bottleneckScore 55/100Watch
Cover pivoted to custom silicon cutting weapon-detection cost 90%, but faces ~1yr fab lead times at a European foundry
“I found a way to do everything very cheaply in silicon and chips and reduced the price by like 90%... the fabrication times for designing our own chips and getting them out took about a year... We had a special fabricator in Europe that had to go make them and it took about a year.”
Why it matters
A 90% cost reduction via custom ASICs makes wide-scale K-12 weapons-scanning deployment economically feasible, but fab lead times (~1 year, another 6 months for second batch) gate the rollout timeline.
Investment implication
Relevant for custom silicon/ASIC design and foundry capacity (TSMC, European specialty fabs); signals potential disruption to legacy security screening incumbents (e.g., Evolv Technology) once cost curve hits.