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WEEBIT NANO LTD (WBT) - Beyond Flash: How Weebit Nano's ReRAM is Transforming Semiconductor Memory

• Andrew Musgrave

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Memory technology might seem mundane, but it's actually at the heart of the most exciting technology revolution we're experiencing today. In this fascinating conversation with Coby Hanoch, CEO of Weebit Nano Limited, we explore how this Australian-listed semiconductor company is pioneering the next generation of non-volatile memory.

Traditional Flash memory simply can't keep up with the demands of modern AI applications, especially at the edge where devices need to process information locally rather than sending everything to the cloud. Weebit's resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology solves this problem by enabling smaller, more efficient, and more secure memory solutions. As Coby explains, their recent automotive qualification (AEC Q100) proves their technology can withstand extreme conditions—operating at 150°C for 10 years—making it suitable for virtually any application worldwide.

What makes Weebit's story particularly compelling is their emerging position as the only independent supplier of ReRAM technology. While competitors have fallen by the wayside, Weebit has secured partnerships with semiconductor powerhouses like OnSemi (a NASDAQ 100 company) and DB HiTek. With over $90 million in cash, they're poised for significant growth as the industry increasingly recognizes ReRAM as Flash memory's successor. If you're curious about the technologies that will power everything from your smartphone to autonomous vehicles in the coming years, this episode provides a rare glimpse into a critical but often overlooked sector of the tech industry.

Andrew Musgrave Host

Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs, where we speak with leaders driving innovation across Australia's listed companies, and today we're joined by Coby Hanoch, the CEO of Weebit Nano Limited, a semiconductor technology company revolutionising memory technology through its proprietary Resistive RAM. Coby, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast. 

Coby Hanoch Guest

Good afternoon. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now Coby. For listeners that may be unfamiliar with Weebit Nano, can you just provide a brief overview of the company? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

Yes, so Weebit is in the semiconductor space. Semiconductors, as I'm not sure if everyone is really aware of, are really everywhere. That's what really drives our economy and all the electronic devices that we have around us. These devices need memory and Weebit is developing a new technology for non-volatile memory, which is the memory that doesn't lose its content when you unplug it from power, like a USB stick or an SSD drive, etc. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and congratulations on the AEC Q100 qualification. So how does this achievement position the company in automotive and other high reliability markets? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

So AEC is an organization that was formed by the leading automotive companies, and they defined a standard which you have to meet in order to be accepted in the automotive market and the automotive market is really one of the most extreme ones, if you think about the heat that you have in engines and braking systems and in all kinds of things like that. So, one of the key criteria is that you can operate at 150 degrees for 10 years. You need to have very high level of endurance, etc. So, when we achieved a AEC Q100, it basically sent a message to the world that this technology is really robust, really strong. It can meet practically any application in the world actually.

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now you've demonstrated edge AI capability through the EMASS collaboration. So, what differentiates ReRAM in enabling ultra-low power AI applications compared to alternatives like MRAM? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

So, first of all, you know I don't need to say that AI is now everywhere and it's growing so fast and so rapidly. AI consists of two main parts. There's the learning part, where it learns to do something, and then there's the inference, where it actually uses the knowledge that it got to perform a certain activity. Now, the learning part requires huge compute power and memories and everything, and that's done in what's called the cloud, you know, in the huge data centres. However, the inference part that's something that everyone realizes today it has to be done at the edge devices, at all of those devices that are spread out everywhere, because transferring all the data to the data centre requires huge bandwidth and power and all kinds of other things. Now, when you're dealing with the inference at the edge, edge devices are normally, you know, the chips in the edge devices are normally manufactured in small geometries for many reasons for speed, capacity, all kinds of things, and so the existing technology that everyone's been using up to now Flash cannot scale to those levels. So, the only solutions you have are the new technologies like ReRAM or, like you mentioned, MRAM. The thing about MRAM is beyond the fact that it is very expensive to manufacture and uses rare earth materials and things like that. It's magnetic. The M stands for magnetic and there have already been cases where devices using MRAM in the field were surrounded by magnetic fields and memories were corrupted. So, re-RAM is really the solution. 

Now, what people have been doing up to now is they basically had two chips. They had one chip, which was the AI chip, and then a separate chip which was a flash chip. Flash is the old technology, and they would keep all of the AI coefficients on the flash chip and when they turn on the system they would copy everything from the flash into the AI chip. They had what's called an SRAM. It's a volatile memory that is very fast and operate. The thing is well, two chips are all obviously more expensive and there's a big security issue when you copy everything from flash to the AI chip, everyone can eavesdrop on that. 

So, replacing the SRAM with a ReRAM now you have a non-volatile solution, so you can have just one chip. You don't have the security risk. It's a non-volatile system, so you can turn it off. If you know the, the device isn't operating and the ReRAM bits are much smaller than SRAM, so you can actually have many more bits on the same piece of silicon and have a higher level of accuracy. So, this is a very hot domain and Weebit is becoming a key player, I would say, or definitely wanting to grow into being a key player in this domain. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and you've made solid progress with onsemi's Treo platform. So, what's the timeline for mass production and royalty generation under this agreement? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

So, first of all, onsemi was a huge win for us. This is already one of the big players in the market. I know that people in Australia might not know the name. This used to be Motorola Communication that spun out and it's a very big. It's a NASDAQ 100 company, and they have set up this new Treo platform. For them, this is really the big thing that will move the company forward and obviously, when you do something like that, you don't want an old technology like Flash. So, they brought us in and we're now, I believe, a key element in that Treo platform, which is, you know, it impacted the whole market first of all. Everyone is now noticing Weebit after that agreement. onsemi is putting a lot of effort into this. They're really pushing this very hard and we're making really fast progress with them. We haven't published a timeline for when exactly we will be qualified there and I'm not sure if they want to disclose it. 

Actually, one thing that's very important to understand, onsemi is one of the few companies that not only designs chips, it actually manufactures as well. So, it manufactures its own products. It's what's called an IDM. It's not a foundry. Most companies in the industry are either foundries that just do manufacturing and that's all, they don't have any products, or they're what called fabless like Apple, Facebook, google, Qualcomm, et cetera, Nvidia that they do products but they go to the foundries to manufacture. Very few are capable of manufacturing their own devices. So onsemi, in this case, took us in because they want to put us in their devices and I don't think they published right now a schedule for when they want to have the devices out. But I can tell you they're putting a lot of energy, a lot of focus, on making this happen as fast as possible. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And with wafers already manufactured at DB HiTek, how far are you from commercial qualification and what are the next steps in this partnership? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

DB HiTek is a great partner for Weebit. That's a foundry. They manufacture and they have hundreds of customers. We now have already fully functional wafers. We demonstrated actually we demonstrated the EMASS demo also on DB HiTek wafers at a recent trade show in Germany and again the reaction was very, very positive. We plan to finish the qualification of DB HiTeK before the end of this year. So before the end of this year, we will be ready for mass production and we're already talking to their customers about going and starting to manufacture there with our ReRam. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just touching on the partnerships you've mentioned, more commercial deals are on the horizon, so what types of customers or use cases are showing the most traction for Weebits ReRam? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

It's actually across the board. Foundries and IDMs and product companies what's called fabless. We are focusing now on pushing forward, first of all, the manufacturing facilities. So, we're working very strongly with IDMs. You know, with IDMs there's the big advantage that the product company is built in and so you close one deal, and you have the manufacturing and the product. So, we're pushing very strongly on the IDM side. We're also working with the big foundries, and they definitely see just this week one of the key managers in a big foundry told me we’re seeing demand for ReRam everywhere so it’s really happening and they see the demand from their customers so these are the big focus, but obviously when you work with the foundries they want to know that their customers will be using this if they engage with us. So, we are working a lot with the fabless or the product companies to show this demand to the foundries. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and when you're looking to structure deals, is it primarily licensing with NRE and royalties, or are you also exploring other monetization models? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

At this point. That's our focus. We have a very strong technology. The market needs a new NVM, a non-volatile memory. So, the market has been looking for something to replace flash for many, many years, for more than 15 years. 

There were many options to replace Flash, I think one by one they all disappeared because they were too expensive, too difficult to manufacture. MRAM and ReRAM were the last two, and MRAM, as I mentioned, there are just issues with the magnetic fields and so on. So many companies already made it very clear it's too expensive and it's just too risky. And now it's really a matter of the last year and a half, two years that the market has basically made its choice, that it wants ReRAM, which is what we're developing. 

Weebit today is the only independent supplier of ReRAM, because, in parallel to all the stuff that I was talking about now, other ReRAM developers also because of different reasons I think they made strategic mistakes, they are basically gone and today, except for a few big foundries that developed their own ReRAM, the market, if they want ReRAM, Weebit is the address. So, we're very, very busy with all of these companies and that's really. We want to fill in this vacuum. There's a big vacuum right now in the industry, so that's the big focus to license the technology to the foundries, to the IDMs and to the product companies, get to the point where we get royalties. That's where really the revenues are going to ramp up quickly. We are looking at how we can have what's called discrete devices, memory chips that we develop, but that's something that currently is in the background and is in lower priority. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, now just touching on the financials. With over $90 million in cash and minimal debt, you're in a strong position to execute. So, what are your top priorities for deploying that capital? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

Well I think it’s actually no debt as far as I know but yes we are happy to have this position, that we have the cash. We can really focus on commercialization and not worry right now about the money. So, the R&D team is continuing to improve the technology and we're constantly improving the technology. I think our shareholders know we have 13 PhDs and continuing to slowly grow that team. PhDs in physics and chemistry who are constantly improving the technology in parallel. The amount of engagements and the intensity of engagements right now is significant. There's a lot of work to be done. 

Our big focus in 2025 is really to prepare ourselves for massive scaling. So, the whole infrastructure, procedures and methodologies and how do we just make things much easier to expand to support many fabs in parallel, to support many fabs in parallel to support many product companies in parallel. That's really what the focus is this year, because we can already see this mass engagement and multiple deals. We told the market we're expecting to sign a few more deals both with manufacturers and start having deals with product companies in 25 already and we definitely expect to meet that commitment and by 26, I think we're going to start having many more of these companies and a faster ramp up. So, we really need to be prepared for this very fast growth. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just finally, for investors and stakeholders what's the key message you want to leave with them about the company's future? 

Coby Hanoch Guest

Oh, it's extremely bright right now. The market has decided that ReRAM is the next generation non-volatile memory. You can see that in so many different ways. Weebit is now the only independent provider of this technology and Weebit already has important agreements with DB HiTek and onsemi, as you mentioned, Weebit has demonstrated that the technology is very robust and operates in extreme conditions, and we're planning to sign additional deals in 2025 and ramp up to have a lot more in 2026. So, we're really optimistic right now and very excited about what's going to happen. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, Coby. Well, it's been great to speak with you today, so thanks for your time and we look forward to further updates from Weebit Nano in the upcoming months. 

Coby Hanoch Guest

Thank you.

Andrew Musgrave Host

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.