Okay, so what could be so important that Enovix needs to airlift batteries from China to USA? There must be a customer that really, really needs the batteries. Well, I have some theories. Let’s first look at the slide:

and now let’s look at this post:

Now, keep in mind, Cameron here didn’t have to say this. But he offered a glowing review of AR/VR headsets in a reply to Facebook’s Oculus post.
Looking at his job history, looks like he’s worked there for quite a while:

So, since Enovix has said that they’ve been quality testing their products with potential customers for years, the requirements for that customer would have to be the following:

– Not a new customer. They’ve been in the market for some time if they’ve already been pre-qualifying.

– Not a huge customer. Can’t be a Samsung or Apple. Enovix wouldn’t currently have the production capabilities to support how much they would consume. Even if it was Apple (which I’m almost certain it isn’t), Apple wouldn’t want to advertise who their suppliers are unless it had a marketing benefit for them. Maybe this would be? But even so, Enovix doesn’t have the production capacity to meet Apple’s use case.

– Big ticket item so that the cost of the battery would be low in comparison to the total cost of the item.

Plus, I don’t think it’d be super weird to be trying to get into AR/VR because, according to Enovix, they are one of the most profitable ventures they could do:

So we’ve got Cameron here talking about Facebook Reality Labs. Let’s have a look at that?
According to Android Central, Oculus Quest 2 has sold 2-3 million units. TechRadar says Oculus Quest 3 won’t be released until 2022 at minimum, and Enovix isn’t planning on any huge revenues until next year anyway as they go through final customer qualifications this Fall. The release dates and Enovix projected revenues seem to fall in line and it fits with all the other literature published by Enovix.

I’m placing my bet on Facebook Oculus for their first Tier 1 customer.
For the second customer, let’s look at wearables and 5G cell phones. Enovix already mentioned iPhone and Motorola Edge Plus, both of which are current-gen 5G phones. Enovix would have the production capacity to supply Motorola, but I doubt they’d be able to do iPhone. For this, I’m going to bet on Google Pixel, OnePlus, or Motorola.  These 5G cell phones have low enough production runs that I think Enovix would be able to supply them.

Some alternatives would be the U.S. Government. Doesn’t seem too strange considering Enovix has a Head of Government Affairs – but I don’t know if that’s for business development or for policy/law. Given that she was a previous policy director, seems like she’d be a great lobbyist and not so much for business development. But then again, what do I know? I’m just an armchair stock investor.

Anyway, just thought I’d share my latest thoughts.