From the Wire: Nanoveu put its EMASS chip in a drone – but what does that really mean?

For the “trending” segment on this week’s HotCopper Wire podcast, Isaac McIntyre and Jonathon Davidson turned to the junior lighting up the forums: Nanoveu (ASX:NVU), the Perth-based tech outfit that just strapped its ultra-low-power AI chip to a real drone – and asked whether the story holds up.

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Nanoveu’s EMASS arm has this week finished a chip that “sips power” and bolted it into a two-and-a-bit-kilo quadcopter, delivering a claimed 27% jump in flight efficiency. Basically, more air time with no bigger battery needed.

“Could well be a bit of a microcap dream,” McIntyre said, noting Nanoveu is still around 5cps, has early-stage trials to clear, a few million in the bank, and just bought a Singapore group to run the silicon-to-airframe process. “Drones plus AI plus a junior with a story,” he said – catnip for the forums.

Davidson was less charmed. The drone angle was an extension of a theme the pair raised last week, he said (Oz investors are loving drone tech), but he flagged a swerve: “Nanoveu has suddenly pivoted into hearing aids for some reason recently… I see a company that perhaps doesn’t know the best use case.”

He was willing to concede that a microchip isn’t a biotech drug locked to one condition, though, so a multi-use strategy “can be legitimate” in some cases.

But, his scepticism ran deeper than this week’s news. “I am still haunted by memories of the presentation Nanoveu put out when they first acquired this chip tech,” Davidson said, recalling a pitch to use it for crop prediction. “I think [that] failed to realise weather radars and extensive prediction technologies already exist.” That idea was dropped, he pointed out. “Now it’s drones and hearing aids.”

“I’m being a hater, yes,” he conceded, calling it promising Nanoveu was working with a proper quadcopter “as opposed to a smaller Temu drone model.”

“Maybe it comes good, and I’m just an idiot for being too cynical. If the chip really lets a drone “divert all of its power to propulsion, absolutely there’s a value prop there.”

Then the Wire duo checked the maths. Unsure how much battery a microchip actually draws in a drone not using Nanoveu’s tech, Davidson said the announcements left him led to believe it’s a lot, so he looked it up.

“According to websites I was satisfied are reliable, it’s not much,” he said. By his read, “around 1% of a standard drone battery gets used anyway.”

His verdict: “So if there’s money in unlocking that 1%, sure, I guess.”

You can listen to the full HotCopper Wire episode below.

You can also find the POD to listen to and download over on Spotify.

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