Business Description

AXT is a worldwide materials science company that develops and produces high-performance compound and single element semiconductor substrates, also known as wafers. Two of our consolidated subsidiaries produce and sell certain raw materials some of which are used in our substrate manufacturing process and some of which are sold to other companies. Our substrate wafers are used when a typical silicon substrate wafer cannot meet the performance requirements of a semiconductor or optoelectronic device. The dominant substrates used in producing semiconductor chips and other electronic circuits are made from silicon. However, certain chips may become too hot or perform their function too slowly if silicon is used as the base material. In addition, optoelectronic applications, such as LED lighting and chip-based lasers, do not use silicon substrates because they require a waveform frequency that cannot be achieved using silicon. Alternative or specialty materials are used to replace silicon as the preferred base in these situations. Our wafers provide such alternative or specialty materials. We do not design or manufacture the chips. We add value by researching, developing and producing the specialty material wafers. We have two product lines: specialty material substrates and raw materials integral to these substrates. Our compound substrates combine indium with phosphorous (indium phosphide: InP) or gallium with arsenic (gallium arsenide: GaAs). Our single element substrates are made from germanium (Ge). InP is a high-performance semiconductor wafer substrate used in broadband and fiber optic applications, 5G infrastructure and data center connectivity. Data centers use InP devices for high-speed optical data transmission. We believe the growth of AI applications is increasing the need for high-speed data transfer, which may enable a growing increase in InP substrate demand for such data centers. Currently, InP substrates are being used in certain consumer products, including proximity sensors and other sensors in mobile devices. Semi-insulating GaAs substrates are used to create various high-speed microwave components, including power amplifier chips used in cell phones, satellite communications and broadcast television applications. Semi-conducting GaAs substrates are used to create opto-electronic products, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) that are used in a wide range of applications including automotive lighting, horticulture, signage, display, sensors and machine vision. Semi-conducting GaAs substrates are also used in making industrial lasers. GaAs wafers could also be used for making vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) for facial recognition. Ge substrates are used in applications such as solar cells for space and terrestrial photovoltaic applications. Our supply chain strategy includes several consolidated raw material companies. One of these consolidated companies produces pyrolytic boron nitride (pBN) crucibles used in the high temperature (typically in the range 500 C to 1,500 C) growth process of single crystal ingots, effusion rings when growing OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) tools, epitaxial layer growth in MOCVD (Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition) reactors and MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) reactors. We use these pBN crucibles in our own ingot growth processes and they are also sold in the open market to other companies. A second consolidated company converts raw gallium to purified gallium. We use purified gallium in producing our GaAs substrates and it is also sold in the open market to other companies for use in producing magnetic materials, high temperature thermometers, single crystal ingots, including gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, gallium antimonite and gallium phosphide ingots, and other materials and alloys. In addition to purified gallium, the second consolidated company also produces InP base material which we then use to grow single crystal ingots. Our substrate product group generated 67%, 68%, and 63% of our consolidated revenue and our raw materials product group generated 33%, 32%, and 37% for 2025, 2024, and 2023, respectively.…