Jonathan Klamkin
Analyst · Craig-Hallum
Thank you, Alex, and thank you all for joining today's call. Today, I'll begin with a recap of the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, or OFC, which took place this March in Los Angeles and how Aeluma's engagements in the AI datacom market have accelerated. OFC is the premier optical networking and communication conference. And this year, there was a notable emphasis on the massive build-out of data centers for AI. Data center CapEx investments continue to surge. This has placed a historic demand on high-performance photonics for interconnects and the supply chain wasn't prepared. In response, NVIDIA made 3 investments each of $2 billion in Lumentum, Coherent and Marvell to secure supply of key components, especially lasers and $3.2 billion in Corning for components and packaging. Major laser suppliers are sold out. Therefore, investments are being made to scale indium phosphide fab capacity. However, some major hurdles stand in the way. First, adding fab capacity may require several years. Second, although efforts are being made to transition to 6-inch indium phosphide, many claim this won't provide sufficient supply to meet market demand. And last, there is a major shortage of indium phosphide substrates of all sizes. Suppliers are sold out for years, with only limited increase in capacity expected in the near term and geopolitics adding a degree of uncertainty. When we commenced operations in 2021, we shared foresight with the investment community. We stated that indium was in short supply, that indium phosphide substrates were too small, expensive and fragile and that indium phosphide manufacturing doesn't scale to large volumes. We suggested a different path to address the future needs of datacom and consumer electronics. Don't use indium phosphide substrates, put the detector and laser materials on lower cost, larger diameter substrates and leverage volume microelectronics manufacturing. GaN-on-silicon became a mainstream technology for power electronics. Why not work toward indium phosphide on silicon? So, we put our heads down to mature our technology. We instilled a philosophy of setting and then beating milestones. We attracted strategic government and commercial partners, and we grew our talented team to continue building traction across AI, mobile, defense and aerospace and other key markets. This laid the groundwork for the high degree of interest in our technology at the recent OFC Conference. The industry is hungry for a solution to address near-term demand and supply chain constraints and to enable future generation integrated microsystems such as co-packaged optics or CPO. Encouragingly, the industry is thinking long term. They are taking measures to address near-term needs while also anticipating massive future growth opportunities. The growing demand for 200G per-lane transceivers and the transition to 400G per-lane provide opportunities for Aeluma's high-speed InGaAs photodiodes. By not using indium phosphide substrates, we can overcome supply constraints and win on cost. The so-called slow and wide architectures driven by microLEDs, micro VCSELs and other technologies require new high-speed photodiode array formats. Aeluma has been developing such photodiodes on non-indium phosphide substrates for a defense customer, anticipating the dual-use applicability of the technology for commercial markets. Right now, high-power lasers for transceivers are a bottleneck in commercial applications. Customers want more power and better reliability to withstand the stringent requirements for data centers. Lasers are failing at high power and high temperature. The interest in quantum dot lasers has surged for their potential to improve power handling, increase reliability and eliminate optical isolators. Aeluma is the first company to offer MOCVD quantum dot lasers. Compared to MBE, a technique used by others, MOCVD has much higher throughput and is the industry standard for volume production. For example, MOCVD is used exclusively for large volume VCSEL manufacturing for facial recognition in mobile phones. Given all the moving pieces in the supply chain, a common question is, where does Aeluma fit in the ecosystem? We sit at the intersection of semiconductor materials, photonic component design and manufacturing, and this is a rarefied and strategic position. Our proprietary platform combines the advantages of compound semiconductors with scalable microelectronics manufacturing. We can produce photonics at large volumes with an outsourced supply chain, or we can partner with customers that have their own manufacturing infrastructure. And for very large markets such as mobile, we may license our intellectual property as a go-to-market strategy. Allow me to go into more detail on the tailwinds driving our target markets, which are illustrated in Slide 2, AI infrastructure and data centers. AI is driving a major build-out of data centers. As mentioned in our last call, the top 4 hyperscalers invested more than $300 billion in data center CapEx in 2025. This number will approach $700 billion in 2026, and is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2029. Optical networking will be approximately 15% of this investment. This is the huge opportunity for photonics and it's fueling a breadth of activity in this space. While photonic components were developed in the 1990s for telecom networks to connect people, today, they are needed for AI to connect machines at scale. This market is propelling Aeluma's photonics product road map forward. Customers are considering our technology to address current supply gaps and for long-term growth opportunities. This provides us with an ideal combination of near-term revenue paths to drive production ramp and qualification plans and to develop longer-term strategic partnership opportunities. This is an exciting time for the photonics industry because higher performance requirements are accelerating innovation. Existing technologies are being pushed to their limits and new technologies are being evaluated for adoption. Photonic components of all shapes and sizes are needed across the data center for slow and wide and fast and narrow transceiver formats. Many of these traditionally depend on indium phosphide technology, which has become a critical bottleneck. Aeluma's product offerings manufactured with non-indium phosphide substrates are illustrated in Slide 3. For slow and wide applications, candidates being considered on the transmit side are microLEDs, micro VCSELs and silicon micro-ring modulators. Aeluma's non-indium phosphide high-speed InGaAs photodiode arrays compare with any of these transmitter technologies. For fast and narrow transmitters, indium phosphide EMLs are being pushed to 400G per-lane performance as our thin-film lithium niobate modulators and silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators. Aeluma's non- indium phosphide high-speed InGaAs photodiode can also pair with any of these transmitter technologies. For silicon photonics CPO transceivers, indium phosphide lasers are a bottleneck due to supply constraints, performance requirements and packaging complexity. Alternative gallium arsenide quantum dot lasers are being considered to address these challenges. Aeluma's MOCVD quantum dot lasers offer high-power handling, scalability and the potential for better reliability. As customers continue to evaluate our photodiode and laser technologies for AI data centers and we navigate this highly active market, we have gained increasing confidence in our manufacturing approach and go-to-market strategy. Mobile and consumer electronics. Mobile OEMs are gearing up to adopt shortwave infrared or SWIR for image sensors and smartphones. SWIR sensors improve eye safety, achieve high-resolution imaging and can be positioned behind the OLED display, thereby preserving important screen real estate. InGaAs is the gold standard for SWIR, but it is manufactured on indium phosphide substrates and therefore, is expensive and doesn't scale. Alternative SWIR technologies were evaluated but showed subpar performance. Early in Aeluma's history, we explained that the winning approach for broad market adoption is to combine the best-in-class SWIR material InGaAs with scalable manufacturing. Our InGaAs photodiode arrays on non-indium phosphide substrates are optimized for performance and scale, and deliver on key technical metrics such as dark current and sensitivity. We have been engaged across the supply chain from the OEMs to the Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. To execute our capital-light model, we are partnering with established manufacturers and where appropriate, we can license our technology for this high-volume application. While qualification and production will require a multi-year effort, our engagements in this target market are progressing steadily through evaluation and feasibility. At the same time, we continue to mature our technology with foundry partners. The sheer scale of this market is massive and one that will drive to silicon substrate sizes. This is an exciting growth opportunity for Aeluma, and we are carefully positioning our company and technology to capitalize. Defense and aerospace. Aeluma's technology is truly dual use. It is high-performance technology engineered for the rigors of defense systems, but also applicable to commercial markets. We successfully attracted strategic non-dilutive funding from government agencies for development. These programs were leveraged to mature our technology and to gain traction with the government, prime contractors, private defense tech companies and commercial customers. In several cases, these contracts have progressed to later-stage programs focused on technology transition that will benefit both defense and commercial sectors. We recently announced new contracts to advance quantum dot lasers and quantum non-linear materials, along with partnerships with Tower Semiconductor and Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies. The stated strategic priority for fiscal year '26 was to win 3 to 7 new development contracts for non-dilutive funding for R&D and growth of partnership opportunities. We have met this goal, having secured 6 contracts to date totaling well over $5 million in value. Supply chain and scaling. On supply chain, we have been working with fabrication foundries, materials companies, integration and packaging partners for several years. A disruptive semiconductor company supply chain is proprietary information. As an example, in the public domain, earlier this year, quantum company, IonQ, announced its intention to acquire SkyWater, a pure-play U.S. semiconductor foundry. IonQ was presumably early working with SkyWater as a foundry partner, yet I don't believe this information was disclosed prior to the acquisition announcement. Aeluma works with several supply chain partners. These include fabrication foundries, some of which are compound semiconductor fabs and others silicon fabs. Some are capable of 100-millimeter wafer fabrication, some 200-millimeter and some up to 300-millimeter. For many of our target markets, 150-millimeter wafers are sufficient. Even so, Aeluma's use of non-indium phosphide substrates at this size provides a path to scale and meet demand while overcoming supply chain constraints and winning on cost. Aeluma produces starting wafers in-house, but also works with partners such as Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies to enable scaling. For some next-generation datacom microsystems as well as quantum, integration on silicon is desirable. This is where partnerships with foundries like Tower Semiconductor are key. And lastly, for large volume consumer markets, 200 and even 300-millimeter silicon manufacturing are foreseeable. In summary, we have been working strategically with a variety of supply chain partners to match the technology to market opportunity to manufacturing approach, all the while increasing manufacturing readiness to ensure we are positioned to intersect market adoption time lines. To support our strategic priorities, which include operations and go-to-market execution, our team also continues to expand. In early March, we welcomed Dr. Christiane Poblenz as VP of Materials Operations. Christiane brings 25 years of experience commercializing semiconductor wafers and laser products for consumer markets, including next-generation displays and automotive. She is now leading efforts to scale production of Aeluma's large-diameter epitaxial wafers and expand operations. We also recently welcomed Dr. Willy Rachmady as VP of Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystem. Willy was a technical and strategic leader at Intel, driving product road maps, intellectual property development, strategic investments and ecosystem partnerships. At Aeluma, Willy will lead foundry and ecosystem partnerships, customer engineering and technology commercialization strategy. Lastly, on the commercial pipeline and commercial sales. Looking forward, our enthusiasm continues to grow. We described the wealth of activity across AI datacom, mobile and consumer and defense and aerospace. There is also a noticeable uptick in engagements from prospective quantum customers. Overall, the quality and precision of our engagements have increased, and this is driving our product road map execution and discussions with strategic partners. We are prioritizing the most impactful and clearly defined opportunities while qualifying products to meet industry standards and customer specifications. It is highly motivating to see Aeluma's vision come to life as we move toward broad commercialization. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Chris Stewart, to discuss the financials.