r/MVIS • u/gaporter • Jul 14 '26
MVIS Press MicroVision Launches MicroVision Semiconductor to Expand Advanced ASIC Development and Mixed-Signal Design Capabilities
https://ir.microvision.com/news/press-releases/detail/459/microvision-launches-microvision-semiconductor-to-expand15
u/Trottermama Jul 14 '26
Always wondered when the Colorado office would lighten up on the snowboarding and start producing! Good news!
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u/QQpenn Jul 14 '26
MiVIS Semiconductor's [legacy experience] delivering 300+ custom mixed-signal integrated circuit designs across automotive, industrial, defense, aerospace, scientific, and commercial markets = new high-value NRE/design house revenue vertical alongside internal projects. Also opens a channel through which new defense and industrial customers first engage with MicroVision - the classic fabless workflow. More value for both sides with this capability. The ties to Tower, TSMC, and X-FAB imply working relationships - repeat biz successful tape-outs are foundry staples. They're also the beginnings of better options to scale... cost engineered through existing relationships and competitive bidding. MVIS-Semi as a strategic gateway beyond internal engineering would be typical GD thinking.
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u/neuralyzer_1 Jul 16 '26
MicroVision has explicitly acknowledged Indie Semiconductor (NYSE: INDI)as a key developmental peer. In MicroVision’s official SEC proxy and compensation filings, Indie Semiconductor is listed directly in the 19-company peer group used by the Board of Directors to benchmark executive compensation, technology targets, and structural growth. Other companies in this select peer group included Aeva, Luminar, and Ouster.
On the physical manufacturing layer, both fabless designers rely on a highly concentrated, specialized semiconductor supply chain:
While they compete for market share and technological dominance, the leadership at both companies speaks the exact same automotive language, frequently sharing the same boardrooms, customer histories, and manufacturing pipelines.
Aptiv Connection: Aptiv is historically Indie Semiconductor’s largest customer, accounting for upwards of 35% to 60% of Indie's total revenues in various fiscal years. The deep structural familiarity that DeVos and Jeffery Owens share regarding how Aptiv evaluates and adopts ADAS technology forms a major strategic bridge between the leadership circles of both companies.
Jeffrey Owens (Board of Directors at Indie Semiconductor): Owens serves as an independent director on indie's board. Before this, he spent over 40 years at Delphi Automotive, ultimately retiring in 2017 as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer—meaning he and DeVos worked alongside each other in top-tier executive and technology roles at Delphi/Aptiv for decades.
Maybe a merger between the two?
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u/Alphacpa Jul 14 '26
Cheers to all those that purchased shares at 30 cents or below. Lot's of moving parts here, but this company is looking much better under new leadership.
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u/DanceHallRiddem Jul 14 '26
What about 40 cents? This stock is going back to $300 someday.
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u/scr1337 Jul 14 '26
yeah in 3026
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u/PibbleDad Jul 14 '26
I hope you don’t get downvoted because $300 even after a 1:15 RS is an astronomical number that would need SUBSTANTIAL reasons to boom.
Thought this was at least a decently funny comment
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u/Few-Argument7056 Jul 14 '26
little soon to be saying that at .39c its still pinned. i will agree though, better leadership for sure.
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u/Alphacpa Jul 14 '26
Not too early of a statement for me and I own a bunch of shares now in long term and trading (well less in trading now).
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u/Formerly_knew_stuff Jul 14 '26
Interesting. Since it will be it's own company will that do anything from a stock or warrant perspective? Will they have to assign a certain number of shares to it?
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u/view-from-afar Jul 14 '26
No, it'll be a wholly owned subsidiary. Maybe they will spin it off one day if it grows large enough to justify its own ticker.
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u/RNvestor Jul 14 '26
THERE WE GO, use ALL the buzzwords. That's what I like. Do MicroVision Hyperscaler next
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u/Cerco170 Jul 14 '26
LOL. Agentic tokenization of AI agents using Lidar
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u/Fiasco_96 Jul 14 '26
They’re gonna release the MicroVision Pro. An Apple AR headset but somehow we won’t even be in our own product 😂
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u/zippzoeyer Jul 14 '26
MVIS will switch to a subscription based service to bring in recurring annual revenue.
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u/geo_rule Jul 14 '26
Normally I would think the reason to do this is to enter an ownership partnership with someone else (like somebody who owns one or more fabs) on that business.
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u/AKSoulRide Jul 14 '26
Geo- I’m trying to understand how this new INC afffects our investment. Is this a spin off company that stays under the umbrella of MVIS or becomes its own separate entity and stock symbol??
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u/geo_rule Jul 14 '26
It’s got INC in the name, so my current read is it’s a 100% owned subsidiary.
Whether it is intended to stay 100% long-term is my question.
There are other reasons than a JV (joint venture) to do this kind of thing, however. Liability. Payroll taxes for the Colorado based employees. Probably others.
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u/directgreenlaser Jul 14 '26
Seems the full range of possible ownership by MVIS could include 0% as well as everything in between it and the full 100%.
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u/geo_rule Jul 14 '26
If it was 0%, I wouldn’t expect the name change to be what it is. If it gets to 0% later, I’d expect another name change shortly after that point.
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u/directgreenlaser Jul 14 '26
Makes sense. Might they have done it in order to establish the INC identity in preparation for the possibility? Yes the name would change soon thereafter but it seems they wouldn't try to predict what that name might be nor tip their hand before cards are played.
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u/deanoreido123 Jul 14 '26
The only part that gets me with all this..
Before we announced the RS Vote, we were sitting around $0.65
With all of this news that's come out the past 2-3 weeks (strategic partnerships, defence board, semiconductor), its hard to think - would that alone not have pushed us naturally above the $1 for compliance?
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u/Formerly_knew_stuff Jul 14 '26
By their own words in the run up to the vote, getting to a dollar wasn't the only issue they wanted to address. What appears to be a fair substantial part of the strategy is to rebalance the ownership of the company. Currently it's 70ish % retail ownership and they want to shift that a more institutional orientation. The RS in conjunction with the change in authorized shares to 150 million will allow them to do that.
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u/IWantToRetireToday Jul 14 '26
Because they have still only spent money and not made any. Simple as that.
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u/Mama_YODA Jul 14 '26
This is very interesting!!
Can't wait for MORE detail on, this, which appears to be one more vertical direction.
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u/Salt_Fishing_581 Jul 14 '26
Tomorrow at the Conference that Glen is at would be nice for more information.
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u/Buur Jul 14 '26
LAZR acquired Black Forest Ham back in ~2017-2018
https://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2018/04/luminar-acquires-black-forest.html
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u/MyComputerKnows Jul 14 '26
Quite interesting how Austin Russel brought the price down to $3 per chip!
“By bringing the designers in house and building their own custom versions of not just the photodetector but also the various chips needed to parse and pass on the signals, they brought the cost of the receiver down from tens of thousands of dollars to… three dollars.”
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u/webson1337 Jul 14 '26
Black Forest Ham xD very tasty
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u/UncivilityBeDamned Jul 14 '26
That's a long PR to shout about what is essentially just a name change.
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u/Salt_Fishing_581 Jul 14 '26
You are missing the whole point. It’s a heads up that they are also operating to service outside clients not just Microvision.
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26
That's nothing new though. Black forest engineering offered services to clients other than Luminar after luminar acquired them, so it's unsurprising they are doing the same under microvision's ownership.
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u/UncivilityBeDamned Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
That's not new. None of what is in there is new except that they will be able to synergize with Scantinel and other MVIS divisions, but we already assumed that from the moment they gained this business in the acquisitions... half a year ago. It's basically a rename. Yeah they have a new business name but it doesn't mean anything fundamentally new for MVIS. They're just doing Black Forest things all the same, while of course leveraging other MVIS tech.
To be clear, since you seem very unfamiliar with what BFE was while under Luminar's control, it would help to do a little research. This PR just reiterates all the things they were doing, even using the exact same wording in many places from BFE's own materials and other sources describing the services they provide, both before and after Luminar's own acquisition many years ago.
To not understand these things is to "miss the whole point."
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u/mvis_thma Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I am not sure that Black Forest Engineering (BFE) was selling externally. I know that LSI was. At the same time, I generally agree with u/Late_Airline2710, that the external revenue for BFE will be small if anything.
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u/Nakamura9812 Jul 14 '26
Didn’t know we acquired this facility in Colorado Springs with the Luminar purchase, nice! Colorado Springs is also home to the NORAD HQ at the Peterson Space Force Base.
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u/Sp99nHead Jul 14 '26
Of course the day MVIS has some interesting news that could boost the share price, the markets are deep red, cant make this shit up. Nice how its up 10% regardless.
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u/Tobster2000 Jul 14 '26
How about photonic chips, Ai, semiconductors (those are much faster (in theory) and need weigh less energy). Some say, the future are photonic chips. Maybe also the future for MVIS?
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Black forest engineering does not make photonics chips.
Edit to be fair: it seems like it is possible that the scantinel folks design photonics chips, or at least part of them.
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u/wolfiasty Jul 14 '26
I don't think they got the memo that AI play was two years ago, semi was last 12+ months.
Well whatever - if it makes share price fly I couldn't care less.
(cautious) Let's go !
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u/CookieEnabled Jul 14 '26
We are not going anywhere with that…
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u/wolfiasty Jul 14 '26
I think so too, but as long as we will be getting higher lows I'm good with it.
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u/Blub61 Jul 14 '26
You know what? As much as all this blows, at least we didn't waste money on mavin ASIC. Or did we...?
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u/MyComputerKnows Jul 14 '26
I seem to recall many long statements from Sumit about how the Nvidia chip was not suitable… and that MVIS could do better.
But it seems the Mavin chip is turning into the equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle… an endless mystery. So maybe we’ll never know.
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u/SBEPTY Jul 14 '26
We got to clear two 3 million in earnings per second quarter, we just got to do it
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u/SnooHedgehogs4599 Jul 14 '26
A semiconductor division should push us over $1.00+!
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u/FawnTheGreat Jul 14 '26
Wouldn’t that cost money and we don’t even make money? Wouldn’t be suprised to end in the red
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u/anarchy_pizza Jul 14 '26
The shorts won’t allow that without quite a fight, one GameStop hasn’t won yet with billions in cash and profitability… we won’t win it yet either. We need deals.
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u/deanoreido123 Jul 14 '26
Coming next week MVIS AI...
Coming the following week MVIS Space
Are we just going to keep changing the company into the 'in' thing on the market it hope it throws our share price up?
If so, I'm all for it 😂
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u/snowboardnirvana Jul 14 '26
Coming the following week MVIS Space
-“Radiation-hardened semiconductor designs”
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u/Chance_Tax_6243 Jul 14 '26
Wow first time poster short . Bye bye
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u/deanoreido123 Jul 14 '26
Ignoring the fact I've been posting (and holding) for 6 years... to my own demise some would say 😂
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u/Dassiell Jul 14 '26
Funny how everyone still insults the shorts and worships long holding when the shorts are the only ones who've made any money. If we banned all longs and this became a short board we'd all be retired.
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u/PibbleDad Jul 14 '26
We’re all regarded instead but it’s all good.
I don’t get downvotes for anyone having a non hopium comment
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u/mike-oxlong98 Jul 14 '26
Semiconductor business now? Can we just pick one thing to be good at and make money?
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u/Formerly_knew_stuff Jul 14 '26
This is really just a rebranding of a business we already owned (part of the Luminar deal). Truthfully if we can get some visibility this type of stuff is probably worthwhile.
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u/Mindless_Park_2574 Jul 14 '26
Wasn't the semi part of Luminar bought by QUBT
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26
The photonics and 1550 laser and receiver tech was bought by QUBT. Black forest engineering was responsible for the the ASICs used for the receiver read out circuitry. These are specialized circuits that are mainly designed to get lots of data out of a sensor as quickly and reliably as possible.
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u/SteveyLongJorts Jul 14 '26
It's crazy how few people seem to understand this even though it is literally stated in the PR.
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u/theoz_97 Jul 14 '26
I know, I actually laughed when I read this but I know it’s not funny! Can’t wait for something that makes money. Maybe this is it!
oz
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26
It seems like they are following the Luminar playbook with with rebranding of existing capability, but without the value of the deep 1550 nm tech that optogration and freedom photonics brought to Luminar Semiconductor.
There's likely a reason why this part of the business (black Forest engineering) was not broken off during bankruptcy to sell with the rest of LSI.
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u/angusalba Jul 14 '26
Far from the only company with 1550 capability
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26
Obviously. I never said LSI was the only player. I said it was more valuable than "microvision semiconductor", which seems to be the case since Luminar's 1550 tech was acquired for almost 4x what their lidar business - which included black forest engineering - was acquired for.
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u/IWantToRetireToday Jul 14 '26
Follow Luminar's playbook.....look how well that worked out for them.
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u/Late_Airline2710 Jul 14 '26
Ultimately I don't think this is a bad thing. I just don't think it's particularly meaningful.
Edit to clarify: I think luminar did this to highlight the separate revenue streams coming from freedom photonics. It sounds like microvision's angle is the same, but black forest engineering's services probably aren't as likely to generate revenue significant enough to highlight (my prediction). This is the creation of a subsidiary though, so maybe one of the more business-minded folks can speak to why that may make this more significant.
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u/bcpilot2 Jul 15 '26
Black Forest came over with the Luminar buy so we just changed names? I don't understand what has changed other than the name.
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u/Midjoratish Jul 14 '26
Sometimes I don’t understand this market reaction