As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 29, 2021
Registration No. 333-259278
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
________________________
Amendment No.1 to
FORM S-1
REGISTRATION STATEMENT
UNDER
THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
________________________
CYNGN Inc.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
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Delaware |
7371 |
46-2007094 |
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(State or other jurisdiction of
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(Primary Standard Industrial
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(I.R.S. Employer
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________________________
Cyngn Inc.
1015 O’Brien Dr.
Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 924-5905
(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)
________________________
Lior Tal
Chief Executive Officer
Cyngn Inc.
1015 O’Brien Dr.
Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 924-5905
(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)
________________________
Copies to:
Gregory Sichenzia, Esq. Marcelle S. Balcombe, Esq. Sichenzia Ross Ference LLP. 1185 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036 (212) 930-9700 |
Anthony W. Basch, Esq. Benming Zhang, Esq. Kaufman & Canoles, P.C. 1021 E. Cary St. Richmond, Virginia 23219 (804) 771-5700 |
Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public: As soon as practicable after this registration statement becomes effective.
If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933 check the following box. ☒
If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer ☐ |
Accelerated filer ☐ |
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Non-accelerated filer ☒ |
Smaller reporting company ☒ |
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Emerging growth company ☒ |
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act. ☐
CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE
Title of Each Class of Securities to be Registered |
Proposed
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Amount of
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Common Stock, par value $0.00001 |
$ |
34,500,000 |
$ |
3,763.95 |
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Underwriter’s Warrants(3)(4) |
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— |
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— |
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Shares of Common Stock underlying Underwriter’s Warrants(4) |
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1,500,000 |
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163.65 |
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Total |
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36,000,000 |
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3,927.60 |
(5) |
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(1) Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the amount of the registration fee pursuant to Rule 457(o) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Includes shares to be sold upon exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares.
(2) Pursuant to Rule 416, the securities being registered hereunder include such indeterminate number of additional securities as may be issued after the date hereof as a result of stock splits, stock dividends or similar transactions.
(3) No fee pursuant to Rule 457(g) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
(4) The Underwriter’s Warrants will represent the right to purchase 4% of the aggregate number of shares of common stock sold in this offering, excluding the overallotment option, at an exercise price equal to 125% of the offering price per share.
(5) Previously paid.
The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant will file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement will thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or until the registration statement will become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.
The information in this prospectus is not complete and may be changed. We may not sell these securities until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities and is not soliciting an offer to buy these securities in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale is not permitted.
PRELIMINARY PROSPECTUS |
SUBJECT TO COMPLETION |
SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 |
3,529,412 Shares
Common Stock
This is the initial public offering of shares of common stock of Cyngn Inc.
Prior to this offering, there was no public market for our common stock. We currently estimate that the initial public offering price per share will be between $7.50 and $9.50. We have applied to list our shares of common stock for trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market, subject to official notice of issuance, under the symbol “CYN”. Completion of this offering is contingent on the approval of our listing application for trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market.
We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in Section 2(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings. This prospectus complies with the requirements that apply to an issuer that is an emerging growth company.
Investing in our securities is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. See “Risk Factors” beginning on page 9 of this prospectus for a discussion of information that should be considered in connection with an investment in our securities.
Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.
Per Share |
Total |
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Initial public offering price |
$ |
$ |
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Underwriting discounts and commissions(1) |
$ |
$ |
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Proceeds, before expenses, to us |
$ |
$ |
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(1) The underwriters will be reimbursed for certain expenses incurred in the offering. See “Underwriting” for additional disclosure regarding underwriting discounts, commissions and expenses.
We have granted to the underwriters an option to purchase up 529,412 additional shares of common stock to cover overallotments, if any, exercisable at any time until 45 days after the date of this prospectus.
The underwriters expect to deliver the shares of common stock to purchasers in the offering on or about , 2021.
AEGIS CAPITAL CORP.
The date of this prospectus is , 2021
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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS |
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MATERIAL U.S. FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONSEQUENCES TO NON-U.S. HOLDERS OF OUR COMMON STOCK |
75 |
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79 |
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83 |
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83 |
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F-1 |
You should rely only on the information contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectuses or amendments thereto that we may provide to you in connection with this offering. Neither we nor any of the underwriters have authorized anyone to provide you with information different from, or in addition to, that contained in this prospectus or in any such free writing prospectus. If anyone provides you with different or inconsistent information, you should not rely on it. We can provide no assurance as to the reliability of any other information that others may give to you. The information in this prospectus is accurate only as of the date on the front cover of this prospectus, and the information in any free writing prospectus that we may provide you in connection with this offering is accurate only as of the date of such free writing prospectus. Our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects may have changed since those dates. Neither we nor any of the underwriters are making an offer to sell or seeking offers to buy these securities in any jurisdiction where or to any person to whom the offer or sale is not permitted.
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Unless otherwise indicated, all references to “dollars,” “US$,” or “$” in this prospectus are to United States dollars.
This prospectus contains various company names, product names, trade names, trademarks and service marks, all of which are the properties of their respective owners.
Unless otherwise indicated or the context otherwise requires, all information in this prospectus assumes no exercise of the over-allotment option.
Unless otherwise indicated, all references to “GAAP” in this prospectus are to United States generally accepted accounting principles.
Information contained on our websites, including www.cyngn.com, shall not be deemed to be part of this prospectus or incorporated herein by reference and should not be relied upon by prospective investors for the purposes of determining whether to purchase the units offered hereunder.
Through and including , 2021 all dealers effecting transactions in shares of our common stock, whether or not participating in this offering, may be required to deliver a prospectus. This is in addition to a dealer’s obligation to deliver a prospectus when acting as an underwriter with respect to an unsold allotment or subscription.
For investors outside the United States, neither we nor any of our agents have done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. You are required to inform yourself about and to observe any restrictions relating to this offering and the distribution of this prospectus.
USE OF MARKET AND INDUSTRY DATA
This prospectus includes market and industry data that has been obtained from third party sources, including industry publications, as well as industry data prepared by our management on the basis of its knowledge of and experience in the industries in which we operate (including our management’s estimates and assumptions relating to those industries based on that knowledge). Management’s knowledge of such industries has been developed through its experience and participation in those industries. Although our management believes such information to be reliable, neither we nor our management have independently verified any of the data from third party sources referred to in this prospectus or ascertained the underlying economic assumptions relied upon by such sources. In addition, the agents have not independently verified any of the industry data prepared by management or ascertained the underlying estimates and assumptions relied upon by management. Furthermore, references in this prospectus to any publications, reports, surveys or articles prepared by third parties should not be construed as depicting the complete findings of the entire publication, report, survey or article. The information in any such publication, report survey or article is not incorporated by reference in this prospectus.
We own or have rights to various trademarks, service marks and trade names that we use in connection with the operation of our business. This prospectus may also contain trademarks, service marks and trade names of third parties, which are the property of their respective owners. Our use or display of third parties’ trademarks, service marks and trade names or products in this prospectus is not intended to, and does not imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship by us. Solely for convenience, the trademarks, service marks and trade names referred to in this prospectus may appear without the ®, TM or SM symbols, but the omission of such references is not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights or the right of the applicable owner of these trademarks, service marks and trade names.
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This summary highlights selected information that is presented in greater detail elsewhere in this prospectus. This summary does not contain all of the information you should consider before investing in our Common Stock. You should read this entire prospectus carefully, including the sections titled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus, before making an investment decision. Unless the context otherwise requires, the terms “Cyngn” “the Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” in this prospectus refer to Cyngn Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.
Company Overview
We are an autonomous vehicle (AV) technology company that is focused on addressing industrial uses for autonomous vehicles. We believe that technological innovation is needed to enable adoption of autonomous industrial vehicles that will address the substantial industry challenges that exist today. These challenges include labor shortages, lagging technological advancements from incumbent vehicle manufacturers, and high upfront investment commitment.
Industrial sites are typically rigid environments with consistent standards as opposed to city streets that have more variable environmental and situational conditions and diverse regulations. These differences in operational design domains (ODD) will be major factors that make proliferation of industrial AVs in private settings achievable with less time and resources than AVs on public roadways. Namely, safety and infrastructure challenges are cited as roadblocks that have delayed AVs from operating on public roadways at scale1. Our focus on industrial AVs simplifies these challenges because industrial facilities (especially those belonging to a single end customer that operates similarly at different sites) share much more in common than different cities do. Furthermore, our end customers own their infrastructure and can make changes more easily than governments can on public roadways.
With these challenges in mind, we are developing an Enterprise Autonomy Suite (EAS) that leverages advanced in-vehicle autonomous driving technology and incorporates leading supporting technologies like data analytics, fleet management, cloud, and connectivity. EAS provides a differentiated solution that we believe will drive pervasive proliferation of industrial autonomy and create value for customers at every stage of their journey towards full automation and the adoption of Industry 4.0.
EAS is a suite of technologies and tools that we divide into three complementary categories:
1. DriveMod, our modular industrial vehicle autonomous driving software;
2. Cyngn Insight, our customer-facing tool suite for monitoring and managing AV fleets (including remotely operating vehicles) and aggregating/analyzing data; and
3. Cyngn Evolve, our internal tool suite and infrastructure that facilitates artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) training to continuously enhance our algorithms and models and provides a simulation framework (both record/rerun and synthetic scenario creation) to ensure that data collected in the field can be applied to validating new releases.
Legacy automation providers manufacture specialized industrial vehicles with integrated robotics software for rigid tasks, limiting automation to narrow uses. Unlike these specialized vehicles, EAS can be compatible with existing vehicle assets in addition to new vehicles that have been purpose built for autonomy by vehicle manufacturers. EAS is operationally expansive, vehicle agnostic, and compatible with indoor and outdoor environments. By offering flexible autonomous services, we aim to remove barriers to industry adoption.
We understand that scaling of autonomy solutions will require an ecosystem made up of different technologies and services that are enablers for AVs. Our approach is to forge strategic collaborations with complementary technology providers that accelerate AV development and deployment, provide access to new markets, and create new capabilities. Our focus on designing DriveMod to be modular will combine with our experience deploying AV technology on diverse industrial vehicle form factors, which will be difficult for competitors to replicate.
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1 https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/21122331/autonomous-vehicles-are-we-there-yet
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We expect our technology to generate revenue through two main methods: deployment and EAS subscriptions. Deploying our EAS requires us and our integration partners to work with a new client to map the job site, gather data, and install our AV technology within their fleet and site. We anticipate that new deployments will yield project-based revenues based on the scope of the deployment. After deployment, we expect to generate revenues by offering EAS through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, which can be considered the AV software component of Robotics as a Service (RaaS). Although we have not offered, and have no present intention to offer, the robotic assets ourselves directly to the end customer, our software can be part of a combined offering with third parties, such as an OEM.
RaaS is a subscription model that allows customers to use robots/vehicles without purchasing the hardware assets upfront. We will seek to achieve sustained revenue growth largely from ongoing SaaS-style EAS subscriptions that enable companies to tap into our ever-expanding suite of AV and AI capabilities as organizations transition into full industrial autonomy.
At this time, EAS is available as a private beta release2. Early versions of EAS have been deployed with customers in the past, including an unpaid customer trial in 2017 and a paid customer pilot in 2018, which ended in 2019. We do not currently have any customers, and we do not currently have recurring revenues from EAS. We plan to engage with select customers for limited paid deployments of our EAS beta release over the next 18-24 months (beta phase). Further, we expect EAS to continually be developed and enhanced according to evolving customer needs in the future, which will take place concurrently while other features of EAS are commercialized as is typical in software products.
During the beta phase, we will prepare EAS for scaled commercialization that is targeted in 2024. Key activities that will occur during the beta phase include but are not limited to collecting and training on additional data, enhancing various components of DriveMod and Cyngn Insight based on our experience with beta customers, increasing customer support, and conducting paid beta deployments of increasing scale with select customers. We estimate the costs to prepare EAS for scaled commercialization to be roughly $18M-$23M and expect the limited paid beta deployments to offset some of the ongoing R&D costs of developing EAS. There can be no guarantee that the actual amount required to prepare EAS for scaled commercialization will not exceed these estimates or that limited paid deployments that would offset some of these costs will be at the level we have planned. We target scaled deployments and recurring revenues to begin in 2024, which we expect to drive additional spending in sales, marketing, and customer support while EAS continues to undergo technology and product feature enhancements on an ongoing basis.
Our go-to-market strategy is to acquire new customers that use industrial vehicles in their mission-critical and daily operations by (a) leveraging the relationships and existing customers of our network of strategic partners, (b) bringing AV capabilities to industrial vehicles as a software service provider, and (c) executing a robust in-house sales and marketing effort to nurture a pipeline of industrial organizations. Our focus is on acquiring new customers who are either looking (a) to embed our technology into their vehicle product roadmaps or (b) to apply autonomy to existing fleets with our vehicle retrofits. In turn, our customers are any organizations that could benefit from our EAS solution, including original equipment manufacturers (OEM) that supply industrial vehicles, end customers that operate their own industrial vehicles, or service providers that operate industrial vehicles for end customers.
As OEMs and leading industrial vehicle users seek to increase productivity, reinforce safer working environments, and scale their operations, we believe Cyngn is uniquely positioned to deliver a dynamic autonomy solution via our EAS to a wide variety of industrial uses. Our long-term vision is for EAS to become a universal autonomous driving solution with minimal marginal cost for companies to adopt new vehicles and expand their autonomous fleets across new deployments. We have deployed DriveMod software on nine different vehicle form factors that range from stockchasers and stand-on floor scrubbers to 14-seat shuttles and 5-meter-long cargo vehicles demonstrating the extensibility of our AV building blocks. These deployments were prototypes or part of proof-of-concept projects. Of these deployments, two were at customer sites. For one deployment we were paid $166,000 and the other was part of our normal R&D activities.
Our strategy upon establishing a customer relationship with an OEM, is to seek to embed our technology into their vehicle roadmap and expand our services to their many clients. Once we solidify an initial AV deployment with a customer, we intend to seek to expand within the site to additional vehicle platforms and/or expand the use of similar vehicles to other sites operated by the customer. This “land and expand” strategy can repeat iteratively across new vehicles and sites and is at the heart of why we believe industrial AVs that operate in geo-fenced, constrained environments are poised to create value.
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2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta
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Meanwhile, over $16B has been invested into passenger AV development over the last several years with negligible revenues generated and constant delays3. The $200B industrial equipment market (projected in 2027) is substantial, but it does not justify billions of dollars of annual research & development spend. These leading passenger AV companies must take the approach of first capturing the trillion-dollar markets of passenger AV to achieve their desired returns.
Risk Factor Summary
Our business is subject to numerous risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. You should carefully consider these risks before making an investment. Some of these risks include:
• Autonomous driving is an emerging technology and involves significant risks and uncertainties.
• We have a limited operating history in a new market and face significant challenges as our industry is rapidly evolving.
• Our business model has yet to be tested and any failure to commercialize our strategic plans would have an adverse effect on our operating results and business.
• We operate in a highly competitive market and will face completion from both established competitors and new market entrants.
• Business collaboration with third parties is subject to risks and these relationships may not lead to significant revenue.
• We are an early-stage company with a history of losses, and expect to incur significant expenses and continuing losses for the foreseeable future.
• If we fail to manage our growth effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service, or adequately address competitive challenges.
• Pandemics and epidemics, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, terrorist activities, political unrest, and other outbreaks could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows or liquidity.
• Our business may be adversely affected if we are unable to adequately establish, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights or prevent third parties from making unauthorized use of our technology and other intellectual property rights.
• Our patent applications may not issue as patents, which may have a material adverse effect on our ability to prevent others from commercially exploiting product technology similar to ours.
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3 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/money-pit-self-driving-cars-16-billion-cash-burn
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GLOSSARY OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL TERMS
The following is a glossary of technical terms used in this prospectus:
Autonomous driving — The levels of automated driving systems as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)4 are as follows:
• Level 0 (No Automation): The human driver performs all driving tasks but may receive warnings from the automated system.
• Level 1 (Driver Assistance): The human driver is responsible for driving, but may receive support features limited to steering OR braking/acceleration from the automated system.
• Level 2 (Partial Automation): The human driver is responsible for driving, but may receive support features limited to steering AND braking/acceleration from the automated system.
• Level 3 (Conditional Automation): The automated system is responsible for all aspects of driving in limited pre-defined conditions, but a human driver is present to take over control of the vehicle at any time that the automated system requests.
• Level 4 (High Automation): The automated system is responsible for all aspects of driving in limited pre-defined conditions. A human may have the option to control the vehicle.
• Level 5 (Full Automation): The automated system is responsible for all aspects of driving under all conditions. A human may have the option to control the vehicle.
Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) — Wheel-based load carriers that follow a fixed route without an onboard operator or driver, typically using floor markings, wires/tracks, or location beacons.
Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) — Wheel-based load carrier that is capable of moving around its environment without an onboard operator while not being confined to a fixed route or requiring the infrastructure-based guidance systems of an AGV.
Beta release — A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Software beta releases can be either public or private, depending on whether they are openly available or only available to a limited audience. Beta version software is often useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization and to prospective customers.
Customers — Any organization that could utilize Cyngn’s software, tools, and products, including vehicle manufacturers, organizations that use vehicles in their business operations (defined as End Customers below), or organizations that operate vehicles on behalf of end customers.
Drive-by-wire (DbW) — electrical or electro-mechanical systems for performing vehicle functions traditionally achieved by mechanical linkages.
Electronic Control Unit (ECU) — embedded system that controls one or more systems or subsystems in a vehicle.
End Customers — Companies and organizations that use industrial vehicles in their business operations.
Human-Machine Interface (HMI) — The hardware or software through which an operator interacts with a controller of an electronic or computer device.
Industrial automation — The use of control systems, such as computers or robots, and information technologies for handling different processes and machineries in an industry.
Industry 4.0 — Also known as “the fourth industrial revolution”. The ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology (e.g., machine-to-machine communication, internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles).
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4 https://www.sae.org/news/2019/01/sae-updates-j3016-automated-driving-graphic
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Internet of Things (IoT) — The interconnection via the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.
Lidar — LiDAR or lidar which stands for “Light Detection and Ranging,” is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) of objects from a lidar sensor.
Localization — Process by which an autonomous system is able to locate its position within an environment.
Machine Learning (ML) — Computer systems that are able to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions, by using algorithms and statistical models to analyze and draw inferences from patterns in data.
Operational Design Domain (ODD) — Operating conditions under which a given driving automation system or feature thereof is specifically designed to function, including, but not limited to, environmental, geographical, and time-of-day restrictions, and/or the requisite presence or absence of certain traffic or roadway characteristics.
Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) — Original producer of a vehicle.
Retrofit — The act of adding a component(s) or accessory(ies) to something that did not have it when originally manufactured.
Robotics as a Service — Service-oriented business model for using robotic systems that helps to avoid the upfront capital costs associated with end customers buying expensive robotic assets.
Robot-in-a-box — Fully functional robot that is designed to perform a specific task or set of tasks in a pre-defined environment.
Sensor Fusion system — System that combines data streams from different sensors (e.g., Lidar, Radar, cameras) into an accurate digital representation of the physical world.
Service lifecycle management — Post-sale lifecycle of automation systems including consulting, installation, employee training, operations, customer service, and end of life reclamation.
Software as a Service — software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis.
Corporate Information
The Company was originally incorporated in the State of Delaware on February 1, 2013, under the name Cyanogen, Inc. or Cyanogen. The Company started as a venture funded company with offices in Seattle and Palo Alto, aimed at commercializing CyanogenMod, direct to consumer and through collaborations with mobile phone manufacturers. CyanogenMod was an open-source operating system for mobile devices, based on the Android mobile platform.
Between 2013 and 2015, Cyanogen released multiple versions of its mobile operating system, and collaborated with an ecosystem of companies including mobile phone OEMs, content providers and leading technology partners.
In 2016 the Company’s management and board of directors, determined to pivot its product focus and commercial direction from the mobile device and telecom space to industrial and commercial autonomous driving. In May 2017, the Company changed its name to Cyngn Inc.
Our principal business address is 1015 O’Brien Dr., Menlo Park, CA 94025. We maintain our corporate website at https://cyngn.com. The reference to our website is an inactive textual reference only. The information that can be accessed through our website is not part of this prospectus, and investors should not rely on any such information in deciding whether to purchase our common stock.
Our executive officers, directors and principal stockholders (including entities affiliated with Benchmark, that beneficially own approximately 40% and 35% upon completion of this offering) in the aggregate, beneficially own approximately 98% and will continue to own approximately 86% of our outstanding common stock upon completion of this offering (assuming no exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares). Such persons acting together, will have the ability to control or significantly influence all matters submitted to our board of directors or stockholders for approval, as well as our management and business affairs.
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THE OFFERING
Securities offered |
We are offering 3,529,412 shares of common stock (4,058,824 shares if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option). |
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Public offering price |
The assumed public offering price is $8.50 per share of common stock (the midpoint of the price range listed on the cover page of this prospectus). |
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Common Stock outstanding before this offering: |
950,794 shares (excludes 21,982,491 shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of outstanding Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock, and Series C Preferred Stock, at the option of the holders). |
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Common Stock to be outstanding immediately after this offering |
26,462,697 shares (includes 21,982,491 shares of common stock upon conversion of outstanding Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock, and Series C Preferred Stock at the closing of this offering). |
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Option to purchase additional shares: |
We have granted the underwriters a 45-day option to purchase up to 529,412 additional shares of our common stock (equal to 15% of the number of shares of common stock sold in the offering), from us. |
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Use of proceeds |
Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share, after payment of commissions and expenses, we expect to receive gross proceeds of $30,000,000 and net proceeds of $26,790,325 (or gross proceeds of $34,500,000 and net proceeds of $30,930,325 if the over-allotment option is exercised in full). We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including funding our operating needs. |
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See “Use of Proceeds” on page 32 for a more complete description of the intended use of proceeds from this offering. |
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Dividend Policy |
Holders of common stock are entitled to receive ratably such dividends, if any, as may be declared by our board of directors, or the Board, out of funds legally available. We have not paid any dividends since our inception, and we presently anticipate that all earnings, if any, will be retained for development of our business. Any future disposition of dividends will be at the discretion of our Board and will depend upon, among other things, our future earnings, operating and financial condition, capital requirements, and other factors. |
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Voting Rights |
Each share of common stock will entitle its holder to one vote on all matters to be voted on by stockholders. See “Description of Securities.” |
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Risk Factors: |
Investing in our securities is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the information set forth in this prospectus and, in particular, the specific factors set forth in the “Risk Factors” section beginning on page 9 of this prospectus before deciding whether or not to invest in our securities |
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Proposed Nasdaq Ticker Symbol |
We have applied to list our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “CYN”. This Offering will not be consummated until we have received Nasdaq Capital Market approval of our application. |
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Lock-ups |
We and our directors, officers, employees and holders of at least 10% of our outstanding securities have agreed with the underwriters not to offer for sale, issue, sell, contract to sell, pledge or otherwise dispose of any of our common stock for a period of 120 days from this offering. See “Underwriting” on page 79. |
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Unless we indicate otherwise or the context otherwise requires, all information in this prospectus:
• excludes an aggregate of 21,982,491 shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of outstanding Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock, and Series C Preferred Stock, which will automatically convert to common stock upon closing of this offering.
• assumes the shares of common stock are offered at $8.50 per share (the midpoint of the price range listed on the cover page of this prospectus);
• excludes 8,593,678 shares issuable upon exercise of outstanding options;
• excludes 8,212,691 shares reserved for issuance under the Company’s 2013 Equity Incentive Plan, as amended; and
• assumes no exercise by the underwriters of their overallotment option.
Emerging Growth Company under the JOBS Act
We qualify as an “emerging growth company” under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act. As an emerging growth company, we have elected to take advantage of reduced reporting requirements and are relieved of certain other significant requirements that are otherwise generally applicable to public companies. As an emerging growth company:
• we may present only two years of audited financial statements and only two years of related Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations;
• we are exempt from the requirement to obtain an attestation and report from our auditors on whether we maintained effective internal control over financial reporting under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;
• we are permitted to provide less extensive disclosure about our executive compensation arrangements; and
• we are not required to give our stockholders non-binding advisory votes on executive compensation or golden parachute arrangements.
We may take advantage of these provisions until December 31, 2026 (the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of our initial public offering) if we continue to be an emerging growth company. We would cease to be an emerging growth company if we have more than $1.07 billion in annual revenue, have more than $700 million in market value of our shares held by non-affiliates or issue more than $1.0 billion of non-convertible debt over a three-year period. We may choose to take advantage of some but not all of these reduced burdens. We have elected to provide two years of audited financial statements. Additionally, we have elected to take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, for complying with new or revised accounting standards that have different effective dates for public and private companies until the earlier of the date we (i) are no longer an emerging growth company or (ii) affirmatively and irrevocably opt out of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.
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SUMMARY CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL AND OTHER DATA
The following tables present our summary financial data and should be read together with our audited consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes and information in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. The summary financial data for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 are unaudited and include all normal adjustments necessary for a fair presentation of the Company’s financial position at June 30, 2021 and 2020, and its results of operations and cash flows for the period then ended. These unaudited financial statements should be read in conjunction with the audited financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, which are included elsewhere in this prospectus. Our consolidated financial statements are prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”). Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our future results.
UNAUDITED
|
AUDITED
|
|||||||||||||||
2021 |
2020 |
2020 |
2019 |
|||||||||||||
Summary Consolidated Statements of Operations Data |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
Revenue |
$ |
— |
|
$ |
— |
|
$ |
— |
|
$ |
124,501 |
|
||||
Operating expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
Research and development |
|
1,766,186 |
|
|
2,678,419 |
|
|
5,120,979 |
|
|
5,707,705 |
|
||||
General and administrative |
|
1,877,118 |
|
|
1,680,138 |
|
|
3,252,649 |
|
|
3,982,491 |
|
||||
Total operating expenses |
|
3,643,304 |
|
|
4,358,557 |
|
|
8,373,628 |
|
|
9,690,196 |
|
||||
Loss from operations |
|
(3,643,304 |
) |
|
(4,358,557 |
) |
|
(8,373,628 |
) |
|
(9,565,695 |
) |
||||
Other (expense) income |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
Interest (expense) income |
|
(6,043 |
) |
|
33,976 |
|
|
39,841 |
|
|
230,521 |
|
||||
Other income (expenses) |
|
5,952 |
|
|
10,669 |
|
|
(5,020 |
) |
|
— |
|
||||
Total other (expense) income |
|
(91 |
) |
|
44,645 |
|
|
34,821 |
|
|
230,521 |
|
||||
Net loss |
$ |
(3,643,395 |
) |
$ |
(4,313,912 |
) |
$ |
(8,338,807 |
) |
$ |
(9,335,174 |
) |
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ |
(3.83 |
) |
$ |
(4.54 |
) |
$ |
(8.78 |
) |
$ |
(9.92 |
) |
||||
Weighted average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
|
950,794 |
|
|
950,794 |
|
|
949,544 |
|
|
940,867 |
|
UNAUDITED
|
AUDITED
|
|||||||||||
2021 |
2020 |
2020 |
2019 |
|||||||||
Summary Consolidated Balance Sheet Data |
|
|
|
|
||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents* |
$ |
3,404,381 |
$ |
9,754,075 |
$ |
6,056,190 |
$ |
13,280,550 |
||||
Working capital |
|
3,515,234 |
|
10,034,933 |
|
6,124,624 |
|
13,476,958 |
||||
Total Assets |
|
4,025,605 |
|
10,490,091 |
|
6,673,230 |
|
14,090,404 |
||||
Total liabilities |
|
1,975,208 |
|
870,293 |
|
1,075,496 |
|
286,218 |
||||
Convertible preferred stock |
|
10 |
|
10 |
|
10 |
|
10 |
||||
Total stockholders’ equity |
|
2,050,397 |
|
9,619,798 |
|
5,597,734 |
|
13,804,186 |
____________
* Excludes $400,000 classified as Restricted cash in the consolidated balance sheets as of June 30, 2021 and 2020, and December 31, 2020 and 2019 respectively. The Company’s Restricted cash consists of cash that the Company is obligated to maintain in accordance with the terms of its credit card spending arrangement. The amount of Restricted cash was reduced to $50,000 in July 2021.
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Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this prospectus, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before making a decision to invest in our common stock. Our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be adversely affected by these risks. In that event, the market price of our Common Stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. Our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects could also be harmed by risks and uncertainties not currently known to us or that we currently do not believe are material.
Risks Related to Our Technology, Business, and Industry
Autonomous driving is an emerging technology and involves significant risks and uncertainties.
We develop and deploy a suite of autonomous driving software products that are compatible with existing sensors and hardware to enable autonomous driving on industrial vehicle platforms manufactured and designed by OEMs and other third-party industrial vehicle suppliers. Our autonomous driving technology is highly dependent on internally developed software, as well as on partnerships with third parties such as industrial OEMs and other suppliers.
We partner with OEMs that are seeking to manufacture purpose-built industrial vehicles capable of incorporating our autonomous driving technology. The collaborative partnerships are established through mutually beneficial, non-binding memorandums of understanding or partnership agreements for the purpose of joint go-to-market efforts. In addition to OEMs, we depend on other third parties to produce hardware components, and, in some cases adjacent software solutions, that support our core suite of autonomous driving software products and tools. The timely development and performance of our autonomous driving programs is dependent on the materials, cooperation, and quality delivered by these partners. Further, we do not control the initial design of the industrial vehicles we work with and therefore have limited influence over the production and design of systems for braking, gear shifting, and steering. There can be no assurance that these systems and supporting technologies can be developed and validated at the high reliability standard required for deployment of autonomous industrial vehicles using our technology in a cost-effective and timely manner. Our dependence on these relationships exposes us to the risk that components manufactured by OEMs or other suppliers could contain defects that would cause our autonomous driving technology not to operate as intended.
Our autonomous driving technology is currently available as a private beta release, during which phase, we will prepare for scaled commercialization in 2024. Although we believe that our algorithms, data analysis and processing, and artificial intelligence technology are promising, we cannot assure you that our technology will achieve the necessary reliability for scaled commercialization of autonomous industrial vehicles. For example, we are still improving our technology in terms of handling edge cases, unique environments, and discrete objects. There can be no assurance that our data analytics and artificial intelligence could predict every single potential issue that may arise during the operation of an autonomous industrial vehicle utilizing our autonomous vehicle technology. Furthermore, the release and adoption of EAS and our other technologies and products may not be successful and may take longer than anticipated. If the development of EAS and our other technologies and products is delayed or customers do not adopt and buy our solutions to the extent we anticipate, our business and operating results will be adversely impacted.
We have a limited operating history in a new market and face significant challenges as our industry is rapidly evolving.
You should consider our business and prospects in light of the risks and challenges we face as a new entrant into a novel industry, including, among other things, with respect to our ability to:
• design, integrate, and deploy safe, reliable, and quality autonomous vehicle software products and tools for industrial vehicles with our partners on an ongoing basis;
• navigate an evolving and complex regulatory environment;
• successfully produce with OEM partners a line of purpose-built autonomous industrial vehicles on the timeline we estimate;
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• improve and enhance our software and autonomous technology;
• establish and expand our customer base;
• successfully market our autonomous driving solutions and our other products and services;
• properly price our products and services;
• improve and maintain our operational efficiency;
• maintain a reliable, secure, high-performance, and scalable technology infrastructure;
• attract, retain, and motivate talented employees;
• anticipate and adapt to changing market conditions, including technological developments and changes in competitive landscape; and
• build a well-recognized and respected brand.
If we fail to address any or all of these risks and challenges, our business may be materially and adversely affected. There are also a number of additional challenges to the execution and adoption of autonomous vehicle technology in industrial markets, many of which are not within our control, including market acceptance of autonomous driving, governmental licensing requirements, concerns regarding data security and privacy, actual and threatened litigation (whether or not a judgment is rendered against us), and the general perception that an autonomous vehicle is not safe because there is no human driver. There can be no assurance that the market will accept our technology, in which case our future business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.
The autonomous industrial vehicle industry is in its early stages and is rapidly evolving. Our autonomous driving technology has not yet been commercialized at scale. We cannot assure you that we will be able to adjust to changing market or regulatory conditions quickly or cost-effectively. If we fail to do so, our business, results of operations, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
Our business model has yet to be tested and any failure to commercialize our strategic plans would have an adverse effect on our operating results and business.
You should be aware of the difficulties normally encountered by a relatively new enterprise that is beginning to scale its business, many of which are beyond our control, including unknown future challenges and opportunities, substantial risks and expenses in the course of entering new markets and undertaking marketing activities. The likelihood of our success must be considered in light of these risks, expenses, complications, delays, and the competitive environment in which we operate. There is, therefore, substantial uncertainty that our business plan will prove successful, and we may not be able to generate significant revenue, raise additional capital, or operate profitably. We will continue to encounter risks and difficulties frequently experienced by early commercial stage companies, including securing market acceptance for our product and service offerings, scaling up our infrastructure and headcount. We may encounter unforeseen expenses, difficulties, or delays in connection with our growth. In addition, as a result of the capital-intensive nature of our business, we can be expected to continue to sustain substantial operating expenses without generating sufficient revenue to cover expenditures. Any investment in our company is therefore highly speculative and could result in the loss of your entire investment.
Our future business depends in large part on our ability to continue to develop and successfully commercialize our suite of software products and tools. Our ability to develop, deliver, and commercialize at scale our technology to support or perform autonomous operation of industrial vehicles is still unproven.
Our technology suite is currently available as a private beta release which will need to be continually developed and enhanced for scaled commercialization. Our continued enhancement of our autonomous driving technology is and will be subject to risks, including with respect to:
• our ability to continue to enhance our data analytics and software technology;
• designing, developing, and securing necessary components on acceptable terms and in a timely manner;
• our ability to attract and retain customers;
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• our ability to pay for research and development costs;
• our ability to attract, recruit, hire, and train skilled employees;
• our ability to fund the development and commercialization of our technology; and
• our ability to enter into strategic relationships with key members in the industrial vehicles and industrial automation industries and component suppliers.
We operate in a highly competitive market and will face competition from both established competitors and new market entrants.
The market for autonomous industrial vehicles and industrial automation solutions is highly competitive. Many companies are seeking to develop autonomous driving and delivery solutions. Competition in these markets is based primarily on technology, innovation, quality, safety, reputation, and price. Our future success will depend on our ability to further develop and protect our technology in a timely manner and to stay ahead of existing and new competitors. Our competitors in this market are working towards commercializing autonomous driving technology and may have substantial financial, marketing, research and development, and other resources.
In addition, we also face competition from traditional industrial vehicle and solution companies. Traditional vehicle and solution providers operating with human drivers are still the predominant operators in the market. Because of the long history of such traditional companies serving our potential customers and industries, there may be many constituencies in the market that would resist a shift towards autonomous industrial vehicles, which could include lobbying and marketing campaigns, particularly because our technology will displace machine operators and drivers.
In addition, the market leaders in our target industries, such as Industrial Material Handling (IMH) may start, or have already started, pursuing large scale deployment of autonomous industrial vehicle technology on their own. These companies may have more operational and financial resources than we do. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to effectively compete with them.
We may also face competition from component suppliers and other technology and industrial solution companies if they decide to expand vertically and develop their own autonomous industrial vehicles, some of whom have significantly greater resources than we do. We do not know how close these competitors are to commercializing autonomous driving systems.
Many established and new market participants have entered or have announced plans to enter the autonomous industrial vehicle market. Most of these participants have significantly greater financial, manufacturing, marketing, and other resources than we do and may be able to devote greater resources to the design, development, manufacturing, distribution, promotion, sale, and support of their products. If existing competitors or new entrants commercialize earlier than expected, our competitive advantage could be adversely affected.
Business collaboration with third parties is subject to risks and these relationships may not lead to significant revenue.
Strategic business relationships are and will continue to be an important factor in the growth and success of our business. We have alliances and partnerships, through mutually beneficial non-binding memoranda of understanding or partnering arrangements with other companies in the industrial equipment, automation and automotive industries to help us in our efforts to continue to enhance our technology, commercialize our solutions, and drive market acceptance.
Collaboration with these third parties is subject to risks, some of which are outside our control. For example, certain agreements with our partners grant our partner or us the right to terminate such agreements for cause or without cause. If any of our collaborations with third parties are terminated, it may delay or prevent our efforts to deploy our software products and tools on purpose-built autonomous industrial vehicles at scale. In addition, such agreements may contain certain exclusivity provisions which, if triggered, could preclude us from working with other businesses with superior technology or with whom we may prefer to partner with for other reasons. We could experience delays to the extent our partners do not meet agreed upon timelines or experience capacity constraints. We could also experience disagreement in budget or funding for joint development projects. There is also a risk of other
11
potential disputes with partners in the future, including with respect to intellectual property rights. Our ability to successfully commercialize could also be adversely affected by perceptions about the quality of our or our partners’ vehicles or products.
Risks Related to Our Financial Position and Need for Additional Capital
We are an early-stage company with a history of losses and expect to incur significant expenses and continuing losses for the foreseeable future.
We incurred net losses of ($3,643,395) and ($4,313,912) for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 and, ($8,338,807) and ($9,335,174) for the years ended December 31, 2020, and 2019, respectively. We have not recognized a material amount of revenue to date, and we had accumulated deficit of ($112,337,396) and ($108,694,001) as of June 30, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively. We have developed and tested our autonomous driving technology but there can be no assurance that it will be commercially successful at scale. Our potential profitability is dependent upon a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control. If we are unable to achieve and sustain profitability, the value of our business and common stock may significantly decrease.
We expect the rate at which we will incur losses to be significantly higher in future periods as we:
• design, develop, and deploy our autonomous vehicle software products and tools on industrial vehicle platforms with OEM partners and end customers.
• seek to achieve and commercialize deployments of level 4 autonomy for industrial vehicles;
• seek to expand our commercial deployments, on a nationwide basis in the United States and internationally;
• expand our design, development, maintenance, and repair capabilities;
• respond to competition in the autonomous driving market and from traditional industrial solution providers;
• respond to evolving regulatory developments in the nascent autonomous industrial vehicle and industrial automation markets;
• increase our sales and marketing activities; and
• increase our general and administrative functions to support our growing operations and for being a public reporting company.
Because we will incur the costs and expenses from these efforts before we receive any incremental revenue, our losses in future periods will be significant. In addition, we may find that these efforts are more expensive than we currently anticipate or that these efforts may not result in revenue, which would further increase our losses. In particular, we expect to incur substantial and potentially increasing research and development (“R&D”) costs as we continue to develop and enhance EAS and other technology and products for commercialization. While our R&D costs were $5,120,979 and $5,707,705 during the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, and are likely to grow in the future, we have no recurring revenues. Further, because we account for R&D as an operating expense, these expenditures will adversely affect our results of operations in the future. Our R&D program may not produce successful results, and our new products may not achieve market acceptance, create additional revenue, or become profitable.
We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results of operations.
We were founded in 2013. As a result of our limited operating history, our ability to accurately forecast our future results of operations is limited and subject to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. Our historical performance should not be considered indicative of our future performance. Further, in future periods, our revenue growth could fluctuate for a number of reasons, including shifts in our offering and revenue mix, slowing demand for our offering, increasing competition, decreased effectiveness of our sales and marketing organization, and our sales and marketing efforts to acquire new customers, failure to retain existing customers, changing technology, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, or our failure, for any reason, to continue to take advantage of growth opportunities. We anticipate that we will encounter, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, such as the risks and uncertainties described in this prospectus.
12
If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties and our future revenue growth are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could suffer.
We expect fluctuations in our financial results making it difficult to project future results.
Our results of operations may fluctuate in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, our past results may not be indicative of our future performance. In addition to the other risks described herein, factors that may affect our results of operations include the following:
• changes in our revenue mix and related changes in revenue recognition;
• changes in actual and anticipated growth rates of our revenue, customers, and key operating metrics;
• fluctuations in demand for or pricing of our offering;
• our ability to attract new customers;
• our ability to retain our existing customers, particularly large customers;
• customers and potential customers opting for alternative products, including developing their own in-house solutions;
• investments in new offerings, features, and functionality;
• fluctuations or delays in development, release, or adoption of new features and functionality for our offering;
• delays in closing sales which may result in revenue being pushed into the next quarter;
• changes in customers’ budgets and in the timing of their budget cycles and purchasing decisions;
• our ability to control costs;
• the amount and timing of payment for operating expenses, particularly research and development and sales and marketing expenses;
• timing of hiring personnel for our research and development and sales and marketing organizations;
• the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, educating, and integrating new employees and retaining and motivating existing employees;
• the effects of acquisitions and their integration;
• general economic conditions, both domestically and internationally, as well as economic conditions specifically affecting industries in which our customers participate;
• the impact of new accounting pronouncements;
• changes in revenue recognition policies that impact our technology license revenue;
• changes in regulatory or legal environments that may cause us to incur, among other things, expenses associated with compliance;
• the impact of changes in tax laws or judicial or regulatory interpretations of tax laws, which are recorded in the period such laws are enacted or interpretations are issued and may significantly affect the effective tax rate of that period;
• health epidemics or pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic;
• changes in the competitive dynamics of our market, including consolidation among competitors or customers; and
• significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to, the delivery and use of our offering.
13
Any of these and other factors, or the cumulative effect of some of these factors, may cause our results of operations to vary significantly. If our quarterly results of operations fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts who follow our stock, the price of our common stock could decline substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.
We may need to raise additional funds and these funds may not be available to us on attractive terms when we need them, or at all.
The commercialization of autonomous vehicles is capital intensive. This includes autonomous industrial vehicles outfitted with our technology and purpose-built autonomous industrial vehicles manufactured by OEMs we intend to partner with. To date, we have financed our operations primarily through the issuance of equity securities in private placements. We may need to raise additional capital to continue to fund our commercialization activities, sales and marketing efforts, enhancement of our technology and to improve our liquidity position. Our ability to obtain the necessary financing to carry out our business plan is subject to a number of factors, including general market volatility, investor acceptance of our business plan, regulatory requirements and the successful development of our autonomous technology. These factors may make the timing, amount, terms, and conditions of such financing unattractive or unavailable to us.
We may raise these additional funds through the issuance of equity, equity related, or debt securities. To the extent that we raise additional financing by issuing equity securities or convertible debt securities, our stockholders may experience substantial dilution, and to the extent we engage in debt financing, we may become subject to restrictive covenants that could limit our flexibility in conducting future business activities. Financial institutions may request credit enhancement such as third-party guarantee and pledge of equity interest in order to extend loans to us. We cannot be certain that additional funds will be available to us on attractive terms when required, or at all. If we cannot raise additional funds when we need them, our financial condition, results of operations, business, and prospects could be materially adversely affected.
We may be subject to risks associated with potential future acquisitions.
Although we have no current acquisition plans, if appropriate opportunities arise, we may acquire additional assets, products, technology or businesses that are complementary to our existing business. Any future acquisitions and the subsequent integration of new assets and businesses would require significant attention from our management and could result in a diversion of resources from our existing business, which in turn could have an adverse effect on our operations, and consequently our results of operations and financial condition. Acquired assets or businesses may not generate the financial results we expect. Acquisitions could result in the use of substantial amounts of cash, potentially dilutive issuances of equity securities, significant goodwill impairment charges, amortization expenses for other intangible assets and exposure to potential unknown liabilities of the acquired business. Moreover, the costs of identifying and consummating acquisitions may be significant.
We have notes payable under the Paycheck Protection Program which if not forgiven could significantly impact our cash available to meet operating obligations.
In April 2020 and February 2021, we obtained loans from JPMorgan Chase under the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) established under Section 1102 of the CARES Act, pursuant to which we entered into notes in the amount of $695,078 and $892,115, respectively (the “PPP Loans”). The April 2020 loan plus accrued interest is due in April 2022 and the February 2021 loan plus accrued interest is due in February 2026. In order to apply for the PPP Loans, we were required to certify, among other things, that the current economic uncertainty made the PPP loan request necessary to support our ongoing operations. We made this certification in good faith after analyzing, among other things, our financial situation and access to alternative forms of capital and believe that we satisfied all eligibility criteria for the PPP Loan, and that our receipt of the PPP Loan is consistent with the broad objectives of the Paycheck Protection Program of the CARES Act. While we made this certification in good faith, the certification does not contain any objective criteria and is subject to interpretation.
We have applied for debt forgiveness of the April 2020 loan and will similarly apply for forgiveness of the February 2021 loan once forgiveness guidelines are issued. There can be no assurance that the PPP Loans will be forgiven. If forgiveness of all or part of the PPP Loans is not granted, we will be required to repay the loans from our cash reserves.
The PPP Loans are subject to review by the SBA for a period up to six-years following forgiveness. If despite our good-faith belief that given our circumstances we satisfied all eligible requirements for the PPP Loans, including
14
eligibility for forgiveness, we are later determined to have violated any of the laws or governmental regulations that apply to us in connection with the PPP Loan, such as the False Claims Act, or it is otherwise determined that we were ineligible to receive the PPP Loan, we may be subject to penalties, including significant civil, criminal and administrative penalties and could be required to repay the PPP Loans, plus accrued interested, in their entirety. In addition, a review or audit by the SBA or other government entity or claims under the False Claims Act could consume significant financial and management resources. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Risks Related to Our Business Operations
Our success depends largely on the continued services of our senior management team, technical engineers, and certain key employees.
We rely on our executive officers and key employees in the areas of business strategy, research and development, marketing, sales, services, and general and administrative functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team or key employees resulting from the hiring or departure of executives or key employees, which could disrupt our business. We do not maintain key-man insurance for any member of our senior management team or any other employee. We do not have employment agreements with our executive officers or other key personnel that require them to continue to work for us for any specified period and, therefore, they could terminate their employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers or key employees could have a serious adverse effect on our business.
To execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for these personnel is intense in the technology industry, especially for engineers with high levels of experience in artificial intelligence and designing and developing autonomous driving related algorithms. Furthermore, it can be difficult to recruit personnel from other geographies to relocate to our California locations. We may also need to recruit highly qualified technical engineers internationally and therefore subject us to the compliance of relevant immigration laws and regulations. We have, from time to time, experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have and can offer more attractive compensation packages for new employees. If we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees or our company have breached their legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources and potentially in litigation. In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the share incentive awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our share awards declines, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain highly skilled employees. If we fail to attract new personnel on a timely basis or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, we may not be able to commercialize and then expand our solutions and services in a timely manner and our business and future growth prospects could be adversely affected.
If we fail to manage our growth effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service, or adequately address competitive challenges.
We expect to invest in our growth for the foreseeable future. Any growth in our business is expected to place a significant strain on not only our managerial, administrative, operational, and financial resources, but also our infrastructure. We plan to continue to expand our operations in the future. Our success will depend in part on our ability to manage this growth effectively and execute our business plan. To manage the expected growth of our operations and personnel, we will need to continue to improve our operational, financial, and management controls and our reporting systems and procedures.
We rely heavily on information technology (“IT”) systems to manage critical business functions. To manage our growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our infrastructure, including our IT, financial, and administrative systems and controls. In particular, we may need to significantly expand our IT infrastructure as the amount of data we store and transmit increases over time, which will require that we both utilize existing IT products and adopt new technology. If we are not able to scale our IT infrastructure in a cost-effective and secure manner, our ability to offer competitive solutions will be harmed and our business, financial condition, and operating results may suffer.
We must also continue to manage our employees, operations, finances, research and development, and capital investments efficiently. Our productivity and the quality of our solutions may be adversely affected if we do not integrate
15
and train our new employees quickly and effectively or if we fail to appropriately coordinate across our executive, research and development, technology, service development, analytics, finance, human resources, marketing, sales, operations, and customer support teams. As we continue to grow, we will incur additional expenses, and our growth may continue to place a strain on our resources, infrastructure, and ability to maintain the quality of our solutions. If we do not adapt to meet these evolving challenges, or if the current and future members of our management team do not effectively manage our growth, the quality of our solutions may suffer and our corporate culture may be harmed. Failure to manage our future growth effectively could cause our business to suffer, which, in turn, could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and operating results.
Our management team has limited experience managing a public company.
Our management team has limited experience managing a publicly-traded company, interacting with public company investors, and complying with the increasingly complex laws pertaining to public companies. Our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage our transition to being a public company subject to significant regulatory oversight and reporting obligations under the federal securities laws and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These new obligations and constituents will require significant attention from our senior management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We may be subject to product liability or warranty claims that could result in significant direct or indirect costs, including reputational harm, increased insurance premiums or the need to self-insure, which could adversely affect our business and operating results.
Our technology is used for autonomous driving, which presents the risk of significant injury, including fatalities. We may be subject to claims if one of our or a customer’s industrial vehicles is involved in an accident and persons are injured or purport to be injured or if property is damaged. Any insurance that we carry may not be sufficient or it may not apply to all situations. If we experience such an event or multiple events, our insurance premiums could increase significantly or insurance may not be available to us at all. Further, if insurance is not available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, we might need to self-insure. In addition, lawmakers or governmental agencies could pass laws or adopt regulations that limit the use of autonomous driving or industrial automation technology or increase liability associated with its use. Any of these events could adversely affect our brand, relationships with users, operating results, or financial condition.
If our autonomous driving software fails to perform as expected our ability to market, sell or lease our autonomous driving software could be harmed.
Our autonomous industrial vehicle software products and tools as well as the vehicles, sensors, and hardware they utilize and are deployed on may contain defects in design and manufacture that may cause them not to perform as expected or require repair. For example, our autonomous vehicle software will require modification and updates over the life of the vehicle it is deployed on. Software products are inherently complex and often contain defects and errors when first introduced. There can be no assurance that we will be able to detect and fix any defects in the industrial vehicles’ hardware or software prior to commencing user sales or during the life of the vehicle. Autonomous industrial vehicles utilizing our suite of products and tools may not perform consistent with users’ expectations or consistent with other vehicles that may become available. Any product defects or any other failure of our software, supportive hardware, or deployment vehicle platform or to perform as expected could harm our reputation, result in adverse publicity, lost revenue, delivery delays, product recalls, product liability claims, and significant warranty and other expenses, and could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, operating results, and prospects.
If we are unable to establish and maintain confidence in our long-term business prospects among users, securities and industry analysts, and within our industries, or are subject to negative publicity, then our financial condition, operating results, business prospects, and access to capital may suffer materially.
Users may be less likely to purchase or use our technology and the industrial vehicles it is deployed on if they are not convinced that our business will succeed or that our service and support and other operations will continue in the long term. Similarly, suppliers and other third parties will be less likely to invest time and resources in developing business relationships with us if they are not convinced that our business will succeed. Accordingly, in order to build and maintain our business, we must maintain confidence among users, suppliers, securities and industry analysts, and other parties in our long-term financial viability and business prospects. Maintaining such confidence may be particularly complicated by certain factors including those that are largely outside of our control, such as our limited
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operating history at scale, user unfamiliarity with our solutions, any delays in scaling manufacturing, delivery, and service operations to meet demand, competition and uncertainty regarding the future of autonomous vehicles, and our performance compared with market expectations.
Pandemics and epidemics, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, terrorist activities, political unrest, and other outbreaks could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows or liquidity.
During the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, the capital markets are experiencing pronounced volatility, which may adversely affect investor’s confidence and, in turn may affect our initial public offering.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to modify our business practices (such as employee travel plan and cancellation of physical participation in meetings, events, and conference), and we may take further actions as required by governmental authorities or that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, users, and business partners. In addition, the business and operations of our manufacturers, suppliers, and other business partners have also been adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and may be further adversely impacted in the future, which could result in delays in our ability to commercialize our suite of autonomous vehicle software products and tools.
As a result of social distancing, travel bans, and quarantine measures, access to our facilities, users, management, support staff, and professional advisors has been limited, which in turn has impacted, and will continue to impact, our operations, and financial condition.
The extent to which COVID-19 impacts our, and those of our partners and potential users, business, results of operations, and financial condition will depend on future developments, which are uncertain and cannot be predicted, including, but not limited to, the occurrence of a “second wave,” duration and spread of the outbreak, its severity, the actions to contain the virus or treat its impact, and how quickly and to what extent normal economic and operating conditions can resume. Even if the COVID-19 outbreak subsides, we may continue to experience materially adverse impacts to our business as a result of its global economic impact, including any recession that has occurred or may occur in the future.
We are also vulnerable to natural disasters and other calamities. Although we have servers that are hosted in an offsite location, our backup system does not capture data on a real-time basis, and we may be unable to recover certain data in the event of a server failure. We cannot assure you that any backup systems will be adequate to protect us from the effects of fire, floods, typhoons, earthquakes, power loss, telecommunications failures, break-ins, war, riots, terrorist attacks or similar events. Any of the foregoing events may give rise to interruptions, breakdowns, system failures, technology platform failures or internet failures, which could cause the loss or corruption of data or malfunctions of software or hardware as well as adversely affect our ability to provide services.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property, Information Technology and Data Privacy
We may become subject to litigation brought by third parties claiming infringement, misappropriation or other violation by us of their intellectual property rights.
The industry in which our business operates is characterized by a large number of patents, some of which may be of questionable scope, validity or enforceability, and some of which may appear to overlap with other issued patents. As a result, there is a significant amount of uncertainty in the industry regarding patent protection and infringement. In recent years, there has been significant litigation globally involving patents and other intellectual property rights. Third parties may in the future assert, that we have infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated their intellectual property rights. As we face increasing competition and as a public company, the possibility of intellectual property rights claims against us grows. Such claims and litigation may involve one or more of our competitors focused on using their patents and other intellectual property to obtain competitive advantage, or patent holding companies or other adverse intellectual property rights holders who have no relevant product revenue, and therefore our own pending patents and other intellectual property rights may provide little or no deterrence to these rights holders in bringing intellectual property rights claims against us. There may be intellectual property rights held by others, including issued or pending patents and trademarks, that cover significant aspects of our technologies or business methods, and we cannot assure that we are not infringing or violating, and have not infringed or violated, any third-party intellectual property rights or that we will not be held to have done so or be accused of doing so in the future. In addition, because patent applications can take many years until the patents issue, there may be applications now pending of which we are
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unaware, which may later result in issued patents that our products may infringe. We expect that in the future we may receive notices that claim we or our collaborators have misappropriated or misused other parties’ intellectual property rights, particularly as the number of competitors in our market grows.
To defend ourselves against any intellectual property claims brought by third parties, whether with or without merits, can be time-consuming and could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our resources. These claims and any resulting lawsuits, if resolved adversely to us, could subject us to significant liability for damages, impose temporary or permanent injunctions against our products, technologies or business operations, or invalidate or render unenforceable our intellectual property.
If our technology is determined to infringe a valid and enforceable patent, or if we wish to avoid potential intellectual property litigation on any alleged infringement, misappropriation or other violation of third party intellectual property rights, we may be required to do one or more of the following: (i) cease development, sales, or use of our products that incorporate or use the asserted intellectual property right; (ii) obtain a license from the owner of the asserted intellectual property right, which may be unavailable on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, or which may be non-exclusive, thereby giving our competitors and other third parties access to the same technologies licensed to us; (iii) pay substantial royalties or other damages; or (iv) redesign our technology or one or more aspects or systems of our autonomous industrial vehicles to avoid any infringement or allegations thereof. The aforementioned options sometimes may not be commercially feasible. Additionally, in our ordinary course of business, we agree to indemnify our customers, partners, and other commercial counterparties for any infringement arising out of their use of our intellectual property, along with providing standard indemnification provisions, so we may face liability to our users, business partners or third parties for indemnification or other remedies in the event that they are sued for infringement.
We may also in the future license third party technology or other intellectual property, and we may face claims that our use of such in-licensed technology or other intellectual property infringes, misappropriates or otherwise violates the intellectual property rights of others. In such cases, we will seek indemnification from our licensors. However, our rights to indemnification may be unavailable or insufficient to cover our costs and losses.
We also may not be successful in any attempt to redesign our technology to avoid any alleged infringement. A successful claim of infringement against us, or our failure or inability to develop and implement non-infringing technology, or license the infringed technology on acceptable terms and on a timely basis, could materially adversely affect our business and results of operations. Furthermore, such lawsuits, regardless of their success, would likely be time-consuming and expensive to resolve and would divert management’s time and attention from our business, which could seriously harm our business. Also, such lawsuits, regardless of their success, could seriously harm our reputation with users and in the industry at large.
Our business may be adversely affected if we are unable to adequately establish, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights or prevent third parties from making unauthorized use of our technology and other intellectual property rights.
Our intellectual property is an essential asset of our business. Failure to adequately protect our intellectual property rights could result in our competitors offering similar products, potentially resulting in the loss of our competitive advantage, and a decrease in our revenue which would adversely affect our business prospects, financial condition, and operating results. Our success depends, at least in part, on our ability to protect our core technology and intellectual property. We rely on a combination of intellectual property rights, such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets (including know-how), in addition to employee and third-party nondisclosure agreements, intellectual property licenses, and other contractual rights, to establish, maintain, protect, and enforce our rights in our technology, proprietary information, and processes. Intellectual property laws and our procedures and restrictions provide only limited protection and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, invalidated, circumvented, infringed or misappropriated. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, we may lose an important advantage in the markets in which we compete. While we take measures to protect our intellectual property, such efforts may be insufficient or ineffective, and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, which could result in them being narrowed in scope or declared invalid or unenforceable. Other parties may also independently develop technologies that are substantially similar or superior to ours. We also may be forced to bring claims against third parties, or defend claims that they may bring against us, to determine the ownership of what we regard as our intellectual property. However, the measures we take to protect our intellectual property from unauthorized use by others may not be effective and there can be no assurance that our intellectual property rights will be sufficient to protect against others offering products, services, or technologies that are substantially similar or superior to ours and that compete with our business.
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Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to protect our trade secrets. Our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property. Any litigation initiated by us concerning the violation by third parties of our intellectual property rights is likely to be expensive and time-consuming and could lead to the invalidation of, or render unenforceable, our intellectual property, or could otherwise have negative consequences for us. Furthermore, it could result in a court or governmental agency invalidating or rendering unenforceable our patents or other intellectual property rights upon which the suit is based. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management’s attention and resources, could delay the introduction and implementation of new technologies, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our products or injure our reputation. Moreover, policing unauthorized use of our technologies, trade secrets, and intellectual property may be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, particularly in foreign countries where the laws may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States and where mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be weak. If we fail to meaningfully establish, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Changes in U.S. patent law could diminish the value of patents in general, thereby impairing our ability to protect our products.
There are a number of recent changes to the patent laws that may have a significant impact on our ability to protect our technology and enforce our intellectual property rights. For example, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (the “AIA”) enacted in September 2011, resulted in significant changes in patent legislation. An important change introduced by the AIA is that, as of March 16, 2013, the United States transitioned from a “first-to-invent” to a “first-to-file” system for deciding which party should be granted a patent when two or more patent applications are filed by different parties claiming the same invention. Under a “first-to-file” system, assuming the other requirements for patentability are met, the first inventor to file a patent application generally will be entitled to a patent on the invention regardless of whether another inventor had made the invention earlier. A third party that files a patent application in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) after that date but before us could therefore be awarded a patent covering an invention of ours even if we made the invention before it was made by the third party. Circumstances could prevent us from promptly filing patent applications on our inventions.
The AIA also includes a number of significant changes that affect the way patent applications will be prosecuted and also may affect patent litigation. These include allowing third party submission of prior art to the USPTO during patent prosecution and additional procedures to attack the validity of a patent by USPTO administered post-grant proceedings, including post-grant review, inter partes review, and derivation proceedings. Because of a lower evidentiary standard in USPTO proceedings compared to the evidentiary standard in United States federal courts necessary to invalidate a patent claim, a third party could potentially provide evidence in a USPTO proceeding sufficient for the USPTO to hold a claim invalid even though the same evidence would be insufficient to invalidate the claim if first presented in a district court action. Accordingly, a third party may attempt to use the USPTO procedures to invalidate our patent claims that would not have been invalidated if first challenged by the third party as a defendant in a district court action. The AIA and its implementation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.
Further, the standards applied by the USPTO and foreign patent offices in granting patents are not always applied uniformly or predictably. For example, there is no uniform worldwide policy regarding patentable subject matter or the scope of claims allowable for business methods. As such, we do not know the degree of future protection that we will have on our technologies, products, and services. While we will endeavor to try to protect our technologies, products, and services with intellectual property rights such as patents, as appropriate, the process of obtaining patents is time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes unpredictable.
Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on several patent cases in recent years, such as Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. and Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, either narrowing the scope of patent protection available in certain circumstances or weakening the rights of patent owners in certain situations. In addition to increasing uncertainty with regard to our ability to obtain patents in the future, this combination of events has created uncertainty with respect to the value of patents, once obtained.
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Depending on decisions by the U.S. Congress, the federal courts, and the USPTO, the laws and regulations governing patents could change in unpredictable ways that could weaken our ability to obtain new patents or to enforce our existing patents and patents that we might obtain in the future.
Our patent applications may not issue as patents, which may have a material adverse effect on our ability to prevent others from commercially exploiting products similar to ours.
We cannot be certain that we are the first inventor of the subject matter to which we have filed a particular patent application, or if we are the first party to file such a patent application. If another party has filed a patent application to the same subject matter as we have, we may not be entitled to the protection sought by the patent application. Further, the scope of protection of issued patent claims is often difficult to determine. As a result, we cannot be certain that the patent applications that we file will issue, or that our issued patents will be broad enough to protect our proprietary rights or otherwise afford protection against competitors with similar technology. In addition, the issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability. Our competitors may challenge or seek to invalidate our issued patents, or design around our issued patents, which may adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition or operating results. Also, the costs associated with enforcing patents, confidentiality and invention agreements, or other intellectual property rights may make aggressive enforcement impracticable.
We may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights throughout the world.
Filing, prosecuting, maintaining, defending, and enforcing patents and other intellectual property rights on our product candidates in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive, and our intellectual property rights in some countries outside the United States can be less extensive than those in the United States. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as federal and state laws in the United States. Consequently, we may not be able to prevent third parties from practicing our inventions in all countries outside the United States, or from selling or importing products made using our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection or other intellectual property rights to develop their own products and may export otherwise infringing, misappropriating, or violating products to territories where we have patent or other intellectual property protection, but enforcement rights are not as strong as those in the United States. These products may compete with our product candidates, and our patents or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing.
Many companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of some countries do not favor the enforcement of patents and other intellectual property rights, which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement, misappropriation, or other violation of our intellectual property rights generally. Proceedings to enforce our intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial costs and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of our business, could put our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly and our patent applications at risk of not issuing, and could provoke third parties to assert claims against us. We may not prevail in any lawsuits that we initiate, and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful.
Many countries, including European Union countries, India, Japan, and China, have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner may be compelled under specified circumstances to grant licenses to third parties. In addition, many countries limit the enforceability of patents against government agencies or government contractors. In those countries, we may have limited remedies if patents are infringed or if we are compelled to grant a license to a third party, which could materially diminish the value of those patents. This could limit our potential revenue opportunities. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop or license, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.
In addition to patented technology, we rely on our unpatented proprietary technology, trade secrets, processes, and know-how.
We rely on proprietary information (such as trade secrets, know-how, and confidential information) to protect intellectual property that may not be patentable, or that we believe is best protected by means that do not require public disclosure. We generally seek to protect this proprietary information by entering into confidentiality agreements,
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or consulting, services, or employment agreements that contain non-disclosure and non-use provisions with our employees, consultants, contractors, scientific advisors, and third parties. However, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that has or may have had access to our trade secrets or proprietary information and, even if entered into, these agreements may be breached or may otherwise fail to prevent disclosure, third-party infringement or misappropriation of our proprietary information, may be limited as to their term and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized disclosure or use of proprietary information. We have limited control over the protection of trade secrets used by our third-party manufacturers and suppliers and could lose future trade secret protection if any unauthorized disclosure of such information occurs. In addition, our proprietary information may otherwise become known or be independently developed by our competitors or other third parties. To the extent that our employees, consultants, contractors, and other third parties use intellectual property owned by others in their work for us, disputes may arise as to the rights in related or resulting know-how and inventions. Costly and time-consuming litigation could be necessary to enforce and determine the scope of our proprietary rights, and failure to obtain or maintain protection for our proprietary information could adversely affect our competitive business position. Furthermore, laws regarding trade secret rights in certain markets where we operate may afford little or no protection to our trade secrets. If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor or other third party, we would have no right to prevent them from using that trade secret to compete with us. If any of our trade secrets were to be disclosed (whether lawfully or otherwise) to or independently developed by a competitor or other third party, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We also rely on physical and electronic security measures to protect our proprietary information, but we cannot guarantee that these security measures provide adequate protection for such proprietary information or will never be breached. There is a risk that third parties may obtain unauthorized access to and improperly utilize or disclose our proprietary information, which would harm our competitive advantages. We may not be able to detect or prevent the unauthorized access to or use of our information by third parties, and we may not be able to take appropriate and timely steps to mitigate the damages (or the damages may not be capable of being mitigated or remedied).
We utilize open-source software, which may pose particular risks to our proprietary software, technologies, products, and services in a manner that could harm our business.
We use open-source software in our products and services and anticipate using open-source software in the future. We utilize a distribution of the open-source Linux system, and tools such as ROS (open-source publish-subscribe tool) in the technical stack. Professional open-source license scanning systems such as WhiteSource and ScanCode are used in both places. Both Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (“CI/CD”) level open-source scan and overall system opensource scan is performed to protect the systems and our intellectual property. In the event that our scanning and open-source check protocols fail, the Company could be negatively affected Some open-source software licenses require those who distribute open-source software as part of their own software products to publicly disclose all or part of the source code to such software product or to make available any modifications or derivative works of the open-source code on unfavorable terms or at no cost. This could result in our proprietary software being made available in the source code form and/or licensed to others under open-source licenses, which could allow our competitors or other third parties to use our proprietary software freely without spending the development effort, and which could lead to a loss of the competitive advantage of our proprietary technologies and, as a result, sales of our products and services. The terms of many open-source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts, and there is a risk that open-source software licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide or distribute our products or services or retain our ownership of our proprietary intellectual property. Additionally, we could face claims from third parties claiming ownership of, or demanding release of, the open-source software or derivative works that we developed using such software, which could include our proprietary source code, or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of, or alleging breach of, the applicable open-source license. These claims could result in litigation and could require us to make our proprietary software source code freely available, purchase a costly license, or cease offering the implicated products or services unless and until we can re-engineer them to avoid breach of the applicable open-source software licenses or potential infringement. This re-engineering process could require us to expend significant additional research and development resources, and we cannot guarantee that we will be successful.
Additionally, the use of certain open-source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open-source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of software. There is typically no support available for open-source software, and we cannot ensure that the authors of such open-source
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software will implement or push updates to address security risks or will not abandon further development and maintenance. Many of the risks associated with the use of open-source software, such as the lack of warranties or assurances of title, non-infringement, or performance, cannot be eliminated, and could, if not properly addressed, negatively affect our business. We have processes to help alleviate these risks, including a review process for screening requests from our developers for the use of open-source software, but we cannot be sure that all open-source software is identified or submitted for approval prior to use in our products and services. Any of these risks could be difficult to eliminate or manage, and, if not addressed, could adversely affect our ownership of proprietary intellectual property, the security of our vehicles, or our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Unauthorized control or manipulation of systems in autonomous industrial vehicles may cause them to operate improperly or not at all, or compromise their safety and data security, which could result in loss of confidence in us and our products, cancellation of contracts with future OEM or supplier partners.
There have been reports of vehicles of certain automotive OEMs being “hacked” to grant access to and operation of the vehicles to unauthorized persons. Our autonomous vehicle software products and tools as well as the vehicles they are deployed on contain or will contain complex IT systems and are designed with built-in data connectivity. We are in the process of and will continue implementing security measures intended to prevent unauthorized access to our information technology networks and systems. However, hackers may attempt to gain unauthorized access to modify, alter, and use such networks and systems to gain control of, or to change the functionality of the autonomous industrial vehicles’ running our software, user interface and performance characteristics, or to gain access to data stored in or generated by our products. As techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage systems change frequently and may not be known until launched against us or our third-party service providers, there can be no assurance that we will be able to anticipate, or implement adequate measures to protect against, these attacks. Any such security incidents could result in unexpected control of or changes to the vehicles’ functionality and safe operation and could result in legal claims or proceedings and negative publicity, which would negatively affect our brand and harm our business, prospects, financial condition, and operating results.
The costs to comply with, or our actual or perceived failure to comply with, changing U.S. and foreign laws related to data privacy, security and protection, could adversely affect our financial condition, operating results, and our reputation.
In operating our business and providing services and solutions to clients, we collect, use, store, transmit, and otherwise process employee, partner, and customer data, including personal data, in and across multiple jurisdictions. We use the electronic systems within the autonomous industrial vehicles that log information about each industrial vehicle’s use in order to aid us in vehicle diagnostics, repair, and maintenance, as well as to help us collect data regarding operators’ use patterns and preference in order to help us customize and optimize the driving and operating experiences. The integrated autonomous industrial vehicles leveraging our software products and tools may also collect personal information of drivers, operators and passengers, such as a voice command of a person, in order to aid the manual operation of our industrial vehicles. When our autonomy enabled industrial vehicles are in operation, the camera, LiDAR, and other sensing components of the vehicles will collect site and route view, mapping data, landscape images, and other LiDAR information, which may include personal information such as license plate numbers of other vehicles, facial features of pedestrians, appearance of individuals, GPS data, geolocation data, in order train the data analytics and artificial intelligence technology equipped in our industrial vehicles for the purpose of identifying different objects, and predicting potential issues that may arise during the operation of our integrated industrial vehicles.
We plan to utilize systems and applications that are spread over the globe, requiring us to regularly move data across national borders. As a result, we are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the United States, and other foreign jurisdictions as well as contractual obligations, regarding data privacy, protection, and security. Some of these laws and regulations require obtaining data subjects’ consent to the collection and use of their data, honoring data subjects’ request to delete their data or limit the processing of their data, providing notifications in the event of a data breach, and setting up the proper legal mechanisms for cross-border data transfers. Some customers may refuse to provide consent to our collection and use of their personal information, or may restrict our use of such personal information, and in some cases it is not feasible to obtain consent from data subjects in the general public whose personal information may be captured by our autonomous industrial vehicles, all of which may hinder our ability to train our data analytics and artificial intelligence technology, and may harm the competitiveness of our technology. In many cases, these laws and regulations apply not only to the collection and processing of personal information from
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third parties with whom we do not have any contractual relationship, but also to the sharing or transfer of information between or among us, our subsidiaries and other third parties with which we have commercial relationships, such as our service providers, partners, and customers. The regulatory framework for data privacy, protection, and security worldwide is continuously evolving and developing and, as a result, interpretation and implementation standards and enforcement practices are likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future. In particular, some of these laws and regulations may require us to store certain categories of data collected from individuals residing in a jurisdiction only on servers physically located in such jurisdiction, and may further require us to conduct security assessments and/or adopt other cross-border data transfer mechanisms in order to transfer such data outside of such jurisdiction. With the continuously evolving and rapidly changing privacy regulatory regime, our ability to freely transfer data among our affiliates and with our partners in different jurisdictions may be impeded, or we may need to incur significant costs in order to comply with such requirements. In addition, the number of high-profile data breaches at major companies continues to accelerate, which will likely lead to even greater regulatory scrutiny.
The scope and interpretation of the laws and regulations that are or may be applicable to us are often uncertain and may be conflicting, particularly with respect to foreign laws. For example, the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), which became effective in May 2018, greatly increased the European Commission’s jurisdictional reach of its laws and added a broad array of requirements for handling personal data with respect to EU data subjects. EU member states are tasked under the GDPR to enact, and have enacted, certain implementing legislation that adds to and/or further interprets the GDPR requirements and potentially extends our obligations and potential liability for failing to meet such obligations. The GDPR, together with national legislation, regulations and guidelines of the EU member states and the United Kingdom governing the processing of personal data, impose strict obligations and restrictions on the ability to collect, use, retain, protect, disclose, transfer, and otherwise process personal data with respect to EU and UK data subjects. In particular, the GDPR includes obligations and restrictions concerning the consent and rights of individuals to whom the personal data relates, the transfer of personal data out of the EEA or the United Kingdom, security breach notifications and the security and confidentiality of personal data. Among other stringent requirements, the GDPR restricts transfers of data outside of the EU to third countries deemed to lack adequate privacy protections (such as the U.S.), unless an appropriate safeguard specified by the GDPR is implemented. A July 16, 2020 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated a key mechanism for lawful data transfer to the U.S. and called into question the viability of its primary alternative. As such, the ability of companies to lawfully transfer personal data from the EU to the U.S. is presently uncertain. Other countries have enacted or are considering enacting similar cross-border data transfer rules or data localization requirements. These developments could limit our ability to launch our products in the EU and other foreign markets. The GDPR authorizes fines for certain violations of up to 4% of global annual revenue or €20 million, whichever is greater. Such fines are in addition to any civil litigation claims by data subjects. Much remains unknown with respect to how to interpret and implement the GDPR and guidance on implementation and compliance practices is often updated or otherwise revised. Given the breadth and depth of changes in data protection obligations, including classification of data and our commitment to a range of administrative, technical and physical controls to protect data and enable data transfers outside of the EU and the United Kingdom, our compliance with the GDPR’s requirements will continue to require time, resources and review of the technology and systems we use to satisfy the GDPR’s requirements, including as EU member states enact their legislation. Further, while the United Kingdom enacted the Data Protection Act 2018 in May 2018 that supplements the GDPR, and has publicly announced that it will continue to regulate the protection of personal data in the same way post-Brexit, Brexit has created uncertainty with regard to the future of regulation of data protection in the United Kingdom.
The U.S. federal government and various states and governmental agencies also have adopted or are considering adopting various laws, regulations, and standards regarding the collection, use, retention, security, disclosure, transfer, and other processing of sensitive and personal information. In addition, many states in which we operate have laws that protect the privacy and security of sensitive and personal information. Certain state laws may be more stringent or broader in scope, or offer greater individual rights, with respect to sensitive and personal information than federal, international, or other state laws, and such laws may differ from each other, which may complicate compliance efforts. State laws are changing rapidly and there is discussion in Congress of a new federal data protection and privacy law to which we would become subject if it is enacted. All of these evolving compliance and operational requirements impose significant costs that are likely to increase over time, may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies, and may divert resources from other initiatives and projects. Furthermore, non-compliance with data privacy laws and regulations, or a major breach of our network security and systems, could have serious negative consequences
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for our businesses and future prospects, including possible fines, penalties, and damages, reduced customer demand for our products, and harm to our reputation and brand, all of which may have a material and adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and operating results.
We make public statements about our use and disclosure of personal information through our privacy policy, information provided on our website and press statements. Also, we enter into contracts with third parties (such as our partners and clients) that contain provisions regarding the collection, sharing, and processing of personal information. Although we endeavor to comply with our public statements and documentation as well as our contractual and other privacy-related obligations, we may at times fail to do so or be alleged to have failed to do so. The publication of our privacy policy and other statements that provide promises and assurances about data privacy and security can subject us to potential government or legal action if they are found to be deceptive, unfair or misrepresentative of our actual practices. In addition, from time to time, concerns may be expressed about whether our products and services compromise the privacy of clients and others. Any concerns about our data privacy and security practices (even if unfounded), or any failure, real or perceived, by us to comply with our posted privacy policies, contractual obligations, or any legal or regulatory requirements, standards, certifications, or orders, or other privacy or consumer protection-related laws and regulations applicable to us, could cause our clients to reduce their use of our autonomous industrial vehicles and could affect our financial condition, operating results, and our reputation, and may result in governmental or regulatory investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory fines, criminal compliance orders, litigations, breach of contract claims, or public statements against us by government regulatory authorities, our partners and/or clients, data subjects, consumer advocacy groups, or others, all of which could be costly and have an adverse effect on our business.
Furthermore, enforcement actions and investigations by regulatory authorities related to data security incidents and privacy violations continue to increase. Non-compliance could result in proceedings against us by data protection authorities, governmental entities or others, including class action privacy litigation in certain jurisdictions, which would subject us to significant fines, penalties, judgments, and negative publicity, and may otherwise affect our financial condition, operating results, and our reputation. Given the complexity of operationalizing the GDPR and other data privacy and security laws and regulations to which we are subject, the maturity level of proposed compliance frameworks and the relative lack of guidance in the interpretation of the numerous requirements of the GDPR and other data privacy and security laws and regulations to which we are subject, we may not be able to respond quickly or effectively to regulatory, legislative, and other developments, and these changes may in turn impair our ability to offer our existing or planned products and services and/or increase our cost of doing business. In addition, if our practices are not consistent or viewed as not consistent with legal and regulatory requirements, including changes in laws, regulations, and standards or new interpretations or applications of existing laws, regulations and standards, we may become subject to audits, inquiries, whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, investigations, loss of export privileges, or severe criminal or civil sanctions, all of which may affect our financial condition, operating results, and our reputation. Unauthorized access or disclosure of personal or other sensitive or confidential data of Company (including data about third parties which the Company possesses), whether through systems failure, employee negligence, fraud, or misappropriation, by the Company, our service providers or other parties with whom we do business (if they fail to meet the standards we impose, or if their systems on which our data is stored experience any data breaches or security incidents) could also subject us to significant litigation, monetary damages, regulatory enforcement actions, fines, and criminal prosecution in one or more jurisdictions.
Risks Related to Regulations
We are subject to substantial regulations, including regulations governing autonomous vehicles, and unfavorable changes to, or failure by us to comply with, these regulations could substantially harm our business and operating results.
The autonomous industrial vehicles that make use of our software products and tools are subject to substantial regulation under international, federal, state, and local laws. Regulations designed to govern autonomous vehicle operation, testing and/or manufacture are still developing and may change significantly. These regulations could include requirements that significantly delay or narrowly limit the commercialization of autonomous vehicles, limit the number of autonomous vehicles that we can integrate, co-develop, or use our software on, impose restrictions on the number of vehicles in operation and the locations where they may be operated or impose significant liabilities on manufacturers or operators of autonomous
24
vehicles or developers of autonomous vehicle technology. If regulations of this nature are implemented, we may not be able to commercialize our autonomous vehicle technology in the manner we expect, or at all. In addition, the costs of complying with such regulations could be prohibitive and prevent us from operating our business in the manner we intend.
Further, we are subject to international, federal, state, and local laws and regulations, governing pollution, protection of the environment, and occupational health, and safety, including those related to the use, generation, storage, management, discharge, transportation, disposal, and release of, and human exposure to, hazardous and toxic materials. Such laws and regulations have tended to become more stringent over time.
Fines, penalties, costs or liabilities associated with such existing or new regulations or laws, including as a result of our failure to comply, could be substantial and in certain cases joint and several, and could adversely impact our business, prospects, financial condition, and operating results.
Risks Related to This Offering and Our Securities
The offering price for our common stock may not be indicative of its fair market value.
The offering price for our common stock was determined in the context of negotiations between us and the underwriters. Accordingly, the offering price may not be indicative of the true fair market value of the Company or the fair market value of our common stock. We are making no representations that the offering price of our common stock under this prospectus bears any relationship to our assets, book value, net worth or any other recognized criteria of our value.
No public market for our common stock currently exists, and an active public trading market may not develop or be sustained following this offering.
Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for our common stock. Although we have applied to list our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market, an active public trading market for our common stock may not develop following the completion of this offering or, if developed, it may not be sustained. The lack of an active market may impair your ability to sell your shares at the time you wish to sell them or at a price that you consider reasonable. The lack of an active market may also reduce the fair value of your shares. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital to continue to fund operations by selling shares and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our shares as consideration.
There is no established trading market for our shares; further, our shares will be subject to potential delisting if we do not maintain the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market.
This offering constitutes our initial public offering of our shares. No public market for these shares currently exists. We have applied to list the shares of our common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market, or Nasdaq. An approval of our listing application by Nasdaq will be subject to, among other things, our fulfilling all of the listing requirements of Nasdaq. Even if these shares are listed on Nasdaq, there can be no assurance that an active trading market for these securities will develop or be sustained after this offering is completed.
In addition, Nasdaq has rules for continued listing, including, without limitation, minimum market capitalization and other requirements. Failure to maintain our listing, or de-listing from Nasdaq, would make it more difficult for shareholders to dispose of our common stock and more difficult to obtain accurate price quotations on our common stock. This could have an adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Our ability to issue additional securities for financing or other purposes, or otherwise to arrange for any financing we may need in the future, may also be materially and adversely affected if our common stock is not traded on a national securities exchange.
We will incur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to compliance with our public company responsibilities and corporate governance practices.
As a public company, we will incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company, which we expect to further increase after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Capital Market, and other applicable securities rules and regulations impose various requirements on public companies. Our management and other personnel will devote a substantial amount of time to compliance with these
25
requirements. Moreover, these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we will incur as a public company or the specific timing of such costs.
As a result of being a public company, we are obligated to develop and maintain proper and effective internal controls over financial reporting, and any failure to maintain the adequacy of these internal controls may adversely affect investor confidence in our company and, as a result, the value of our common stock.
We will be required, pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of the end of the fiscal year that coincides with the filing of our second annual report on Form 10-K. This assessment will need to include disclosure of any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm will be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in our first annual report required to be filed with the SEC following the date we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” We have not yet commenced the costly and time-consuming process of compiling the system and processing documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404, and we may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion once initiated. Our compliance with Section 404 will require that we incur substantial expenses and expend significant management efforts. We currently do not have an internal audit group, and we will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge and compile the system and process documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404.
Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. In addition, changes in accounting principles or interpretations could also challenge our internal controls and require that we establish new business processes, systems and controls to accommodate such changes. Additionally, if these new systems, controls or standards and the associated process changes do not give rise to the benefits that we expect or do not operate as intended, it could adversely affect our financial reporting systems and processes, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial reports or the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting. Moreover, our business may be harmed if we experience problems with any new systems and controls that result in delays in their implementation or increased costs to correct any post-implementation issues that may arise.
During the assessment of the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, the following were identified as material weaknesses: i) the inability to prepare complete and accurate financial statements in accordance with GAAP: ii) lack of personnel with requisite expertise to prepare complete and accurate financial statements in accordance with GAAP and; iii) lack of documentation surrounding components of the Company’s entity level and process level control environment. The SEC defines ‘material weakness’ as a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the registrant’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis by the company’s internal controls. While we have adopted remediation procedures related to these identified material weaknesses, there can be no assurance that such remedies will be effective. In addition, if we identify one or more additional material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting in the future, we will be unable to certify that our internal control over financial reporting is effective. We cannot assure you that there will not be material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting in the future. Any failure to maintain internal control over financial reporting could severely inhibit our ability to accurately report our financial condition or results of operations. If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm determines we have a material weakness or significant deficiency in our internal control over financial reporting, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the SEC or other regulatory authorities. Failure to remedy any material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, or to implement or maintain other effective control systems required of public companies, could also restrict our future access to the capital markets.
The growth and expansion of our business places a continuous, significant strain on our operational and financial resources. Further growth of our operations to support our customer base, our information technology systems and our internal controls and procedures may not be adequate to support our operations. For example, we are still in the process of implementing information technology and accounting systems to help manage critical functions such as billing and
26
revenue recognition and financial forecasts. As we continue to grow, we may not be able to successfully implement requisite improvements to these systems, controls and processes, such as system access and change management controls, in a timely or efficient manner. Our failure to improve our systems and processes, or their failure to operate in the intended manner, whether as a result of the growth of our business or otherwise, may result in our inability to accurately forecast our revenue and expenses, or to prevent certain losses. Moreover, the failure of our systems and processes could undermine our ability to provide accurate, timely and reliable reports on our financial and operating results and could impact the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. In addition, our systems and processes may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions or fraud.
Future sales of our common stock in the public market could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market following the completion of this offering, or the perception that these sales might occur, could depress the market price of our common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. Many of our existing equity holders have substantial unrecognized gains on the value of the equity they hold based upon the price of this offering, and therefore, they may take steps to sell their shares or otherwise secure the unrecognized gains on those shares. We are unable to predict the timing of or the effect that such sales may have on the prevailing market price of our common stock.
Our stock price may be volatile, and the value of our common stock may decline.
We cannot predict the prices at which our common stock will trade. The initial public offering price of our common stock will be determined by negotiations between us and the underwriters and may not bear any relationship to the market price at which our common stock will trade after this offering or to any other established criteria of the value of our business and prospects, and the market price of our common stock following this offering may fluctuate substantially and may be lower than the initial public offering price. In addition, the trading price of our common stock following this offering is likely to be volatile and could be subject to fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our common stock as you might be unable to sell your shares at or above the price you paid in this offering. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
• actual or anticipated fluctuations in our financial condition or results of operations;
• variance in our financial performance from expectations of securities analysts;
• changes in the pricing of the solutions on our platforms;
• changes in our projected operating and financial results;
• changes in laws or regulations applicable to our technology;
• announcements by us or our competitors of significant business developments, acquisitions or new offerings;
• sales of shares of our common stock by us or our shareholders;
• significant data breaches, disruptions to or other incidents involving our technology;
• our involvement in litigation;
• future sales of our common stock by us or our stockholders, as well as the anticipation of lock-up releases;
• changes in senior management or key personnel;
• the trading volume of our common stock;
• changes in the anticipated future size and growth rate of our market;
• general economic and market conditions; and
27
• other events or factors, including those resulting from war, incidents of terrorism, global pandemics or responses to these events.
Broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political, regulatory and market conditions, may also negatively impact the market price of our common stock. In addition, technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. In the past, companies who have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future, which could result in substantial expenses and divert our management’s attention.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish unfavorable or inaccurate research about our business, the market price and trading volume of our common stock could decline.
The market price and trading volume of our common stock following the completion of this offering will be heavily influenced by the way analysts interpret our financial information and other disclosures. We do not have control over these analysts. If few securities analysts commence coverage of us, or if industry analysts cease coverage of us, our stock price would be negatively affected. If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, downgrade our common stock, or publish negative reports about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which might cause our stock price to decline and could decrease the trading volume of our common stock.
We will have broad discretion in the use of the net proceeds to us from this offering and may not use them effectively.
We will have broad discretion in the application of the net proceeds to us from this offering, including for any of the purposes described in the section titled “Use of Proceeds,” and you will not have the opportunity as part of your investment decision to assess whether the net proceeds are being used appropriately. Because of the number and variability of factors that will determine our use of the net proceeds from this offering, our ultimate use may vary substantially from our currently intended use. Investors will need to rely upon the judgment of our management with respect to the use of proceeds. Pending use, we may invest the net proceeds from this offering in investment-grade, interest-bearing securities, such as money market accounts, certificates of deposit, commercial paper and guaranteed obligations of the U.S. government that may not generate a high yield for our stockholders. If we do not use the net proceeds that we receive in this offering effectively, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be harmed, and the market price of our common stock could decline.
Our executive officers, directors and principal stockholders, if they choose to act together, have the ability and will continue to have the ability to control or significantly influence all matters submitted to stockholders for approval.
Our executive officers, directors and principal stockholders (including entities affiliated with Benchmark that beneficially owns approximately 40% and 35% upon completion of this offering) in the aggregate, beneficially own approximately 98% of our common stock and will continue to own approximately 86% of our outstanding common stock upon completion of this offering (assuming no exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares), Such persons acting together, will have the ability to control or significantly influence all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, as well as our management and business affairs. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying, deferring or preventing a change in control, impeding a merger, consolidation, takeover or other business combination involving us, or discouraging a potential acquiror from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our business, even if such a transaction would benefit other stockholders.
You will experience immediate and substantial dilution in the net tangible book value of the shares of common stock you purchase in this offering.
The initial public offering price of our common stock is substantially higher than the adjusted net tangible book value per share of our common stock immediately after this offering. If you purchase shares of our common stock in this offering, your shares will experience immediate dilution of $7.41 per share, or $7.28 per share if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full, representing the difference between our as adjusted net tangible book value per share after giving effect to the sale of common stock in this offering and an assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. See the section titled “Dilution.”
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We anticipate that we will need to raise additional capital, and our issuance of additional capital stock in connection with financings, acquisitions, investments, our equity incentive plans or otherwise will dilute all other stockholders.
We expect to issue additional capital stock in the future that will result in dilution to all other stockholders. We expect to grant equity awards to employees, directors and consultants under our equity incentive plans. We may also raise capital through equity financings in the future. As part of our business strategy, we may acquire or make investments in companies, products or technologies and issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition or investment. We may not be able to obtain additional capital if and when needed on terms acceptable to us, or at all. Further, if we do raise additional capital, it may cause stockholders to experience significant dilution of their ownership interests and the per share value of our common stock to decline.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future and, as a result, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common stock.
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock, and, subject to the discretionary dividend policy described in the section entitled “Dividend Policy” of this prospectus, we do not intend to pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, you may need to rely on sales of our common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on your investment.
We are an “emerging growth company,” and we cannot be certain if the reduced reporting and disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.
We are an “emerging-growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and we have elected to take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or Section 404, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. Pursuant to Section 107 of the JOBS Act, as an emerging growth company, we have elected to use the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. As a result, our consolidated financial statements will not be comparable to the financial statements of issuers who are required to comply with the effective dates for new or revised accounting standards that are applicable to public companies, which may make our common stock less attractive to investors. In addition, if we cease to be an emerging growth company, we will no longer be able to use the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards.
We will remain an emerging-growth company until the earliest of: (1) the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of this offering; (2) the last day of the first fiscal year in which our annual gross revenue is $1.07 billion or more; (3) the date on which we have, during the previous rolling three-year period, issued more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt securities; and (4) the date we qualify as a “large accelerated filer,” with at least $700 million of equity securities held by non-affiliates.
We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive as a result of choosing to rely on these exemptions. For example, if we do not adopt a new or revised accounting standard, our future results of operations will not be as comparable to the results of operations of certain other companies in our industry that adopted such standards. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile.
Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents may discourage our acquisition by a third party, which could limit our stockholders’ opportunity to sell their shares, at a premium.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation effective immediately prior to the completion of this offering include provisions that could limit the ability of others to acquire control of our company. These provisions could have the effect of depriving our stockholders of an opportunity to sell their shares at a premium over prevailing market prices by discouraging third parties from seeking to obtain control in a tender offer or similar transaction. Among other things, the charter documents will provide:
• certain amendments to our bylaws that will require the approval of two-thirds of the combined vote of our then-outstanding shares of our common stock;
29
• directors will be able to be removed only for cause and only by the affirmative vote of the holders of at least two-thirds of the voting power of our common stock;
• our board of directors will be classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms; and
• our board of directors has the authority, without further action by our stockholders, to issue preferred stock in one or more series and to fix their designations, powers, preferences, privileges, and relative participating, optional, or special rights, and the qualifications, limitations, or restrictions, including dividend rights, conversion rights, voting rights, terms.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation designates the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and federal court within the State of Delaware as the exclusive forum for certain types of actions and proceedings that our stockholders may initiate, which could limit a stockholder’s ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be in effect after this offering provides that, subject to limited exceptions, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be exclusive forums for any:
• derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf;
• action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers or other employees to us or our stockholders;
• action asserting a claim against us, our directors or officers or employees arising pursuant to any provision of the DGCL, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws; or
• other action asserting a claim against us, our directors or officers or employees that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine.
This choice of forum provision does not apply to actions brought to enforce a duty or liability created under the Exchange Act. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be in effect after this offering also provides that the federal district courts of the United States are the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. We intend for this provision to apply to any complaints asserting a cause of action under the Securities Act despite the fact that Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for the federal and state courts over all actions brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder. There is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such a provision with respect to claims under the Securities Act, and our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in shares of our capital stock shall be deemed to have notice of and to have consented to the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation described above.
These choice of forum provisions may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find these provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation inapplicable to, or unenforceable in respect of, one or more of the specified types of actions or proceedings, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such matters in other jurisdictions, which could adversely affect our business and financial condition.
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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This prospectus contains, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. The forward-looking statements are contained principally under the headings “Prospectus Summary,” “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” “Use of Proceeds” and “Business.” Forward-looking statements include statements concerning:
• our possible or assumed future results of operations;
• our business strategies;
• our ability to attract and retain customers;
• our ability to sell additional products and services to customers;
• our cash needs and financing plans;
• our competitive position;
• our industry environment;
• our potential growth opportunities;
• expected technological advances by us or by third parties and our ability to integrate and commercialize them;
• the effects of future regulation; and
• the effects of competition.
All statements in this prospectus that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. We may, in some cases, use terms such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “potential,” “predicts,” “projects,” “should,” “will,” “would” or similar expressions that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify forward-looking statements.
The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These important factors include our financial performance and the other important factors we discuss in greater detail in “Risk Factors.” You should read these factors and the other cautionary statements made in this prospectus as applying to all related forward-looking statements wherever they appear in this prospectus. Given these factors, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. You should read this prospectus and the documents that we reference in this prospectus and have filed as exhibits to the registration statement, of which this prospectus is a part, completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we currently expect.
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We estimate that we will receive net proceeds from this offering of approximately $26,790,325 (or approximately $30,930,325 if the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares is exercised in full) based on an assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share of common stock, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.
Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share of common stock would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us from this offering by approximately $3,247,059, assuming the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1.0 million shares in the number of shares of common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us from this offering by approximately $7,820,000, assuming the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share of common stock remains the same, and the exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase 529,412 additional shares of common stock to cover over-allotments, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.
The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility, and create a public market for our common stock. We currently intend to use the net proceeds we receive from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including funding our operating needs. However, we do not currently have specific planned uses for the proceeds.
We may also use a portion of our net proceeds to acquire or invest in complementary products, technologies, or businesses. However, we currently have no agreements or commitments to complete any such transactions.
We cannot specify with certainty all of the particular uses for the remaining net proceeds to us from this offering. We will have broad discretion over how we use the net proceeds from this offering. Pending the use of the proceeds from this offering as described above, we intend to invest the net proceeds from the offering that are not used as described above in investment-grade, interest-bearing instruments.
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We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and future earnings, if any, to fund the development and expansion of our business, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.
Any future determination regarding the declaration and payment of dividends, if any, will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on then-existing conditions, including our financial condition, operating results, contractual restrictions, capital requirements, business prospects, and other factors our board of directors may deem relevant. In addition, our ability to pay dividends may be restricted by any agreements we may enter into in the future.
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The following table sets forth our cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2021:
• on an actual basis;
• on a pro forma basis to reflect the conversion of the Company’s Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series C Preferred Stock; and
• on a pro forma as adjusted basis after giving effect to the sale of common stock in this offering at an assumed offering price of $8.50 per share and the mandatory conversion of the Company’s Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series C Preferred Stock.
You should read the following table in conjunction with the “Use of Proceeds” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of this prospectus and our consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus.
As of June 30, 2021 |
|||||||||||
Actual |
Pro forma
|
Pro Forma
|
|||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents(3) |
$ |
3,804,381 |
|
$ |
3,804,381 |
|
30,594,706 |
|
|||
Debt |
|
1,598,880 |
|
|
1,598,880 |
|
1,598,880 |
|
|||
Stockholders’ equity: |
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Preferred stock, par value $0.00001 per share, 21,982,491 shares authorized, 21,982,491 shares issued and outstanding (actual); 0 shares issued and outstanding (pro forma); 0 shares issued and outstanding (pro forma as adjusted) |
|
220 |
|
|
— |
|
— |
|
|||
Common stock, par value $0.00001 per share, 42,000,000 shares authorized, 950,794 shares issued and outstanding (actual); 21,982,491 shares issued and converted from preferred shares; 3,529,412, shares issued and outstanding (pro forma as adjusted) |
|
10 |
|
|
230 |
|
265 |
|
|||
Additional paid-in capital |
|
114,387,563 |
|
|
114,387,563 |
|
141,177,853 |
|
|||
Accumulated deficit |
|
(112,337,396 |
) |
|
(112,337,396 |
) |
(112,337,396 |
) |
|||
Total stockholder’s equity |
|
2,050,397 |
|
|
2,050,397 |
|
28,840,722 |
|
|||
Total capitalization |
$ |
3,649,277 |
|
$ |
3,649,277 |
|
30,439,602 |
|
____________
(1) Pro forma amounts give effect to the automatic conversion of 21,982,491 shares of preferred stock to 21,982,491 shares of common stock.
(2) Pro forma as adjusted amounts reflect the sale of 3,529,412 shares of our common stock in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share, after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, assumes no exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase 529,412 additional shares of common stock to cover over-allotments, and give effect to the automatic conversion of 21,982,491 shares of preferred stock to 21,982,491 shares of common stock.
(3) Includes $400,000 classified as Restricted cash in the consolidated balance sheet as of June 30, 2021. The Company’s restricted cash consists of cash spending arrangements. The amount of Restricted cash was reduced to $50,000 in July 2021.
Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us by approximately $3,247,059, assuming that the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
If the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full, pro forma cash, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders’ (deficit) equity, total capitalization and shares of common stock outstanding as of June 30, 2021 would be $34,734,706, $145,317,847, $32,980,722, $34,579,602 and 26,992,109 shares, respectively.
34
If you invest in our common stock in this offering, your interest will be diluted to the extent of the difference between the initial public offering price per share of common stock and the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share of our common stock immediately after this offering.
Our pro forma net tangible book value of our common stock as of June 30, 2021 was $2,017,747, or $0.09 per share after giving effect to the conversion of the Company’s Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series C Preferred Stock. Net tangible book value per share represents our total net tangible assets (which were total assets of $4,025,605 less intangible assets of $32,650, less our total liabilities of $1,975,208, at June 30, 2021) divided by the number of shares of outstanding common stock of 22,933,285 shares (inclusive of the conversion of the Company’s Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series C Preferred Stock of 21,982,491 shares).
After giving effect to (i) the mandatory conversion of the Company’s Series A Preferred Stock, Series B Preferred Stock and Series C Preferred Stock and (ii) the receipt of the net proceeds from our sale of common stock in this offering, at an assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value as of June 30, 2021 would have been approximately $28,808,072 or $1.09 per share. This amount represents an immediate increase in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $1.00 per share to our existing stockholders and an immediate dilution of $7.41 per share to new investors participating in this offering.
We determine dilution per share to investors participating in this offering by subtracting pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering from the assumed initial public offering price per share paid by investors participating in this offering. The following table illustrates this dilution on a per share basis to new investors:
Assumed initial public offering price per share |
$ |
8.50 |
|
Pro forma net tangible book value per share as of June 30, 2021 |
$ |
0.09 |
|
Increase per share to existing stockholders attributable to investors in this offering |
$ |
1.00 |
|
Pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share, to give effect to this offering |
|
1.09 |
|
Dilution in pro forma net tangible book value per share to new investors in this offering |
$ |
7.41 |
Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us by approximately $3,247,059, assuming that the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
The pro forma information discussed above is illustrative only and will change based on the actual initial public offering price, number of shares and other terms of this offering determined at pricing.
If the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares of common stock to purchase additional shares of common stock in this offering in full at the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share and assuming the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, the pro forma net tangible book value would be approximately $1.22 per share, and the dilution in pro forma net tangible book value per share to investors in this offering would be approximately $7.28 per share.
The table below summarizes as of June 30, 2021, adjusted pro forma basis described above, the number of shares of our common stock, the total consideration and the average price per share (i) paid to us by existing stockholders and (ii) to be paid by new investors purchasing shares in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $ per share, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.
Shares Purchased |
Total Consideration |
Average Price Per Share |
||||||||||||
Number |
Percent |
Amount |
Percent |
|||||||||||
Existing stockholders |
22,933,285 |
86.7 |
% |
$ |
114,387,793 |
79.2 |
% |
$ |
4.99 |
|||||
New investors |
3,529,412 |
13.3 |
% |
$ |
30,000,000 |
20.8 |
% |
$ |
8.50 |
|||||
Total |
26,462,697 |
100.0 |
% |
$ |
144,387,793 |
100.0 |
% |
$ |
5.46 |
35
In addition, if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares of common stock in full, the percentage of shares held by existing stockholders will be reduced to 85.0% of the total number of shares of common stock to be outstanding upon the closing of this offering, and the number of shares of common stock held by new investors participating in this offering will be further increased by 529,412 shares, or 1.7% of the total number of shares of common stock to be outstanding upon the closing of this offering.
Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $8.50 per share would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us by approximately $3,247,059, assuming that the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.
The total number of shares of our common stock reflected in our actual and pro forma information set forth in the table above excludes:
• Options to purchase 8,593,678 shares of common stock of which have a weighted average exercise price of $1.04. The options expire between February 2023 and July 2031.
36
MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
You should read the following discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with our financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. In addition to historical information, the following discussion and analysis includes forward looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. See the discussion under “Special Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements” beginning on page 31 of this prospectus. Our fiscal year ends on December 31.
Overview
We are an autonomous vehicle (AV) technology company that is focused on addressing industrial uses for autonomous vehicles. We believe that technological innovation is needed to enable adoption of autonomous industrial vehicles that will address the substantial industry challenges that exist today. These challenges include labor shortages, lagging technological advancements from incumbent vehicle manufacturers, and high upfront investment commitment.
Industrial sites are typically rigid environments with consistent standards as opposed to city streets that have more variable environmental and situational conditions and diverse regulations. These differences in operational design domains (ODD) will be major factors that make proliferation of industrial AVs in private settings achievable with less time and resources than AVs on public roadways. Namely, safety and infrastructure challenges are cited as roadblocks that have delayed AVs from operating on public roadways at scale1. Our focus on industrial AVs simplifies these challenges because industrial facilities.
With these challenges in mind, we are developing an Enterprise Autonomy Suite (EAS) that leverages advanced in-vehicle autonomous driving technology and incorporates leading supporting technologies like data analytics, fleet management, cloud, and connectivity. EAS provides a differentiated solution that we believe will drive pervasive proliferation of industrial autonomy and create value for customers at every stage of their journey towards full automation and the adoption of Industry 4.0.
EAS is a suite of technologies and tools that we divide into three complementary categories:
1. DriveMod, our modular industrial vehicle autonomous driving software;
2. Cyngn Insight, our customer-facing tool suite for monitoring and managing AV fleets (including remotely operating vehicles) and aggregating/analyzing data; and
3. Cyngn Evolve, our internal tool suite and infrastructure that facilitates artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) training to continuously enhance our algorithms and models and provides a simulation framework (both record/rerun and synthetic scenario creation) to ensure that data collected in the field can be applied to validating new releases.
Legacy automation providers manufacture specialized industrial vehicles with integrated robotics software for rigid tasks, limiting automation to narrow uses. Unlike these specialized vehicles, EAS can be compatible with the existing vehicle assets in addition to new vehicles that have been purpose built for autonomy by vehicle manufacturers. EAS is operationally expansive, vehicle agnostic, and compatible with indoor and outdoor environments. By offering flexible autonomous services, we aim to remove barriers to industry adoption.
We understand that scaling of autonomy solutions will require an ecosystem made up of different technologies and services that are enablers for AVs. Our approach is to forge strategic collaborations with complementary technology providers that accelerate AV development and deployment, provide access to new markets, and create new capabilities. Our focus on designing DriveMod to be modular will combine with our experience deploying AV technology on diverse industrial vehicle form factors, which will be difficult for competitors to replicate.
We expect our technology to generate revenue through two main methods: deployment and EAS subscriptions. Deploying our EAS requires us and our integration partners to work with a new client to map the job site, gather data, and install our AV technology within their fleet and site. We anticipate that new deployments will yield project-based revenues based on the scope of the deployment. After deployment, we expect to generate revenues by offering EAS
37
through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, which can be considered the AV software component of Robotics as a Service (RaaS). Although we have not offered, and have no present intention to offer, the robotic assets ourselves directly to the end customer, our software can be part of a combined offering with third parties, such as an OEM.
RaaS is a subscription model that allows customers to use robots/vehicles without purchasing the hardware assets upfront. We will seek to achieve sustained revenue growth largely from ongoing SaaS-style EAS subscriptions that enable companies to tap into our ever-expanding suite of AV and AI capabilities as organizations transition into full industrial autonomy.
At this time, EAS is available as a private beta release6. Early versions of EAS have been deployed with customers in the past, including an unpaid customer trial in 2017 and a paid customer pilot in 2018, which ended 2019. We do not currently have any customers, and we do not currently have recurring revenues from EAS. We plan to engage with select customers for limited paid deployments of our EAS beta release over the next 18-24 months (beta phase). Further, we expect EAS to continually be developed and enhanced according to evolving customer needs in the future, which will take place concurrently while other features of EAS are commercialized as is typical in software products.
During the beta phase, we will prepare EAS for scaled commercialization that is targeted in 2024. Key activities that will occur during the beta phase include but are not limited to collecting and training on additional data, enhancing various components of DriveMod and Cyngn Insight based on our experience with beta customers, increasing customer support, and conducting paid beta deployments of increasing scale with select customers. We estimate the costs to prepare EAS for scaled commercialization to be roughly $18M–$23M and expect the limited paid beta deployments to offset some of the ongoing R&D costs of developing EAS. There can be no guarantee that the actual amount required to prepare EAS for scaled commercialization will not exceed these estimates or that the limited paid deployments that would offset some of these costs will be at the level we have planned. We target scaled deployments and recurring revenues to begin in 2024, which we expect to drive additional spending in sales, marketing, and customer support while EAS continues to undergo technology and product feature enhancements on an ongoing basis.
Our go-to-market strategy is to acquire new customers that use industrial vehicles in their mission-critical and daily operations by (a) leveraging the relationships and existing customers of our network of strategic partners, (b) bringing AV capabilities to industrial vehicles as a software service provider, and (c) executing a robust in-house sales and marketing effort to nurture a pipeline of industrial organizations. Our focus is on acquiring new customers who are either looking (a) to embed our technology into their vehicle product roadmaps or (b) to apply autonomy to existing fleets with our vehicle retrofits. In turn, our customers are any organizations that could utilize our EAS solution, including OEMs that supply industrial vehicles, end customers that operate their own industrial vehicles, or service providers that operate industrial vehicles for end customers.
As OEMs and leading industrial vehicle users seek to increase productivity, reinforce safer working environments, and scale their operations, we believe Cyngn is uniquely positioned to deliver a dynamic autonomy solution via our EAS to a wide variety of industrial uses. Our long-term vision is for EAS to become a universal autonomous driving solution with minimal marginal cost for companies to adopt new vehicles and expand their autonomous fleets across new deployments. We have already deployed DriveMod software on nine different vehicle form factors that range from stockchasers and stand-on floor scrubbers to 14-seat shuttles and 5-meter-long cargo vehicles demonstrating the extensibility of our AV building blocks. These deployments were prototypes or part of proof-of-concept projects. Of these deployments, two were at customer sites. For one deployment we were paid $166,000 and the other was part of our normal R&D activities.
Our strategy upon establishing a customer relationship with an OEM, is to seek to embed our technology into their vehicle roadmap and expand our services to their many clients. Once we solidify an initial AV deployment with a customer, we intend to seek to expand within the site to additional vehicle platforms and/or expand the use of similar vehicles to other sites operated by the customer. This “land and expand” strategy can repeat iteratively across new vehicles and sites and is at the heart of why we believe industrial AVs that operate in geo-fenced, constrained environments are poised to create value.
Meanwhile, over $16B has been invested into passenger AV development over the last several years with negligible revenues generated and constant delays7. The $200B industrial equipment market (projected in 2027) is substantial, but it does not justify billions of dollars of annual research & development spend. These leading passenger AV companies must take the approach of first capturing the trillion-dollar markets of passenger AV to achieve their desired returns.
____________
5 https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/21122331/autonomous-vehicles-are-we-there-yet
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta
7 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/money-pit-self-driving-cars-16-billion-cash-burn
38
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates and Recent Accounting Pronouncements
Basis of Presentation
The consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”). While our significant accounting policies are more fully described in our financial statements, we believe the following accounting policies are the most critical to aid in fully understanding and evaluating this management discussion and analysis.
Use of Accounting Estimates
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make certain estimates and assumptions. These estimates and assumptions affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities as of the balance sheet date, as well as reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the reporting period. The Company’s significant estimates and judgments include but are not limited to share-based compensation. Management bases its estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions believed to be reasonable, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities. Actual results could differ from those estimates.
Revenue Recognition
On January 1, 2019, the Company adopted Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (“Topic 606”) and recognizes revenue upon the transfer of goods or services in an amount that reflects the expected consideration received in exchange for those goods or services. The Company recognized $124,501 of revenue in 2019 under one nonrecurring contract. The Company expects to derive revenue from license agreements for our autonomous vehicle software. Recognition of this future revenue will be subject to the terms of any arrangements with our customers, which have not yet been negotiated. The Company has not generated any other revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 and for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019.
Employee Stock-Based Compensation
The Company recognizes the cost of share-based awards granted to employees and directors based on the estimated grant-date fair value of the awards. Cost is recognized on a straight-line basis over the service period, which is generally the vesting period of the award. The Company recognizes stock-based compensation cost and reverses previously recognized costs for unvested awards in the period forfeitures occur. The Company determines the fair value of stock options using the Black-Scholes option pricing model, which is impacted by the fair value of common stock, expected price volatility of common stock, expected term, risk-free interest rates, and expected dividend yield
Research and Development Costs
Research and development expenses consist primarily of outsourced engineering services, internal engineering and development expenses, materials, labor and stock-based compensation related to development of the Company’s products and services. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred. We expect our research and development expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we increase our investment in scaling our proprietary technologies.
Recently Issued Pronouncements
For information on recently issued accounting pronouncements, refer to Note 2 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus.
Results of Operations for the Six Months Ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 and the Year Ended December 31, 2020, compared to December 31, 2019
Revenue
The Company recorded no revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 and for the year ended December 31, 2020. In 2019, the company recorded $124.5 thousand under a non-recurring contract.
39
Cost of Revenue
The Company had no cost of revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 and for the year ended December 31, 2020 or 2019 which is commensurate with its pre-revenue status. Although we had revenue in 2019, there were no associated costs of this revenue as it was all derived from a single software license.
Research and Development
Research and development costs for the six months ended June 30, 2021 of $1,766,186 decreased ($912,233), or (34.1%) compared to $2,678,419 for the similar six month period ended June 30, 2020. The decrease was primarily attributed to the decrease in personnel related costs as a result of staffing reductions due to COVID-19 during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the same six month period ended June 30, 2020.
Research and development costs decreased ($586,725), or (10.3%) from $5,707,705 for the year ended December 31, 2019, to $5,120,979 for the year ended December 31, 2020. The decrease was primarily due to reduced personnel related costs, including contract labor costs which decreased ($482,846) principally as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Material, equipment and other non-personnel related research and development costs decreased ($103,879) during the year.
General and Administrative
General and administrative costs for the six months ended June 30, 2021 of $1,877,118 increased $196,980 or 11.7% compared to $1,680,138 for the similar six month period ended June 30, 2020. The increase was primarily attributed to the increase in personnel related costs as the Company increased staff to support being a public company during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the same six month period ended June 30, 2020.
General and administrative costs decreased ($729,842), or (18.3%) from $3,982,491 for the year ended December 31, 2019, to $3,252,649 for the year ended December 31, 2020. The decrease was primarily due to decreases in legal and professional costs, office related expense and travel costs which decreased by ($553,616), or (53.6%), ($19,648), and ($156,577), respectively. In each case, the year over year decrease was due to reduced spending resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other Income (Expenses)
Other (expense) income of ($91) for the six months ended June 30, 2021 decreased ($44,736) compared to $44,645 for the similar six month period ended June 30, 2020. The decrease was primarily due to: a) the decrease in interest income resulting from the combined effects of the reduction in the Company’s cash balance and in the interest rate yield prevailing during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the similar six month period ended June 30, 2020; and b) the amount of interest expense recognized on two note principal amounts during the six months ended June 30, 2021, compared to one note principal amount during the similar six month period ended June 30, 2020.
In April 2020, the Company entered into a note with JPMorgan Chase (the