Fund: The chip company Vibit Nano from Hod Hasharon jumped by...

Fund: The chip company Vibit Nano from Hod Hasharon jumped by 840% per year Vibe Nano has been listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange in Australia - and is currently worth 410 million Australian dollars ■ The jump was recorded after the company reported significant progress in developing the next generation of memory chips ■ CEO Kobi Hanoch: "Memory is the fastest growing field in the chip industry" Joseph is deaf Joseph is deaf 19.01.2021 The memory chip market is a market that few remember exists, compared to the attention that technologies like artificial intelligence or autonomous cars receive, but it is an essential area of our lives. Every electronic device - from a washing machine to smartphones - contains a memory chip. The dominant technology today is the flash technologies, which we are all familiar with from USB. The Israeli company Weebit Nano is one of the companies that uses innovative technology to refresh the memory chip sector, which has not changed substantially in almost 20 years. Its stock has risen 840% since the beginning of 2020 and is now traded on the Sydney Stock Exchange in Australia at a value of A $ 410 million ($ 310 million). The company is engaged in the field of non-volatile memories - that is, memories in which information is stored even when disconnected from electricity such as a USB card or hard drive - when the company's technology is called ReRAM (Resistive RAM). "Every year we consume more memory than we have consumed from the beginning of history until last year. The field of memories is the fastest growing field in the chip industry," says Kobi Hanoch, CEO of Vivit Nano. The chip market, or non-volatile memory market, is currently valued at $ 54 billion and is expected to grow by 9% a year to $ 84 billion, according to a study by the MarketsandMarkets website. The companies currently dominating the memory chip market are South Korean giants Samsung and SK. Hanoch claims that the company's technology has an advantage over the competition. "What sets us apart is that we use silicon (silicon dioxide) the standard material for chip production. We can go to any chip manufacturing plant in the world and with a drop start adjustments in production. All competitors use non-standard materials and have many manufacturing challenges. In addition, our product is cheap to manufacture and need The power is low, so the battery life of the laptop or smartphone will be extended. " Webbit's chip Quick newsletter subscription Sign up now for TheMarker reading recommendations Click to register More headlines on the subject 17 Israeli companies took off for the Australian Stock Exchange - and after three years returned empty-handed Successful recruitment in Australia Webbit, established in 2015 in Hod Hasharon, was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange in 2016 and is one of the 20 Israeli companies traded on the Australian Stock Exchange. "The offering was a coincidence of several things that happened at the time," says Hanoch. "On the one hand, when we set up the company, venture capital funds in Israel were focused on cyber and artificial intelligence and the chip industry attracted them less. At the same time, the Australian Stock Exchange wanted to bring high-tech to the stock market. They sent a delegation to Israel looking for companies like us to issue and offered many benefits. It all worked out well for us. " Israel is the third largest foreign market on the Australian Stock Exchange, after the US and New Zealand. However, most Israeli companies were not as successful as Vivit, but Vivit also began to stand out only in 2020. The company successfully raised shares and options in June 2020 of approx. A $ 9 million (approximately US $ 7 million) on the ASX Stock Exchange, according to Hanoch, was the opening shot for a series of gains in the stock. Last October, the company announced that it had completed the process of stabilizing the memory it had developed. "In October we completed a very critical phase. The technology became uniform and predictable. All the components produced behave the same, meaning all the chips on each part of the wiper (a silicon wafer on which chips are made) behave the same, which is a significant part towards mass production," says Hanoch. Kobi Hanoch Kobi Hanoch In November, Wibit raised $ 15 million (about $ 12 million) at A $ 1.7 a share. "In the last two rounds of funding, Australian institutional investors have joined, joined by heavier investors, such as Family Office," says Hanoch. In addition to the innovative technology, Webbit attracts the attention of investors and large companies in the high-tech world because of the members of the board of directors. The company's chairman is Dedi Perlmutter, former vice president at Intel Global. Other members are Yoav Nissan Cohen, director and director of research and development at the company who was formerly CEO of Tower, and Attic Raza, who was president and chief operating officer of AMD. For our existence and want to see how the business develops, but I believe that in order for a start-up to be successful it must assume that it is going to be a big company and be able to say no to offers that are not good enough. In the end, there is an offer that cannot be rejected, "says Hanoch. Vibit is not yet profitable. The company reported a net loss of A $ 4 million in fiscal year 2020 (which began in July 2019 and ended in June 2020). The executive pay package in fiscal year 2020 amounted to about 2 million Australian dollars, but most of it was given in a package of shares and options. Examines the demand in the Chinese market Having completed a critical process in the development phase the company now plans to reach a first commercial agreement by mid-2021. One of the markets the company is exploring is the Chinese market. "There is a very high demand for memory technology. Today, 30 memory chip factories are being built in China, and they have to choose which memory technology to use. Our technology is easier to implement in a new pub (chip manufacturing facility), so there is a greater advantage in working with us. At the same time, we are talking to manufacturing plants in the United States, Europe, Korea, Taiwan and Israel, "says Hanoch. Vibit stock Regarding the fear of intellectual property theft, Hanoch said that "everyone in our management has considerable experience with China and it is not that they will be able to take the technology and produce it themselves tomorrow. We preserve intellectual property and register all our patents in China to be protected under Chinese law. "As the Chinese develop their own intellectual property, they become more sensitive to the issue of intellectual property theft." The first market that Wibitt is preparing to enter is the on-chip system (SoC) market - chips that contain a complete system that includes a processor, memory, communication components and more. "Our product meets the vast majority of needs in this field. In this market the business model is licenses, where the customer pays you a licensing fee and royalties for using your technology. Later we will enter the discrete market - these are chips that are all memory, the requirements there are more extreme "It will take us longer to get to this market, but it is of course the bigger and more exciting market," says Hanoch. According to him, the change in the field of memories is going to be very significant because the new technologies are very advanced. He cites the Everspin company as an example. "This company uses MRAM technology - a magnetic material in memory chips and is already selling it. Putting magnetic material into a manufacturing facility (FAB) is like risking an atom bomb," he says. "The demand for new, faster memory chips, with lower power consumption, is so great that people are willing to compromise on technology that can be dangerous," says Hanoch. "The increase in the cost of our production is 5% on the existing situation, the increase in the cost of MRAM is about 35%, but since this technology has hit the market people are willing to compromise. Imagine what will happen when Vivit enters the market with a more standard product."