That is my reading too. The comments you give all relate to the MEMS device. The design, prototyping, and manufacture of the MEMS is out and away the most difficult step of all of the steps on this road. Complete that successfully and you are 95% through the job.
The ASIC is already in the can. This may be a great piece of kit, but it is standard IC manufacturing tech.
I would assume that mating the ASIC with the MEMS into the external package is also relatively straightforward standard IC production technology.
As I read it, AP has not only managed to get the manufacturing sorted on one FAB line, but on several, if not all of the lines at the TowerJazz's six FAB plants. And with zero faults on all of them! That is a tidy achievement! This gives the company a lot of resilience should there be a problem at one FAB site.
My conclusion: announcing the partnership with TowerJazz is pretty close to saying "We have cracked this. We designed it. TowerJazz has been able to make it. Our testing shows that we have a viable product ready to be manufactured in bulk."
All we need now is the response from the industry, which, once the demo is completed, I assume AP will announce as soon as they get enough feedback to be worthy of a release.
(20min delay)