It's hard to know how good this is, but it's definitely good...

It's hard to know how good this is, but it's definitely good news.

We have no idea how many systems are this order "valued at approximately $800,000" - my guess would be between 4 and 8 - nor what the profit margin on these is. But $800k in cash - even if some of that is just covering earlier production costs - is still a decent contribution to our cash position.

More importantly, this is an important milestone towards getting a product into much bigger markets. Get a handful of systems to key innovators now, tweak the design based on their feedback, then hope to get scores of systems into teaching hospitals and other early adopting institutions, then if all goes well, in a few years we could have a product selling in the hundreds or even thousands.

Interesting that we're still at arms length from Zeiss - we're selling them prototype systems, not supplying parts for them to build their own or licensing technology to them or anything like that. Including their internal costs, Zeiss has probably invested upwards of $5 million in this project by now - not a huge sum for them, but not peanuts either. They must think this product has a good chance of succeeding, and they probably know as much about this market as anyone.