting with our LCD technology. Our LCD business this year is increasing somewhat marginally. However, our OLED development, we expect to be in low-rate initial production by the end of this year, maybe into Q1 or the first half of next year in OLED specifically, Jason. So, we're expecting to see new OLED orders for that platform I'd say by the end of this year. The forecast that we've seen is larger than expected and I can't go into too much more detail than that.

Thank you.

JT, first two questions are about guidance.

And then Fabric AI.

Yeah. No, I think we're being uber conservative. We want to make sure that we're able to achieve our forecast and overcome the forecast that we've given. And I think there's definite upside in the forecast that we've given. But nothing negative. We don't see any pullbacks. I think we're probably a little gun-shy from the government shutdowns in Q3 and Q4 of last year. So, we want to make sure that we overcome the forecast that we put out this year.

Great question. So, the OLED deposition line that we're going to install in Westboro has the benefit of being able to use the backend processing machinery that we already have or will be installing as part of our IBAS award. So the overall capex is far less than I would say most people think for this OLED deposition line, but we think the capex that we're going to spend this year is roughly around $5 million over the course of the year and about the same roughly for next year.

Indeed you are. Christian, I would not have spent the money to put in an OLED deposition line if we didn't see tremendous demand from very real customers that we vetted and are participating in these conversations with the Department of War and I think your assumptions are correct. The numbers that we're seeing as congressional line items of record are 1 million drones in the budget this year and a third of those will be first-person view. 3 million in 2027-28 time frame. A third of those will be first-person viewers and out of the drone dominance competition, we can confidently say that we're in several of them with our Sentinel product. Either selling displays or selling a display with an optic or selling a full Sentinel device. So we have three different ways that we can claim revenue in first-person view drones. But for the audience, I think I was corrected by one of our teammates here in how I was thinking about drones. And the words are very sharp, so I apologize for that, but the words are this. Drones are the new bullets and first-person viewers are the gun. And that stuck with me and that shaped my thinking around the volume potential here in the United States for first-person viewer goggles, for the displays and optics that are required with them and the fact that they have to be by law built here in the United States and they cannot use Chinese materials even glass or OLED materials itself. So that provides Kopin with a very unique opportunity for growth and our customers that know now that we have our own OLED deposition machine coming and will be operational around this time next year producing panels for them are very excited that Kopin will be in this market and definitely driving efficiencies and price and full integrated application-specific solutions for them. So very exciting times for us.

Yes, so I'll start with Kopin has microLEDs in production today and they're very difficult, Christian, to manufacture. I think if you were to ask the companies that have either acquired startups or have tried to build microLEDs before that aren't focused on it or specializing in it, it is very difficult technology to make. As an example, in our 2K monochrome device, there are 16 million individual sub-pixels that we have to get perfect to be able to deliver that device. That is a tremendous amount of engineering and capability and to be able to manufacture that at scale is something that Kopin has worked very diligently on for years and I think our competitors are figuring out that it's not just throwing a bunch of LEDs onto a backplane. It is very difficult technology to build and they're struggling with it and we see them struggling with it. Many of them have approached Kopin to help. So we know how to build this technology. We build it today. It is in production flying in an aircraft today and we invented the bi-directional micro display two years ago. In fact, we demonstrate it actively. We can demonstrate Neural Display which is a bi-directional display today. We demonstrate our microLED that has 1.8 million foot-lamberts of brightness which is about 6-8 million nits of brightness which is basically the level of a laser. And we produce that and demonstrate it today. So, we have all the pieces and more importantly, the Department of War is funding Kopin to build a high-rate microLED production line right here in the United States. And that production line will be capable of millions of units. So, we're in a very good position to be early in this market to lead this market. And we have great relationships and funding now to deliver that technology very early and I think it's going to be a huge revenue driver for us this year of at least $15 million. Next year at least $25 million is what we're seeing right now. Potentially up to $50 million of revenue and the year after that I think this chipset could be larger than our entire defense business. That's my personal opinion. So very large opportunity set for us. We have unique skill set to deliver it and we're here in the United States focused on the number two consumer of AI infrastructure which is the Department of War and the US government.

Thanks Christian.

Great question Josh and welcome to the call and the team. Firstly, you're seeing significant investment from the largest GPU manufacturers in the world. I think it's fair to say Nvidia spent over $6 billion in this space over the last few months.

We're seeing other GPU...

CPU memory companies invest in the same into many startup companies that are out there. And M&A is prevalent right now in this space. I think what we're going to see is demonstrable systems this year at least from Kopin and Fabric AI that will demonstrate the capability of moving photons faster, quicker, cheaper at lower power consumption and lower overall cost than that of copper or fiber optics. And for us more specifically, where we fit isn't everywhere. It is very much focused on chip-to-chip, board-to-board, and rack-to-rack. That's where microLEDs, I think, will find their home because of our ability to transmit data over certain lengths. So, I think you're going to see the market start to segment between those areas of chip-to-chip, board-to-board, and rack-to-rack. I think the differentiating factor is rack-to-rack and then rack-to-external racks or floors where fiber optics are going to be used more predominantly. And then from a copper interconnect perspective, I think that market is going to start to shrink very rapidly as these new technologies get adopted next year and certainly into 2028.

You bet. So, right now, Kopin is actively working with multiple four-letter agencies to align funding. As an example, NIST has a BAA funding line with multiple billions of dollars listed on it. Also, the CHIPS Act also has many billions of dollars available for AI infrastructure available and we are actively working with those funding agencies and funding lines as we sit here today.

Great question. So either by luck or by intelligence, I'm not sure which one. Kopin's microLED product is programmable. So one of the things that I started when I joined Kopin is software-defined everything. And if we're able to use a programmable microLED to interface to the brownfield, meaning already existing AI infrastructure, meaning an H100 or an older CPU as an example, and we're able to interface to those CPUs or GPU boards, either in a board-to-board configuration, as an example, or rack-to-rack configuration, we can program our chip to talk to the brownfield, the existing equipment and then our receiver side will be talking through programmability to the new chip potentially an H200 or B300 or whatever it might be. And that programmability sets us apart as well and we're doing so because a lot of the customers that we talk to do not want to rip and replace their entire system. A, it works, B, it's very difficult to change and C, it's already paid for. So we want to be very flexible but we can always move to more of an ASIC platform to remove the cost of programmability but I don't think that's the right thing to do right now. I think getting programmable microLEDs called Neural IO to our customers and in our customers' hands will further the adoption rate and allow that adoption rate to increase more exponentially if it's programmable.

Great question.

Great question. So, yes, in the United States, I think Kopin is very unique in our focus. And going back to a question that I get asked all the time, why Fabric AI? And often, Fabric is there to focus on the hyperscaler markets and staff appropriately with the people that know that market and understand that market. While Kopin understands the defense, Department of War, and the government market specific to four-letter agencies, etc., we know how to talk to those folks. We sell to those folks today and we're actively engaged in that market. And I think we're a very unique supplier in this case. Since the Department of War is paying for this production line in the first place, they get the benefit of not only paying for that production line, but as we utilize it with Neural IO, it brings down our costs and increases our absorption rate of that production line for our color microLED program, which, you know, the government wins twice in that case. So yes, I think there's better margins in the United States government and defense industry for this technology. In terms of European and Southeast Asia and NATO, quite frankly, we haven't reached a partnership yet. We're not engaged in those conversations yet. And we are working to have some partnership discussions with folks that are in that market and can support us in those areas, but we're not there yet.

If it has a camera on it and is controlled, we can use Sentinel FPV. The question becomes is do you need to use a headset versus a panel? And if it's for the smaller drone sets, the individual strikers as an example, what we're seeing is that the warfighter wants to be able to have that first-person viewer on their helmet and be able to remove it or at least look through it and have that dual situational awareness that we talked about and the ability to flip up that headset so they can fight. So in terms of the soldier-worn, soldier-borne type of system, I think we have a great product in Sentinel and it would be used for the vast majority of those drones. Specific to the 1 million to 3 million drones, we think a third of those will be using first-person viewers that are either helmet-mounted or glass-mounted on the face.

Wonderful operator. Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone joining us today. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to updating you on our progress in the months to come. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to our IR firm MZ Group who would be happy to answer them and or set a call with management for a follow-up. Thank you all very much. Have a great day.