BeammWave: a future telecom giant?

2025-04-29 13:44, Edited at: 2025-04-29 14:32

BeammWave is a Swedish deep tech company who has successfuly developed the next generation technology for wireless communications. Considering the multitute and maturity of their partnerships, as well as the multi-billion dollar size of their market, I think the current valuation of <200M SEK is a bargain.

Brief summary:

BeammWave (BEAMMW B) is a Swedish deep tech company led by some of the people behind the success of Bluetooth, and they have successfully developed the next generation technology for wireless communications. Current market cap is about 200M SEK, but the potential market is in the billions of USD.

Several of the biggest telecom companies in the world are currently evaluating their technology, aiming to implement it in a wide range future products. An announcement of a product deal with any one of these companies would be a massive catalyst for the share price, and they have predicted this to happen in 2025/2026.

Technological background:

So you know how 5G was going to be a complete game changer, promising to be like a WiFi away-from-home? Whatever happened with that? Almost nothing, that’s what happened. Why? Well, that’s a bit complicated, but let me just break it down in very basic terms:

1. The reason 5G was expected to be such a big upgrade was, in part, due to the expansion of the frequency range into what’s known as mmWave.
2. At these mmWave frequencies, signals can contain a lot more data, providing much higher speeds.
3. However, mmWave signals have an intrinsically worse range than lower frequencies. To counter this, you need to steer the signals towards the receivers/transceivers in order for the signals to arrive at the target (imagine a lantern vs. a flashlight). This steering is called beamforming.
4. You can do beamforming in two ways: analog or digital. The digital solution is objectively much better in every way, no one will question that, but there has been a lot of concerns about the cost/power efficiency and the complexity of this tech. So, when the 5G rollout was being planned, all the major players went for the easy, analog solution. The only problem is that it just doesn’t work, and this is one of the reasons the mmWave 5G hype just kind of died out.
5. The founders of BeammWave realized that the analog solution would fail long before it actually did, so they started to work on a cheap, effective digital solution viable for mass volume production.
6. Now, 10 years later, they have actually done it, and the implications are potentially massive.

BeammWave’s product:

• A 3x3mm, digital beamforming radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) coupled with software, optimized for high-volume production.
• It’s both better, cheaper and more energy-efficient than today’s analog alternatives.
• The goal is to replace the currently used antennas/RFICs in not only smartphones, but in radars/satellites/drones/IoTs/automotives/FWAs/base stations, etc.
• This means that BeammWave is not dependent on a single market and will never develop an end-consumer-product. Instead, their technology will be a small but vital part in a lot of different devices. Kind of like how Bluetooth RFICs are part of thousands of different devices.
• BeammWave is also currently selling an advanced developing platform (ADP1) along with prototype RFICs which allows customers to evaluate their technology and use it to build their own prototypes, incorporating BeammWaves technology into future commercial products.

BeammWave’s market:

• The market for their technology is just massive. For example, the estimated price is 1-2USD/chip and a typical smartphone would carry 6-10 chips. MobileExperts has projected that some 270 million units will be mmWave enabled by 2026, meaning that within 1 year the TAM would be in the 2.2-4.4bn USD range.
• Handsets are just one of BeammWave’s markets, so it actually becomes quite ridiculous when you start to crunch the numbers. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars if they manage to get even, let’s say, 15% of their TAM, and that is not considering how the mmWave market is expected to have a CAGR of 15-40% until 2030.
• Also worth noting is that they’re the only ones who have managed to do this. Really. As for now they don’t really have any competitors, and they have laid down a minefield of patents aiming to own the entire field of distributed digital beamforming.

BeammWave’s financials:

• They just completed a warrants issue. And had about 40m SEK in cash at the end of 2024, with the annual burn rate being around 20-30M SEK/year.
• Thus, they should be liquid enough to get through >1 full year without any additional revenue.
• However, they have made clear that they expect several more ADP1 customers short-term, will probably receive additional government grants and their stated plan is to have revenue-generating products hitting the market in 2025-2026.
• So far, they have never done any unwarranted hype-building or promised things they couldn’t keep, instead focusing on building long-term credibility, so I have no clear reason to doubt their words on this.

Current customers/partners:

BeammWave have stated that they are having discussions with pretty much every major player in the industry, having signed NDAs with all market leaders (think companies like Samsung, Qualcomm etc.). However, they have already made a number of partners/customers public:

• Molex: A leading electronics manufacturer, owned by Koch Industries. Supplier to loads of companies, including Apple. They purchased BeammWave’s ADP1 developing platform about a year ago and are actively building prototypes for commercialization. According to BeammWave’s CEO, everything is going “very well”, and any news of commercial products would be a major catalyst for BeammWave’s share price. The main focus of the project is to incorporate BeammWave’s tech into new FPGA systems, which is currently a 12bn USD market with an expected CAGR of 16.4% until 2029.
• Alpha Networks: A Taiwanese, global leader in the networking industry (>18bn TWD market cap, >4000 employees). The project with BeammWave was announced last fall, with the objective to study the creation of high-performance CPEs intended for FWA systems, also for complicated radio environments and extreme weather conditions. The global 5G FWA market size was valued at 29bn USD in 2023 and is projected to reach 150bn USD by 2028, at a CAGR of almost 40%.
• Anonymous Asian customer: Last year BeammWave announced that an anonymous global market leader (10bn USD turnover, >70 000 employees) had purchased their ADP1 platform. It is speculated that this customer is probably Murata, the Japanese electronic manufacturing giant (supplier to a lot of companies, including Qualcomm and Apple), and they are working to incorporate BeammWaves tech into smartphones.
• Saab: A Swedish defense company (10bn USD market cap, >21 000 employees) developing and manufacturing weapons systems, jet fighters, drones, radars etc. They are currently working with BeammWave to develop military products using commercial hardware, most likely focusing on drones and drone swarms (which is going to be a huge market).
• Additional companies: Apart from these, BeammWave is working on a number of government-funded projects together with a bunch of different companies (including Ericsson).
• GlobalFoundries: The 3rd largest foundry in the world, assisting BeammWave in the production of their prototype chips, and they are in the late stages of the large scale industrialization process. GlobalFoundries have supported BeammWave with this practically for free, which really says something about their belief in the technology.
• EIC: While not a company, the European Innovation Council is one of the biggest sources of funding and support for European companies. After a rigorous application process, they chose BeammWave as one of just 15 companies (from hundreds of applicants) to represent Europe at MWC2025, the world's biggest and most important industry event. To me, this endorsement really strenghtens my belief in the BeammWave, and the feasibility of their technology.

BeammWave’s people:

The company is founded—and still run by—engineers. There is not one professional finance-bro-hustler in sight, only these old grandpas (literally) with more than a century of combined experience working at the biggest telecom companies in the world. For example:

• CEO: Stefan Svedberg, an electrical engineer who at Ericsson had a driving role in the development and global success of Bluetooth. Was also responsible for several Ericsson M&As.
• VP of Business and Sales: Robert Cadman, who was in part responsible for bringing the Bluetooth technology to the markets.
• Chief Systems Architect: Bengt Lindoff, one of the world’s most prolific inventors with +2000 patents in his name, who most recently had a top position at Huawei.
• Chairman of the board: Fredrik Rosenqvist, a civil engineer and the ex-CEO of Saab Ventures, who amongst other things facilitated the sale of C3 to Apple

I could go on, but you get the drill. Together, they not only carry an enormous respect within the industry—with far-reaching connections to the people at the very top of the big companies—but also an incredible know-how in just what it takes to successfully launch a new technology. Furthermore, the inside ownership is substantial, with the management having taken part in every share issue and have frequently bought additional shares ATM.

Risks:

I can talk about the company for as long as I want, but in the end it’s somewhat of a gamble, and there’s obviously a few risks.

• Patent disputes: It’s a cut-throat industry where patent disputes are quite common. If the big players just decide to bully BeammWave and steal their lunch money (aka patents), they’re probably in big trouble. However, considering the NDAs signees and the ADP1 sales, as well as the experienced company management, I would say they have reduced the risk of that happening as much as they possibly can.
• Their technology turns out to suck: Since I’m not an expert in this field I put a lot of trust in the company management whom I believe are very down-to-earth and competent, with a documented history of success. Also, considering the amount (and quality) of customers/partners they have already attracted, I find it unlikely that the technology is shit. But who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Final note:

I think it’s extremely rare to see a small start-up company having such an incredibly experienced, well-connected and competent leadership. This, coupled with their unique technology, the lack of competitors and the absolutely massive market for it, makes me think it’s a near-perfect case if you want to bet your money on a start-up.