Datavault AI Inc. (NASDAQ:DVLT) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Datavault AI Inc. (NASDAQ:DVLT) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript November 17, 2025

Operator: Good morning, and welcome to Datavault AI’s Third Quarter Conference Call. With us today are Nathaniel Bradley, CEO; and Brett Moyer, CFO. This call will contain forward-looking statements, which reflect management’s current judgment, including certain of our expectations regarding fiscal year 2025 and 2026 financial performance. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially — I do not have rest of the scripture, I do apologize. It’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to management. Please proceed.

Nathaniel Bradley: Yes, I am Nathaniel Bradley here. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining the call today. We put together a brief presentation. There’s obviously the safe harbor there. So look, we had an incredible Q3. Our results really speak for themselves. Again, this is kind of loading both the performance of WiSA from a more scalable to a more scalable, more nimble business model around the WiSA technologies in our Acoustic division. And really a surge in our ADIO technology revenues and also the beginning of what becomes in our fourth quarter, an explosion around our flagship Datavault, our kind of pride and joy. The Datavault platform had incredible performance in our Q4, but Q3 was really a loading of that performance.

And thanks to Jeff Jones and some of the key players on our team that we are able to marshal the technological resources and the integrations necessary to scale our systems globally. We’re now in position with the Datavault platform here Q4. So aggressive revenue guidance for 2026. Really the highlight of this call is that based on the performance of Datavault and what we can see both in the WiSA, in the ADIO technology lines and our Acoustic divisions that we’re going to aggressively advance our guidance. We’re going to increase from a $50 million guidance in 2026 to a full $200 million minimum for next year. And that’s just leading into that a process that’s underway in terms of tokenizing real-world assets all over the world and some of the progress that we’ve made with our Acoustic division in the WiSA technology where we’ve really honed in that technology and see a very scalable future that includes robotics and includes using WiSA in signage and in other areas to deliver data over sound.

And so we have a very scalable model moving forward that we’re very excited about and very pleased to announce that we’ve increased our guidance quite substantially to $200 million by the end of 2026. And that’s a process underway. It’s hard to gauge in the fourth quarter how we’re going to work through a lot of that growth and recognition and all the issues around our revenues in Q4. We do know that it’s coming in droves, and we’re managing that as a team. And so strategic investment in the financial flexibility, really, this was all triggered by the $150 million strategic equity that we received. This is a lifeblood of capital that unlocks our company inside the scale of our customers’ operations. So we’re expanding globally our footprint, and we’ve got a presence now in Zurich, in London, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong.

And we really believe that, that footprint will support a scalable growth on a global basis. When you look at that forecast, it’s really predicated on the strategic partnerships. We’re very proud of Platinum partners of IBM. Of course, our NYIAX partners that have given us access to the NASDAQ Financial Framework, which is very special and Scilex, which will lead a biotech innovation using our technology that was kind of foundational to their investment in us, but also central to how we’ve marshaled some of our forces to meet their design and development needs and beginning, in fact, today, a force is rising there in biotech between Scilex and Datavault where we’re developing an exchange that will be very special in biotech, in scientific research.

So Burke Products also should be mentioned just giving us chops with the federal government and our ability to contract with the federal government. We have a sensor technology and an inaudible tone technology and a semiconductor product that Burke Products is working with our team, in particular, Sonia Choi and others on our team to develop. We have, of course, the RWA tokenization and our ability to tokenize really begins with our ability to really understand the attribution of many types of elements and resources. We’re really specialized in understanding very deeply particular resources. We’ve just done an announcement in geothermal, but we’ll be doing a great number of announcements in this area. And we’ve really specialized in tokenizing things that are very valuable all over the world.

And so we’re really excited about our RWA positioning. Our preeminent patent position and technology is really getting recognized on a global basis, and we’re really excited about that. We have innovative technology and our partnership with IBM can’t be overstated. It’s really special what we have there in terms of engineering and sales throughput. We also have global execution through our headquarters now in Philadelphia and the locations that I mentioned, we’re able to expand. If you look at really the patented technology that we have that’s quite special, it’s enhanced with partnerships and scalability, multibillion-dollar corporations that have put a stack together on our behalf that really is second to none. We’ve talked a lot about CLEAR and IBM, but Fiserv now and Houlihan Lokey coming to our aid in areas where we needed help around international attribution, around RWA, everything from sovereignty to governance to the underlying assets, and how they’re treated.

We have developed an American political exchange that we intend to launch into the midterm elections in November this coming 2026 November. And we have an international elements exchange that we’ve developed that’s been central to our revenue and interesting from a standpoint of capturing an international attention and very strong use cases here in the United States, given the passage of the GENIUS Act and the passage of CLARITY Act, where we’re able to see now the financial governance models that will allow us to have a New York-based exchange operation. We also have the information data exchange, which is the — our ability to exchange information at a level where we believe companies can turn data into cash. And we’re going to have a specialized biotech exchange with Scilex that will add to this cadre of exchanges, but these will be tokenomic exchanges that use a myriad of blockchain and AI tools for both yield management and product attribution.

We, of course, can tokenize on any blockchain. We are agnostic to chain, but can select the proper chain for any initiative across these exchanges. And we’re excited about that platform, of course. The — just to give you kind of the use case around one of our exchanges, the Elements Exchange, which has a bit of a hot hand in terms of answering the call on a global basis. The International Elements Exchange allows for farming, mining, banking and manufacturing organizations to tokenize and realize a value. Again, our technology does really three things. It is a refinery that allows you to refine your data assets and identify them to objectify them. We have a Datavault where you can value your assets and you can use our agents that we’ve developed that are AI agents that are designed to score and value your data assets.

And then when you are able to score and value them, the last piece is to exchange them. And of course, we have our exchanges. This Elements Exchange is focused on the elements of Earth and all of the products of Earth that are under earth in terms of being mined or that are forthcoming in crops or other manufacturing outputs, even geothermal as we announced today, where you have an energy output of earth. Our Elements Exchange will have a myriad of elements, it’s a number of them. We have a focus around our Elements Exchange and how we make money on that exchange is our use of these elements to create objects that are traded on our exchange. We’re focused on right now revenue drivers including commodities, agricultural and soft commodities, that’s sugar and cotton.

Commodities include gold and rare earth, pharma and genomics and biotech, our partnership with Scilex, our partnership with Brookhaven National Laboratory. We are focused around tokenizing, valuing and refining these objects and producing a revenues around these objects that is received on every tick of the trade on these exchanges. We operate exactly like the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ. We are able to uplist companies’ assets in the form of token, and we can trade them in between buyers and sellers in a brokered exchange that is secure and using world-class infrastructure, as I discussed. So we have the ability to do this in real estate as well. We have large RWA products in real estate, corporate data, including data in situations of banking, insurance and accounting, Tort law, a number of interesting data sets that are valuable and can be traded on our exchanges.

We also have, of course, our NIL Exchange. And our international NIL Exchange will be making an enormous announcement about its rebranding, and we’ve targeted a corporation that has identified us and we’ve identified them, and we’re going to make a big step forward and a big announcement in the near future around our sports NIL Exchange. We have also our focus around, of course, developing our quantum computing and high-performance computing capability. This is in combination, of course, with IBM, but it’s also targeted around our London and New York and Hong Kong operations and also looking at using that technology infrastructure team and resource around our exchange resources as well as our ability to use that technology to optimize the output and the performance of our own company.

We are focused on, of course, VerifyU, our credentialing technology, DVHolo, our ability to turn data into experience and to monetize experience on our exchanges. Our ability to use our NIL exchange with an enormous global brand recognized around the world across all professional sports and collegiate sports. And our ability to focus on our digital twin capability through our Twinstitute, our acquisition of API Media and our consolidation of CSI in the event space, our ability to have data from events to look at events around the world as creating data in their [ wake ] that is more valuable potentially than tickets themselves and the ability to optimize those events through data, the sales of merchandise, the development of connections to fans and the continuation of the revenue streams for our customers that engage our Acoustic division.

ADIO which is data over sound; WiSA, which is the ability to control sound in high-definition and spatial environments and to broadcast wirelessly as synchronization that will have extreme value in robotics and into the future. We have, of course, the Sumerian crypto anchors and our ability to map the real world and bring data from adamant objects from real things to know when a file in a physical world is opened, to know when a statute is moved. Our Sumerian anchors are breakthrough technologies. We have, of course, our pipeline that’s driven us to increase our guidance from $50 million to $200 million next year. This is driven by gold, diamonds, tin, Winsor Ruby deal we have in Africa. We just announced this morning a geothermal deal worth $8 million in tokenization that we believe we can recognize in our fourth quarter.

We will then engage in a 5% revenue stream around geothermal energy, which we’re excited to be a part of the Battery of America. We also have, of course, the contract discussions and projects that are underway in aluminum, titanium, tungsten, silver, copper, oil, natural gas, Boron, real estate. We have a number of opportunities around our X Club, which is an international Asian-focused club around XRP and our move forward there is exciting around these elements. We have our acquisition of API Media that’s going to bring us into some high-powered activations and big-time events. The Kentucky Derby, PGA Tour. These are all events that we’re excited to be part of, and we’re part of it because of API Media. We have new leadership. We have new corporate governance and quality in our management because of that acquisition, and we’re so excited to have that team on board with us in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

We — from here, have a guidance and updated our strategic guidance, is really around our launch of these exchanges. That’s how we’re going to drive revenue. That’s how we’re going to meet these expanded goals. It’s difficult. It’s not easy, but we didn’t want a low bar for our team or for our management moving forward. We see this giant opportunity, and we’ve increased guidance accordingly. There’s a lot of wood to chop, a lot of work to do. We’re doing it. Scalable licensing models is our focus. We’ve upgraded our financial outlook, as I discussed, RWA and tokenomics, a world leader in that space with patents to prove it, underlying intellectual property that continues to grow, a big shout out to that team, Josh Paugh and now Jacob on that team that are developing patent resources for us on a daily basis including the opportunity to license the WiSA technologies on a scalable and global basis moving forward with partners that are second to none.

So that sums up really our presentation today or my prepared remarks. We really appreciate the time and interest in our company. We’re excited about what the future has to offer and happy holidays to everyone, and we give thanks to our shareholders and everybody involved in our company, moving and driving this forward. Thank you very much.

Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Ken Londoner from Endicott Partners.

Ken Londoner: That was a comprehensive update. Can you give us some detail on the scope of contracts you’re talking about regarding the tokenization of real-world assets? You mentioned quite a few, but what are sort of the big focuses for you going forward?

Nathaniel Bradley: So really, the strategy there is driven by the quality of the assets that are being tokenized, gold, diamonds, silver. We’re big believers in copper. Copper will have — it’s a conductive metal, of course. And as we rebuild around the world and build new infrastructure around the world, including data centers, copper, we believe, has a lot of value as do many other elements. We’re kind of an open ear around the world. The cool thing is we’ve been invited to governors’ mansions. We’ve been invited into really the governments of international countries and places that we’re excited to go and listen and find where the most valuable assets reside and how we can help move those assets. We did open out of Zurich, the opportunity to have a Swiss exchange, and we’re working through all the legalities and proper modalities for that.

And we’re not quick to work through all of that. We’re careful to work through all of that. And once we do, we will launch there internationally here in the U.S., really from our Philadelphia headquarters. We intend to have these token exchanges all expand. So to answer your question quite succinctly, we’re following the money. We’re listening to our customers and following the most valuable assets, proprietors in those assets that are most valuable that we could — our team would focus on tokenizing assets that we could tokenize this year and recognize revenue for this year and also then move into volume on our exchanges where we have revenue generated on every tick of the trade as do our clients. So we’re focused on RWA that is most valuable.

I think the announcement today with geothermal, if you look at our priorities, we’ve started there with one of our big priorities, geothermal.

Operator: Next question today is coming from Jack Vander Aarde from Maxim Group.

Jack Vander Aarde: Okay. Great. I appreciate the update. You covered quite a lot of ground there. Where do I start? The guidance is jumped off the page to me. So revenue guidance raised in 2025 to over $30 million and $200 million plus revenue for 2026. So maybe, Nate, I mean, this is really leveled up here, I mean, clearly. So maybe help us understand what’s sort of locked in that 2026 guidance versus how much is kind of are you working towards locking in? Just so we have a sense of maybe stress testing that a little bit.

Nathaniel Bradley: So look, I had to arm wrestle with many on my financial team, Brett Moyer, who deserves a lot of credit for unlocking this value in the first place. But the concept here is to really underpromise and overdeliver. I don’t look at that 200 number and feel intimidated. I want my team to feel inspired and to be fired up about a mission that we jointly have together. But I also — so I didn’t want to have a low bar where we are simply overperforming by a function of living. I wanted us to have a goal as a team in our public guidance is obviously our public guidance. Internally, we aim high. And as a leader, we would aspire to be much greater than that number. Our competitors have numbers that are much greater, but they were much older and much more, I would say, bloated and stuck in their way.

We have a very nimble AI strategy. We have the #1 partner in the world in IBM around our development, around our technology and the development of quantum systems, which are in near term, a concern for every operation that has any technological reach. So to stress test, the fourth quarter is to understand that this is our first go around. We’re working with our auditors. We’re working with sophisticated systems around the world. There are revenue recognition and other things to consider that we simply need to understand. So the fourth quarter is likely the steepest climb. It has a lot to do with our technological resources, putting a lot of pressure on that Georgia Development Center that we’ve begun to develop. We will be expanding that development to meet the demand of this international demand for tokenomics.

We also have our new facility in Philadelphia, where we’re bringing a team that worked disparately or worked from a Philadelphia location that was private, but many from their homes and from locations that were disparate, bringing our team together, there’s a common coffee pot focus that I think when we bring our team together, these numbers start to be quite achievable. And I hope to readjust guidance because we don’t want to have a situation where it’s easy to achieve what we intend to achieve. We are rookie in terms of our first year on the NASDAQ as data evolves. We have exceptional pedigree technology from WiSA and a tenure on the NASDAQ that shows in our volume and the respect that we’re getting worldwide. We’re also garnering a number of government — and you can see today very important projects that impact our world.

So I want to thank you for your early guidance for seeing this so early and for having the strength to come out and call us at $3. And as we shoot past that guidance, I hope people recognize your prowess. And we appreciate you following our company for so long.

Jack Vander Aarde: Great. No, and I appreciate that. Let’s — there’s so much to queue on here, Nate. I just want to understand it and also make sure I’m also setting the expectations appropriately. So — and if Brett’s there as well, maybe that would be helpful, too. On the gross margin line, so if we just look kind of going forward, these are, I imagine, high-margin licensing agreements right now on paper. And I’ve yet to see it play out within the tokenization on your guys’ income statement. So that’s going to be a forward-looking thing. Can you just help maybe, help us — help investors understand what are we going to look like on the gross margin line as these revenues would seem to be pretty large, especially relative to historical levels. I’ll…

Nathaniel Bradley: Yes, I’ll let Brett answer that. But what I would tell you is that we do a great deal of work. If you look at the refinement of data, you might make 20 points on your best day on refinement. You’re not looking to get your customer really into these large contracts of CapEx expenditure where you end up in these kind of slow-moving board-level type decisions. Instead, we have a low-cost approach to that. We like to refine on our customers’ premises and give them a data refinery and essentially a vending machine for their data. The ability to buy and sell data from our Datavault on the exchange is our aim. So when you get to the exchange and our SaaS has traditional SaaS margins, which are great. But our exchange has exceptional margins, and those can flirt with upper 80s on the exchange.

So it’s Refinery Vault exchange. And as you walk through that — those tires, I think you have varying degree of margin in the business. And then, of course, our Acoustic division takes on the more traditional cost of goods versus price of product type analysis. But Brett, with that, I’ll turn it to you.

Brett Moyer: Yes. So Jack, if you — I think Nate framed it actually, right? So when you look at the businesses we’re acquiring or have acquired, right, CSI, API and ultimately NYIAX, that creates probably the opportunity to do $35 million to $50 million next year. And that’s going to be more traditional margins in the, call it, 35% to 45% range. But when you move to — if you go back and look at the deals we’ve announced, they all have a component of licensing. So I would expect the rest of the revenue to be weighted higher to the $60 million range, right? So I think when you blend it all out, you’re going to be in a 55%, 60% margin across the company.

Jack Vander Aarde: Fantastic. Okay. Those are excellent margins. And then can I get an update there’s so many moving parts here, obviously, because you guys are on fire. How do we — how do I think about the balance sheet? So — because the third quarter, it doesn’t really do a justice, I don’t believe. So we have a huge Bitcoin investment, it sounds like coming in from Scilex. There’s been a lot more acquisitions that have closed subsequent to the quarter. So there’s debt, there’s fiat cash. Maybe if we could just boil it down, do we have a rough sense of what cash is and what the state of that investment is from Scilex?

Brett Moyer: From Scilex? Yes, Nate, do you want me to answer this?

Nathaniel Bradley: Yes, yes please.

Jack Vander Aarde: Scilex, my apologies.

Brett Moyer: All right. So let’s take the investment from Scilex because that’s $150 million. We got aid in just at the end of the close of the quarter, but that investment is locked down and documented. The only thing between us and having that on the balance sheet is the shareholder vote on November 24. We — that is an Annual Shareholder Meeting. So we will have quorum, and we have voting agreements prior that we had signed at the time of signing the Scilex deal that amount to, I believe, more than 40 million yes votes. So we’re highly confident that the majority of the votes cast will be — will approve the increase authorized so we can close that $150 million on November 24 or 25, right? So when you think about the balance sheet, that’s triggered — that deal triggered a couple of reactions on the balance sheet.

A, it means by the end of the year, you have $130 million plus of liquid assets, maybe $125 million because we’re buying API. It also meant that the convertible debt that we had in Q3 triggered out and is off our balance sheet for good. So the only debt on the balance sheet currently is debt associated with the strategic acquisitions of CSI and Datavault Holdings now known as EOS Technologies. So I think you get to a pretty powerful and strong balance sheet as we report out the K at the end of the year.

Jack Vander Aarde: Excellent. That’s very helpful. Just one more follow-up to that. With the Bitcoin investment, let’s say the shareholder vote is approved, so all $150 worth of Bitcoin is now in your possession. Are you going to be — does that mean your — how much of that is going to be kept in the form of Bitcoin versus how much of that is out the door to fund some of this stuff?

Brett Moyer: Well, look, I think there’s — I think it’s real important for investors to understand that when we took the 150 — when we signed that financing deal, there are no treasury restrictions around it. So from management’s perspective, Nate in my mind, that $150 million is the same as cash, except it has a little bit more volatility than cash, right? But fundamentally, we look at it as cash, so we don’t look at having any pressure for multiple years to have to raise cash, raise any money for the company which is fundamentally changing, right, our platform…

Jack Vander Aarde: Yes. So for all effective purposes, it’s both working capital or it’s an investment. It’s kind of whatever you need it to be when it’s in the door.

Brett Moyer: Exactly.

Operator: Our next question today is coming from Peter [ Ruggieri ] from a private investor.

Unknown Attendee: I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. I got involved originally as an investor in Sorrento, which owns Scilex, which owns Semnur. They’re involved with Celularity, piece of Aardvark [indiscernible] involved, now Semnur or Scilex has put $150 million into Datavault which is new to me. And I have a lot of questions because with all this — with like IPMC and a precision medicine globally with Robert Hariri with Celularity, you’re running a whole platform globally with increasing medicine AI. It’s a big thing. And I’m just astounded by the revenue guidance, by the way. I’m wondering what’s the revenue contract backlog right now?

Nathaniel Bradley: It’s significant. It’s one of the hardest things to get through and particularly internationally, just in terms of getting the company’s chops up for that. And our Philadelphia headquarters is going to address legal and governance and many other things. Also, these exchanges are not simple in their constructs from a governance standpoint. And we have a very kind of governance-first model that served us very well. We get to be the iTunes in the space as opposed to the Napsters, if you will. So I’m excited about that. I think your question is regarding to the biotech space and Scilex investment or interest in us. Scilex is wildly accretive to our strategy. We had announced previously digital twinning and digital twins as a marketplace that we were interested in developing technology around and we have.

And its really data into experience, data into hologram, data into model, data into experiential models where management teams don’t struggle to understand the challenges or the data related to the challenges around them. They’re able to actually experience that data and see the pathways before them more clearly. And that’s kind of at the center of the Datavault which is experience around and that experience includes valuation and score because it had to be sustainable. So valuation and score. And one of the things that is common across these threads, but very specific in the biotech space is our work with the Brookhaven National Laboratory, which I believe Scilex was studied and saw our progress there and read our cooperative research and advancement agreement drafts that are now being considered at Brookhaven.

We have the great privilege of working with supercomputers there in a supercomputer environment of people that we’ve come to trust and in fact, love that we are able to develop a system between our federal laboratories, our allies, so BAE over — just over the pond and some of the collaborators we have here in the United States, whether it’s General Dynamics, Raytheon or Boeing, our ability to take information and have rather than stovepipes and everybody not share their marbles that everybody can collaborate on a global basis for the advancement of technologies across a myriad of spaces, none more important, none more probably well-funded than biotech. And Scilex is a leader in that, the people there and the leaders, Dr. Henry Ji, certainly financially Stephen Ma, who’s become a mentor to me.

These are incredible people who have a great grasp over biotech science and biotech technologies. And we’re proud to have that investment that allows us to build that platform and so much more. We’re a platform of platforms. We’re exchange of exchanges, the ability to launch exchange after exchange, our biotech exchange, which will have a great name. I know the name, I can’t say it, but the biotech exchange will be a very special attribute. So to the size question about — part of your question about size and why is this space so hot or why did we increase our guidance? It’s only partially for the real-world asset of biotech that’s in our guidance. And I think it’s an explosive piece that maybe makes us to re-guide. But the biotech piece is incredibly exciting and has attribution and use case and utility across every medical science, oncology and heart, acute, post-acute.

When you look at the healthcare space, it is not a market, it’s the market. Everyone will engage with it at some point. And many of us on a daily basis, many more on acute management basis are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum to address our health. And the kind of compound nature of that makes it not only an international crisis, but something that needs technology to address. And we’re happy and proud to be part of the solution of creation of digital twins. And you could see scanning the human body and having a digital twin could aid you, just like it aids management in experiencing their data decisions. When you see your digital twin, it has the same effect. And healthcare is very exceptional. It’s very well-funded, but also in crisis.

So it’s a unique combination. We’re happy to be part of the solution.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from [ Tyrell Pruitt, ] a private investor. We reached end of our question-and-answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, this call contains forward-looking statements, which reflect management’s current judgment, including certain of our expectations regarding fiscal year 2025 and 2026 financial performance. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our projections and forecasts are discussed in detail in our periodic filings with the SEC. That does conclude today’s teleconference and webcast. We thank you for your participation today.