Earnings Call Transcript - DVLT Q4 2025

Operator, Operator

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Datavault AI Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Corporate Update Call. I will now turn the call over to Ed Barger, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Edward Barger, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. My name is Ed Barger. I recently joined Datavault AI as Vice President of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be here today and look forward to speaking with all of you in the investment community over the coming weeks and months. With me today is our Chief Executive Officer, Nathaniel Bradley; and our Chief Financial Officer, Brett Moyer. Before I turn the call over to our CEO, I'd like to remind you that this conference call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. SEC laws with respect to future operations, financial results, events, trends and performance, which are based on management's beliefs and assumptions as of today's date. Forward-looking statements may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. See Datavault AI's fourth quarter press release and SEC filings for information regarding specific risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Except as required by law, Datavault AI undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements. I will now pass the call over to our CEO, Nathaniel Bradley. Nate?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Ed, and thank you all for joining us today. This was a strong year for our company, and I'm excited to review our results with you today. We'll begin with key highlights and accomplishments, followed by our business outlook and conclude with expectations for 2026 before opening the call for Q&A. As you can see from the chart, we delivered significant sequential revenue growth, which resulted from our first ever profitable quarter on a GAAP basis with adjusted EBITDA exceeding $8 million. In addition, we took decisive steps in 2025 to fund our future growth. Through strategic financing initiatives, we substantially eliminated our debt and strengthened our balance sheet, ending the year with over $115 million in working capital. 2025 was a transformative period for the company as we executed on our strategic vision. We completed the acquisitions of CompuSystems Inc., or CSI, as well as API Media in early 2026. We are now operating an internal initiative of the joint companies under a project known as Event Citadel. These highly complementary businesses enable us to unify data from events, capture audience engagement and monetize across both physical and digital environments. This creates a scalable ecosystem for tokenized data asset creation and recurring revenue generation through our exchanges. As we integrate these platforms, we are increasingly positioned to deliver end-to-end solutions that combine AI, data analytics, and blockchain-based monetization, strengthening our competitive position across multiple high-growth vertical markets. We believe that the blockchain and Web3 ecosystems represent a large and rapidly expanding market opportunity driven by the shift towards data ownership, tokenization, and decentralized monetization. Datavault AI is positioned to provide an end-to-end platform that enables enterprises to securely transform their data into monetizable assets through our exchanges. Data is our commodity, and data has always been the most significant and critical asset that organizations have, and organizations are facing growing challenges around security, cybersecurity, ownership and monetization. We are ready to address these needs through a secure, transparent and scalable platform operating in a large, rapidly growing market. Adoption is already widespread and projected to expand at a 25.8% year-over-year growth rate. Real-world asset tokenization represents one of the most significant emerging opportunities in the financial markets today. The market is staged for blockbuster growth: $126 trillion of equity market content is being tokenized currently. The system has grown over the past several years, driven by the increase of institutional adoption and the change in the regulatory environment around digital assets. The demand for more efficient, transparent and yield-focused AI-driven infrastructure has taken the RWA market to over $30 trillion in growth projection. We address this market through a patented infrastructure that provides an exchange for the fair valuation, the scoring and the monetization through transaction in a system that can clear anywhere in the world. We believe Datavault AI is uniquely situated with patented technologies covering tokenomics and exchange that real-world assets will be tokenized in a market that is exploding in size where we represent the sole source of exchange within a company that has the freedom to operate and the entire control of market systems that enable transactions to occur on a worldwide basis. The monetization, capture and tokenization of digital assets creates real-world recurring revenue-generative sources. Our IP-driven license model, combined with our acquisitions of CSI and API Media, provides both the infrastructure and real-world asset sources needed to scale. We are well positioned at the intersection of AI, data and blockchain, which enables us to capture value in tokenization and adoption that accelerates growth through the use of AI and automated systems that we present in the platform. Our patented indexes or exchanges are essentially structured data sets that are organized, scored, valued and observable from a system that organizes and indexes data in a system that allows participation from any entity that needs to claim its assets of data without relinquishing them to a third party, but instead claiming them and understanding the value and score of them, the cybersecurity risk around them and the other measurements of these assets that provide quality information for insights and decision-making. We represent these products in the form of data that is tokenized and traded on the data information exchange. We've developed a number of genre-specific exchanges under this patented technology framework. We've also licensed NYIAX, which gives us access to the NASDAQ financial framework. This entity, the data information exchange, has spawned the ability to capture name, image and likeness and the ability to monetize within sports and entertainment; we've now labeled the Sports Illustrated Exchange. The addition of real-world assets to the public stage and the ability to utilize real-world assets such as real estate, precious metals, gases, uranium, titanium, aluminum, chromium and other assets that can be tokenized and developed into monetizable systems provide needed capital to miners and to individuals that extract or own precious metals and other real-world assets. We've brought that forward in an exchange that will be known as the International Elements Exchange. We have, thirdly, an American Political Exchange that we've positioned at the end of this year to solve for the relationship between candidates and causes and their constituents, providing a direct exchange for those individual operations under a Federal Elections Commission approved system that keeps compliance, oversight and insights at the forefront of political operation systems. We have an exchange genre that stems from data that is being carved into individual exchanges that allow us to monetize and turn raw data into measurable comparable assets to support pricing and valuation for tokenization. We enable licensing and royalties tied to data usage, and we developed genre-specific exchanges to allow us to monetize rapidly these assets. We have a patented technology stack, second to none. Our patented technology stack includes CLEAR, which is a KYC system that allows us to know our customer, allows our systems to re-centralize decentralized wallets and other aspects of the Web3 ecosystem. Our CLEAR advantage is that we bring a KYC system that's recognizable, well-registered and has a large user base that is automatically catapulted into a Datavault account. We have international corollaries for CLEAR and other CLEAR functions where we have KYC provided by international providers that bolster that capability within our platform. We've developed with IBM software that orchestrates our systems. We have a developer and a platinum partnership with IBM. We also have a system with IBM that we've created within our platform that allows for the use of our proprietary scoring and valuation engines to both score and value data the moment it is born at the edge of the Internet. The moment that data appears on the scene, our systems stand ready to score and value on behalf of the owner and point towards yield management systems that are ultimately injected into our exchanges to be monetized at maximum yield. We are licensors of NYIAX, a financial framework and a system that allows for tokenization and patented infrastructure towards exchange of those tokenized assets. NYIAX gives us access to the NASDAQ financial framework, allowing our tokens to be traded on one of the most trusted financial frameworks in the world. We have Fiserv as a partner that can reduce to fiat, reduce to debit card proceeds from digital assets—a toggle switch from fiat to token and token to fiat. The idea that we're able to have a partner recognizable worldwide that allows us to clear transactions within seconds is a very powerful tool within this platform. We have, of course, audit and responsibility: a comprehensive compliance infrastructure required to operate an exchange and digital assets in all aspects of management regarding tokenomics and the transactions that occur on a worldwide basis with compliant, high-integrity, very transparent and very high-quality tokenomic platforms that are cybersecure. Houlihan Lokey, a smart contract auditor, will be reviewing all smart contracts created from our platform, the architecture of those contracts, the legality and the underlying compliance infrastructure related to smart contract execution on a worldwide basis. We are taking high-quality digital assets to the highest quality exchange within a patented infrastructure that is second to none. Our Acoustic division is essentially a combination of WiSA, API and Event Citadel. We generate ongoing revenue by enabling real-time data transmission, engagement and authentication through sound-based technology, notably ADIO and WiSA. Importantly, this division also serves as a key data organization layer, creating highest-quality value assets. It is a manufacturer of semiconductors. If you remember that NVIDIA came from video, Datavault AI comes from audio. We have created a system that has been world-renowned for eliminating latency in an audio transmission that is of high-definition quality. Our platform enables both direct and downstream revenue opportunities that include licensing and large-scale operations within the licensing in robotics and in the future of AI technology. It is a key component of our platform that serves as a secure foundation of our ecosystem—cybersecurity is job #1. The most important aspect to digital assets is cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is a problem that we've addressed head on. We've looked at the necessary requirement of the cybersecurity related to digital twins and securing tokens within a SanQtum that provides for a leap to quantum computing that provides high-performance computing capability to track, manage, index, score and value data in a secure environment that has no cybersecurity threats. The ability to view a digital twin is an extremely valuable experience. The ability to make digital twins a reality requires infrastructure. The investment into SanQtum provides a railway. This security layer is critical as it allows for the transformation of data into verifiable, monetizable assets, whether through licensing or tokenization or through financial products that are traded on exchanges that are genre-specific and towards the use case that is most advantageous to the owner of data and product in the digital realm. By combining SanQtum with our broader tokenization, monetization and Acoustic systems, we can use our Sumerian crypto-anchors and our other patented technology to revolutionize the end-to-end secure, cybersecure ability to transact in an open system of blockchain that is both breakthrough and enlightening. We capture real-world assets through our Acoustic and enterprise technologies. We can capture data in ways that other companies cannot. We have the ability to validate and secure it through our cybersecure SanQtum. We organize and assign value through the index platform known as Datavault. And ultimately, we monetize data through AI systems focused on yield management and the maximization of financial yield related to digital assets. We license and tokenize assets in a recurring revenue model that creates a renewable stream of revenue and a growing opportunity for the clients that jump on board the tokenization revolution. This is the end-to-end approach that allows us to participate across the full life cycle of data: from the moment it is born, it is valued and scored; it's understood in context; it's understood in value of all its subordinates, all of its antecedents, all its prerequisites. It is fully understood. It is scored, valued and tokenized. It is available for monetization on the exchange when it qualifies for all regulatory compliance requirements, and it is traded in a way that provides a lifeblood of revenue for our clients and for the users of these systems. As noted in our press release, we are reiterating the guidance that we provided in the fall of 2025. We expect top line revenue of $200 million for the full year 2026. We expect sequential growth each quarter with momentum building throughout the year and the majority of our $200 million outlook weighted to the second half. One more thing we'd like to add this morning is that our team will be infused with the talent of NYIAX and the technology that they have patented many years ago. We will join forces at Datavault AI to create the ultimate exchange experience and exploit the opportunity of tokenomics for American companies and companies worldwide. I'd also like to thank our management team for their exceptional leadership throughout the end of last year. Their relentless, focused and disciplined execution and strategic alignment gives me strong confidence in our ability to deliver sustained long-term value for our shareholders. As we scale this vision with them, I'd like to thank all of them and now open the call for questions.

Operator, Operator

At this time, we will open the call for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group.

Jack Vander Aarde, Analyst, Maxim Group

Okay. Great. Great update, guys. Congrats on all the positive momentum in the recent acquisitions as well. It sounds like there's quite a bit of progress that's been made since the last quarter. So congrats on all the momentum. Nate, can you talk to me a little bit more about NYIAX and then also just the whole licensing revenue stream that's really kicked in here. How does NYIAX fit into your overall strategy and what we're seeing so far with the tokenization strategy? Can you maybe just help us understand and tie that together?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

Yes, sure. There's been a number of movements in this space. You can see a $27 billion valuation just across other exchanges where they brought in token technology that gives them exchange. One thing I consider important in our space is the freedom to operate. You wouldn't just wander into health care or pharmaceuticals or any other technology without the freedom to operate. What we have here is a union with NYIAX that really starts with IP. We met each other and have been working with each other now for years around intellectual property. That culminated into a license that we've had time to kick the tires on and realize that there's a real deal and that their relationship with NASDAQ Stockholm gives us a technology layer that endears us to the exchange. It brings us closer. It gives us the ability to do all the things that, in our trade for that technology, if you look at the historic deal there, it's really the ability for NASDAQ to trade stocks and bonds, ETFs and all the great work that they do. We said that we'll likely never do those things, but we'd like to do all other things that are data related. Data relates to RWA, to image and likeness of human beings—if you have a beating heart in this country, you have data that's valuable. That's the message we carry as a company. Also, human beings and their name, image and likeness need a mechanism to monetize it, and we provide that. Precious metals and the treasures of this world are finite; they have scarcity and value that is well known and published. We give a mechanism to bring that to market. NYIAX gives us the best name in the business, the best exchange in the business, the most trust we could garner from a brand name and from a technology and system, and that's what we're going to bring to market. So NYIAX to us is talent, it's people, it's technology and, preeminently, brand affiliation and a partnership that's long-formed around this tokenomic phenomenon: the ability to tokenize real-world assets. So that's what that's about.

Jack Vander Aarde, Analyst, Maxim Group

Excellent. I appreciate that. And just maybe if you could touch on a little bit more about, I guess, the relationship with IBM. Also, this has been ongoing, and there's a few moving parts here in terms of licensing arrangements and payments. Can you talk to me a little bit about SanQtum as well, the SanQtum cities? And just kind of how that fits into the strategy? Where does this fit in terms of your priorities and importance for the company's strategy?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for the question. I really appreciate you following our company this closely and asking that question. IBM is special to us. It's a chosen partner because we believe AI should be subordinate to human beings. IBM has built watsonx. Early in my career, they were building the face of watsonx and some of the concepts that IBM brings to the table. None were more important than cybersecurity, and you can't really say IBM and Datavault without mentioning Dan Gregory, who is responsible for cybersecuring a lot of our energy grid and has helped other countries do the same. He's brought his intelligence and infrastructure to what is effectively a VPN for quantum, and he's a partner of both IBM and Datavault AI. That partnership is about creating SanQtum. How it fits into our strategy is that data can create extreme value and extreme threat. If you have a digital twin of a city, it can make a mayor more effective in managing that city. But if it fell into the hands of individuals that meant harm—if it allowed someone to jam a system or understand a city for nefarious means—that data becomes precious to the entire community. It must remain cybersecure and in the hands of elected officials who work in our best interest. These are all things that blockchain exposes and our technology fits around these communities where we're using tokenomics to solve American problems. We have True Valor that addresses stolen valor of individuals. We have NIL systems that monetize for people. None of it would mean anything without cybersecurity. SanQtum is about job one: taking care of homeland cybersecurity. When you have cybersecure SanQtums, you can invite a mayor to use a tool that can revolutionize his effectiveness and give communities efficiency that raises the bar for how we can do more for less. That goes hand-in-glove with tokenomic strategies where we're eliminating fraud and identifying systems simply through the nature of using blockchain and using AI to aid us in perfecting our democracy and our communities.

Jack Vander Aarde, Analyst, Maxim Group

That's fine. Maybe if I just follow up — there are quite a few different pillars here we could talk about. I want to save some room for others on the call, but maybe you just touch on the verticals that you have in terms of the tokenization strategy. Which of these verticals do you see being the most meaningful? For example, with pharmaceuticals and Scilex, is this a larger area? Is there any particular area that you're focused on more, or is this just a rising tide that lifts all ships? How do you see things playing out in terms of the tokenization verticals?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

There is an ex caliber principle with Datavault AI: you simply cannot wield it as a single entity. It must be licensed into verticals. Scilex wields the technology. They utilize our technology to create a biotech exchange. To your point, it is enormous, but we license into it because we're not trying to boil the ocean. We make technology that uniformly makes data monetizable; data exists in silos that lead to waste without our exchanges. Our exchanges are vertically centric. So we have the biotech exchange that Scilex will brand, and they will move forward with their energy and know-how to build a biotech exchange with our technology. We just took over the New York Interactive Advertising Exchange, NYIAX. We have the ability to use our exact same infrastructure—data scoring, data value and data monetization—under the same umbrella. The Element Exchange is about real-world assets and the NIL exchange is about human-made assets and the asset of being yourself. These assets are all monetized over a uniform system. We are like sales force to sales; Datavault AI is to data. Our platform hunts in all of these markets, and we've licensed it because we know that Sports Illustrated, for instance, has a better brand name than Datavault for sports and entertainment. We've built the Sports Illustrated Exchange to meet that need. We've looked at the highest value markets in the world: human beings and real-world assets. We have everything in between covered in our data information exchange, which allows emerging data sets to become known, scored, valued and traded. We have a very compliant process to get everyone there on a system that we can trust. IBM in the middle, CLEAR on the front, Fiserv in the middle, and you've got NASDAQ at the back. The ability to use NASDAQ's financial framework to close transactions in vertical markets that we've identified—but licensed those verticals so they can grow fast—moves quicker toward the value we're creating for our shareholders.

Jack Vander Aarde, Analyst, Maxim Group

Well, excellent. I really appreciate the update. Maybe just one more: can you touch on the acquisitions that you have made — API and now NYIAX and CSI as well. Is there anything else part of the puzzle that you're looking to acquire? Or are all the pieces kind of in place now from your acquisition strategy today? How do you see that playing out?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

End-to-end, the stack is ready. We have regulatory compliance at the forefront. We won't launch these exchanges until we have thumbs up from everyone regarding commodity and every aspect of the assets that we are taking to market. That's number one. In terms of these acquisitions, API Media is an American treasure. It's run by incredibly talented technology professionals that have added culture to our company. They are people of high standards, and we're trying to infuse that Ritz-Carlton quality into the fabric of our company. API Media is a cultural acquisition. They chose us because they saw scale, but we chose them because we saw quality. We take over big events through that acquisition in terms of technological management of systems involved in some of the biggest events and products in America—golf, horse racing and other high-pedigree sports. API seems to have acute knowledge there which we find incredible. The acquisition of CSI is an infusion into WiSA and ADIO. It gives us a forum of events to show off how we can control HD-quality sound and how we can move sound around rooms and use data over sound as the voice of robots that greet you and provide service and manners better than any human being. The idea that we could perfect systems that use AI and events and people to maximize yield together means we have ability to have passive recurring revenue generation through events. That's what CSI was about: the ability to take those two — a cultural and event-based strategy — to create more data and use our audio systems to prove how we do it better than anyone in the business.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital Markets.

Edward Woo, Analyst, Ascendiant Capital Markets

Yes. Congratulations on all the progress that you guys did last year. My question is how much of your business is focused on the U.S.? And how much of it do you think you can grow internationally and globally in the future?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for the question. I have literally spent my first night at home last night after being on the road for around 62 days. I have traveled the world, and I would tell you the opportunity internationally is rivaled by that here domestically, but it has a lot of incredible potential. You'll see from announcements that PacRim in Asia is an extremely strong growth market for us, and we have adoption coming at us like a fire hose. We've opened offices: we have an office in Seoul, Korea; we have operations in Tokyo, Japan; we have a large operation in Taiwan through our partners and semiconductor patents around WiSA. We have an office in Beaverton that is meant to service that Asian market. From Philadelphia, of course, our eyes are on the U.K.; I just got back from London. We now have an office in Mayfair. We have the ability to capture business from London all throughout the U.K. We spent some time there and realized there's massive cybersecurity and data operations that feed our exchanges and international scope of our relationship with NYIAX will extend into NASDAQ Stockholm and obviously the SIX Swiss Exchange, where we have the ability to expand our European trading platform around these exchanges. Simultaneous with the turn-up of our exchange in America—which will be the guiding light because of the regulatory excellence and trust that American markets garner when you affiliate with NASDAQ, IBM and Fiserv—we plan to take that regulatory discipline and spread it into the international markets with a focus on the quality of the assets listed on our exchanges. We're focused on international, and that puts our focus on international-quality digital assets. We've had the pleasure of working with companies in the Asia and PacRim regions as well as European regions, and it's certainly scalable to Australia and other international locations we are evaluating heavily. International is a huge part of our play; it could rival or trump our revenue from the United States.

Edward Woo, Analyst, Ascendiant Capital Markets

A lot of opportunities. Do you believe you have to make an acquisition internationally to help you expand? Or would you be able to grow it organically with the acquisitions that you have made over the past year?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

I think the acquisitions we made over the past year give us an American-made technology base and a base of customers that have international reach and influence that draws us overseas. From an acquisition standpoint, you're typically acquiring business entities for the purpose of booking business in geographies—domiciling an LLC there or having a presence to start to do business, particularly when you're working with governments. Those are the types of acquisitions I'm looking to make, which are largely financial in nature but small relative to the revenue they unlock. I'm looking for cash-accretive acquisitions that allow us to turn on revenue streams from international sources. Some of that's qualitative: you need to qualify to do business in particular regions, and we're meeting those qualifications carefully with a focus on regulatory partnerships to drive excellence around best practices. As we expand, we do so carefully with technology that's well protected and patented in these regions.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alfred Blake, a private investor.

Alfred Blake, Private Investor

Congratulations on a great quarter. I wanted to ask you a question about NYIAX. What was the financial framework on that merger or takeover, so to speak, if you're allowed to announce that?

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

I would point you to the press release issued this morning in terms of the financials related to the transaction. The deal is quite fresh—we finished it right at the last moment before this call. For the detail, it's best to refer to the documents that have been published. The NASDAQ financial framework breathes life into an international strategy of launching exchanges. We intend from Philadelphia to build a rival to Wall Street at One Commerce Center; we're building something very special in Philadelphia, and these will be the token exchanges. These token exchanges will take on the NASDAQ financial framework. We will run NYIAX, the New York Interactive Advertising Exchange, and that exchange through this transaction gives us control over our marketing interface and a marketing platform that's the future of how advertising will be bought and sold. We're going to prove out the NYIAX model and add the NYIAX NASDAQ infrastructure to our exchanges. The NYIAX transaction is highly accretive to our ability to own token exchange technology here in the United States.

Alfred Blake, Private Investor

Okay. I was just seeing if it was like a stock transaction or anything such as that was my question.

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

So again, the numbers will speak for themselves. The deal was carefully negotiated. I would tell you that the dollar amount that we traded per share in that transaction was $1.90 as the recognized stock price in that transaction, I believe. The overall approach was to recognize more value in our equity that we believe has not been fully reflected in the market.

Operator, Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to pass back to management for any closing remarks.

Nathaniel Bradley, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, everyone. It's a very exciting time for the company. I appreciate you joining us and the interest in our company. We are grateful and looking forward to the next steps together. Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Goodbye.