It was a day to forget for owners of one ASX stock on Friday.
After returning from a trading halt, its shares crashed as much as 71% before ultimately closing the session 64% lower at just 1 cent.
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Which ASX stock?
The stock that investors were selling off today was 4DS Memory Ltd (ASX: 4DS).
It is a semiconductor technology company aiming to bring high bandwidth, high endurance, persistent non-volatile memory to advanced CMOS process nodes.
The ASX stock's technology, which is known as Interface Switching ReRAM, features tuneable persistence and low energy per bit for today's most challenging compute intensive and AI processor applications.
While this all sounds very promising, it has failed thus far to deliver on its aims.
What happened?
According to an announcement this morning, following the conclusion of extensive analysis of its Sixth Platform Lot results with research and technology partners imec and HGST, the ASX stock's board has decided to initiate a strategic review of its technology pathway.
This review includes a pause in development activities and the disengagement of collaborations with imec and Infineon Technologies.
Explaining what went wrong, the ASX stock stated:
The last twelve (12) months have underscored both the promise and the challenges of pioneering a disruptive memory technology. The 4DS engineers worked extensively to understand the core switching mechanism and its scalability. However, recent results indicate that advancing further iterations to demonstrate the technology at 20nm would demand materially greater time and capital without certainty of achieving the performance benchmarks now demanded by global markets.
It also notes that trends are changing because of artificial intelligence and that Interface Switching ReRAM may not be the way forward. The company adds:
At the same time, the industry landscape is evolving rapidly, particularly with the acceleration of AI and datacentric computing. The clear market trend is toward high-bandwidth, high-endurance memory solutions, with DRAM currently fulfilling those requirements.
To remain competitive and to deliver value for shareholders, the Board believes it is in the best interests of the Company to disengage collaborations with imec and Infineon Technologies LLC pending the outcome of a strategic review to ensure that the Company continues to maximise the value of the Company's technology for its shareholders. To this end it has terminated its current agreement with Infineon Technologies LLC.
This may be a lesson also for shareholders of Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), which continue to bet big on its technology despite there being no sales traction over the last few years and intense competition from tech behemoths.
