Dr. Michael Lebby, chairperson and CEO of Lightwave Logic, Inc. Lightwave Logic develops proprietary engineered electro-optic (EO) polymers. The company's high-activity, high-stability organic polymers allow it to create next-generation photonic EO devices, which convert data from electrical signals into optical signals – critical to the functioning of the Internet. This means that with the company's technology, more data gets sent faster using less power than the current standard, the company reports. Lebby spoke about the increasing demand for faster data transmission required by AI and how his company's tech is uniquely positioned to provide a solution.
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00:00It is my pleasure to welcome in the CEO of Lightwave Logic, Dr. Michael Levy.
00:08It's great to be with you today, doctor.
00:10It's great to meet you, Dan.
00:12I'm excited about the next few minutes.
00:14I am as well.
00:15The honor and pleasure is all mine, my fine friend.
00:18Well, listen, if we could start here, give us an overview of your company.
00:21Overview.
00:22We are a company that specializes in what is known as electro-optic polymers.
00:28This is a polymer-based material that when you apply a voltage across it, like from a
00:33battery for example, you can actually switch light really fast.
00:37Now, if you think about this for a second, we all look at TV screens.
00:42That's a different polymer.
00:43You put a voltage across those polymers and you get red, green, blue, you get your display.
00:48But for us, the different chemistry and you can switch light.
00:52So the question there is, is where do you want to switch light really fast?
00:56Well, it's on the internet.
00:58And when you switch light on the internet, you can actually make ones and zeros by switching
01:04the light on and off.
01:05And so if you do that really fast, you can send lots of data at higher data rates.
01:11And you know, a nice advantage of using these types of polymers, it's low power and everybody
01:16wants to save power these days.
01:18And so with the big push from artificial intelligence, you know, machine learning, everybody sort
01:26of has some idea what it is, but what it really does is it increases computational
01:31processing.
01:32That means you have to spend, send more data down the internet.
01:36And of course, you know, the data centers want to do it much faster.
01:40And so this is where our technology comes into play.
01:43And that's what we in the business call a Segway, you led right into where I wanted
01:45to go next.
01:46You know, how does that technology, your technology fit into the AI ecosphere, your polymers,
01:52especially suited for the demands of obviously AI computing, which these days is getting
01:56more and more as far as demand goes?
01:58Exactly.
01:59So, you know, data centers are spending big capital sums on upgrading their equipment.
02:04So what are they doing when they upgrade their equipment?
02:07They're putting an equipment that actually sends the data faster.
02:10And of course, every data center operator will tell you they have to lower the power
02:14consumption.
02:15So if you've got a technology that operates in our case with lower voltage levels, and
02:22in fact, we just hit record voltage levels just recently with less than a half a volt.
02:28We came out earlier this year and said one volt.
02:30If you think about a battery is sort of that sort of level, right?
02:33So this is super low voltage, which actually really reduces power consumption.
02:39And we're getting the same speed.
02:41So this is really exciting.
02:43This is how it's going to make an impact, faster data rates, lower power.
02:47This is exactly what data center guys are looking for.
02:50We're living in fascinating times, that's for sure.
02:52I'm wondering, Dr. Levy, is an acquisition something that Lightwave is hoping for being
02:57bought out by a larger network, networking infrastructure company?
03:00Could AVG be in your future or something else like that?
03:04It's not our goal to be acquired.
03:06It's our goal to really get a standalone company with a unique technology platform.
03:10Now, this is a new technology platform, and we can see inherent advantages that will give
03:15value to folks who operate the data centers and that supply chain.
03:22And people come kicking the tires, I mean, I can't stop them.
03:26But our goal is to have a high margin business with unique properties in our polymers, good
03:32patent portfolio, so we're protected and we can license the technology.
03:36You can't stop people from being interested if you really have a lot of value.
03:40And this is where we're going for right now.
03:41Sure, interest is always a good thing.
03:43And listen, I know that you recently appointed, you know, for a DuPont executive and CEO of
03:48the American Chemical Society, Thomas M. Connolly Jr. is your newest board member, and also
03:53appointed Yves Lamette to your board of directors.
03:56What did they bring to your team?
03:57Huge, deep experience.
04:00Now, both of these board members are, you know, stand in their own right in their own
04:04disciplines.
04:06With Tom, we had deep materials experience.
04:09Tom cut his teeth at DuPont, was an executive at DuPont.
04:13Really understands the OLED business.
04:15Now, we know what an OLED is because we look at the TV screens, really understands the
04:19dynamics of how OLEDs, when they were first developed, how they became popular.
04:25And now, as I normally say to our shareholders, ubiquitous.
04:29And so Tom really brings to us that experience base.
04:33He knows the executives and the tier one companies.
04:36And so this is incredible.
04:37And also he was headed of the American Chemical Society, which is incredible.
04:42So from a material standpoint, which is what we develop our own materials in Denver, Colorado,
04:48Tom is really going to bring us to a lot of value.
04:50Yves, on the other hand, also brings value.
04:52Yves has cut his teeth with different types of high tech fiber optic communication companies.
05:00And so Yves really understands the dynamics of the data center environment, what it takes
05:05to increase the data rates, what it takes to reduce the power consumption, how that
05:10affects the switches and the routers you find.
05:13These are the pieces of equipment in data centers.
05:15This is the sort of stuff that roots all your traffic when you go on the Internet to different websites.
05:21And so Yves really understands that side of the business really well.
05:24Adding these two folks to our board is going to give us incredible strength.
05:28And it already has done.
05:30And so even in the last few weeks, so we're really excited.
05:33Yeah, it's very exciting.
05:34Two excellent additions.
05:35Listen, they're joining an award winning team.
05:37Tell us about your recent award for the ECOC.
05:39It's a pretty darn big deal.
05:43Yes, so this is an international conference.
05:45It's based in Europe.
05:46It's the European Conference on Optical Communication.
05:50So I'll slow down a little bit because we have complicated words here.
05:53And we participate in this conference.
05:56I gave an invited talk about our latest results.
05:59We had tons of interest from tier one companies.
06:02But we're also given an industrial award for the most innovative hybrid optical pick design.
06:09That stands for photonic integrated circuit.
06:13So we all know what an integrated circuit is in silicon.
06:16But this is an integrated circuit that has photonic components.
06:20And so that includes our modulators.
06:22And so this is a prestigious award, and we're really proud of it.
06:25So yes, we put that out as a press release.
06:28And that means, what does that really mean?
06:32That means the industry now recognizes that that technology has merit.
06:38It has commercial merit, it has performance merit.
06:41And it certainly can add a lot of value to some of the problems and the struggles
06:46that the industry has to upgrade their performance and data rates
06:50and bring the power consumption down.
06:53Absolutely.
06:53And once again, congratulations on winning that prestigious award.
06:56And I want to know about your partnership with Polariton
06:59and what you'll be presenting at the ECOC.
07:02So that was the conference where they used our material in some of their devices.
07:08And so not only are the devices that we designed
07:12with our own material show really good performance,
07:14it just shows you that our material is universal.
07:18It can go into a different type of device design.
07:21Now, I'm going to use a technical word that most people won't understand.
07:25In Polariton, they have a device design that uses plasmonics,
07:30a different type of device design.
07:32But that also is an optical switch and modulates light,
07:36but it does it at very fast speeds.
07:38And they demonstrated super performance in both in their booth and in a paper
07:44and some of the publications of using our material.
07:47And that was really exciting.
07:49So that was one of the reasons why we got together with them at the show.
07:53Absolutely.
07:54Dr. Loeb, I wanted to talk to you about your commercial initiatives
07:57and the progress you're making with your partners
08:00to commercialize the technology you've discussed.
08:03Yes, and this is something loyal shareholders are watching very carefully.
08:07I hear from shareholders every day, and this is not an exaggeration.
08:12And everybody's really watching us closely on this.
08:15And since we produced some world-class results earlier this year,
08:19and the industry node sounds technical, is 200 gigabits per second.
08:24This is where all the internet industry is looking at today,
08:28especially for designing to go into data centers.
08:32And we demonstrated some really state of the art performance.
08:36We've had a lot of interest from tier one companies since then.
08:40I've given a few talks and a few updates.
08:43But what I can say today is that we have deepening relationships with these folks.
08:48And they're not just in the US, they're in Europe as well as in Asia.
08:52And so this is interest level.
08:54These companies include some of the world's biggest transceiver component manufacturers.
09:00And these folks are looking at our technology to implement into next generation transceivers.
09:06And so we've been engaging with them on a number of different fronts.
09:10And one of the issues that these folks are having is,
09:13how do they upgrade their transceiver components?
09:17And some of these components include something called silicon photonics.
09:21Silicon photonics is a silicon chip that has photonic components on it.
09:26Some people call it a PIC, a photonic integrated circuit.
09:29Other people call it silicon photonics.
09:32But basically, they've hit a wall in their performance.
09:36And they're looking at our material, our polymers to upgrade that performance.
09:41And so we've been in deep discussions with this.
09:43And I'm working very, very hard to put together commercial agreements on that.
09:50And this is something that I've indicated to our shareholders
09:53that's taken a little longer than we expected.
09:55But it's also really exciting because now you can start thinking about the scale of our technology.
10:02So this is happening, but I'm working really hard on it.
10:06Yeah, nothing wrong with something that's really, really good or positive,
10:09taking a little extra time to work out the best way it can in the end.
10:12And listen, it's a fascinating time in the industry.
10:14What do you believe, Dr. LaBier, are the most exciting developments
10:17in networking and or polymer science right now?
10:21Well, from our standpoint, the data center and the internet environment,
10:26we thought that was going to be a really interesting application.
10:29And then two years ago, here comes along machine learning, artificial intelligence.
10:36And so look what's happened.
10:37That has caused the data center environment to invest heavily in capital spending.
10:44That means, for me at least, that's proof this market's not going to go away.
10:49This is not going to be a bubble.
10:50This is big.
10:52And so when you think about working on things like a new platform,
10:55like electro-optic polymers, this is incredibly exciting.
10:59These sort of opportunities don't come along that often.
11:02These market opportunities are real.
11:04You're seeing the customers spend money to upgrade their equipment.
11:08This is not something you see in a market report that has a dog leg or something.
11:12This is real money going into real business,
11:15and they want faster and lower power equipment.
11:18And we happen to be positioned really well to support that.
11:21So I think to answer your question, yeah, this is the biggest thing
11:25that's happened in the last two years and probably in the last decade.
11:28And this is what makes it really exciting.
11:30Yep. Great times ahead for Sheryl.
11:32It was an absolute pleasure talking with you today, Dr. Labib.
11:35Thank you so much for your time.
11:36Look forward to doing it again.
11:38Thank you, Don. Really appreciate the chat.