SkyWater Technology (SKYT) specializes in helping its customers develop and then manufacture customized integrated circuit devices. Setting the company apart is a trifecta of differentiation, notes George Gilder, editor of Gilder’s Moonshots.

For starters, it’s the only US-based and solely US-owned pure-play semiconductor foundry. Then there is SkyWater’s portfolio of specialized wafer fabrication processes including mixed-signal CMOS, rad-hard ICs, power discretes, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), superconducting ICs, photonics, carbon nanotubes, and others.

Finally, the company’s novel customer engagement model, dubbed Technology as a Service (TaaS), enables innovative chip firms to co-create novel solutions across SkyWater’s technologies, diverse manufacturing capabilities, and design/production services.

One innovator taking advantage of SkyWater’s Technology as a Service model is Weebit Nano. If that name sounds familiar, until a few months ago we held WBT in the Special Situations Portfolio of the Gilder Technology Report. We got great results: The stock more than doubled in less than a year, meeting its total return target before we closed the position.

You have not heard the last of Weebit, which makes an emergent form of nonvolatile memory called ReRAM (resistive random-access memory) that is enabling new applications from neuromorphic computing to industrial IoT. Weebit is one of more than a dozen breakthrough startup companies spun out of James Tour’s lab at Rice University. Yes, that’s another familiar name as we’ve written a great deal about Tour’s pioneering work in nanotechnology and graphene.

Most of the Tour spinoffs are still privately held. One of the few publicly traded Tour spinoffs, WBT is on the Australian Stock Exchange. On the verge of generating revenue after years of R&D with the help of SkyWater, the company recently raised A$60 million of equity to continue development of its ReRAM technology.

SkyWater’s engagement with ReRAM started with a collaboration on a carbon nanotube-based 3D project with MIT, funded through DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative. That work built the core competences underlying SkyWater’s development partnership with Weebit.

ReRAM offers strategic advantages over currently dominant Flash memory including improved write time, endurance, cost-effectiveness, and power consumption. (See exhibit below.) It may seem counterintuitive that these specialized memory devices can undercut Flash on costs. This is thanks in part to the fact that ReRAM fabrication is highly complementary to SkyWater’s foundational CMOS platform. The fabrication of NAND Flash is a far more complex process.

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Source: Weebit Nano

SKYT is one of the most exciting opportunities in the Moonshots portfolio. Its work to date confirms its great potential for growth.

Recommended Action: Buy SKYT.

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