ACTELIS NETWORKS INC

Company Overview

Actelis Networks, Inc. (“we,” “the Company”, “Actelis”, “us”, “our”) is a market leader in cyber-hardened, rapid-deployment networking solutions for wide-area IoT applications including federal, state and local government, intelligent traffic systems (“ITS”), military, utility, rail, telecom and campus applications. Our unique portfolio of hybrid fiber, environmentally hardened aggregation switches, high density Ethernet devices, advanced management software and cyber-protection capabilities, unlocks the hidden value of essential networks, delivering safer connectivity for rapid, cost-effective deployment.

Our networking solutions use a combination of newly deployed fiber infrastructure and existing copper and coaxial lines which our patented technology can upgrade to Fiber-grade to jointly create what we believe to be a highly cost-effective, secure and quick-to-deploy network. Our patent protected hybrid fiber networking solutions deliver excellent communication over fiber to locations that may be easy to reach with new fiber. However, for locations that are difficult, or too costly to reach with fiber, we can upgrade existing copper lines to deliver cyber-hardened, high-speed connectivity without needing to replace the existing copper infrastructure with new fiber. We believe that such hybrid fiber-copper networking solution has distinct advantages in most real-life installations, while providing significant budget savings and accelerating deployment of modern IoT networks, as based on our experience, most IoT projects have challenging, hard to reach with fiber locations which may explode such projects’ timeline and budgets. We believe that our solutions can provide connectivity over either fiber or copper with speeds of up to multi-Gigabit communication, while supporting Fiber-grade reliability and quality.

A primary focus of ours is to provide our customers with a cyber-secure network solution. We currently offer Triple-Shield protection of data delivered with coding, scrambling and encryption of the network traffic. We also provide secure, encrypted access to our network management software, and are working to further enhance system-level and device-level software protection. We are also working to introduce additional capabilities for network-wide cyber protection software as an additional SW and license-based service.

When high speed, long reach, reliable and secure connectivity is required, network operators usually resort to using wireline communication over physical communication lines such as fiber, coax and copper, rather than wireless communication that is more limited in performance, reliability, reach and security. However, new fiber wireline infrastructure is costly to deploy, involves lengthy civil works to install, and, based on our internal calculations, often accounts for more than 50% of total cost of ownership (ToC) and time to deploy wide-area IoT projects.

Providing new fiber connectivity to hard-to-reach locations is especially costly and time-consuming, often requiring permits for boring, trenching, and right-of-way, sometimes done over many miles. Connecting such hard-to-reach locations may cause significant delays and budget overruns in IoT projects. Our solutions aim to solve these challenges by instantly enhancing performance of such existing copper and coax infrastructure to fiber-grade performance, through the use of advanced signal processing an unique, patented network architecture, without the need to run new fiber to hard-to-reach locations; thus, effectively accelerating deployment of many IoT projects, as we estimate, sometimes from many months to only days. The result for the network owner isa hybrid network that optimizes the use of both new Fiber (where available) as well as upgraded, fiber-grade copper and coax that is now modernized, digitized and cyber-hardened. This unique hybrid network approach is making IoT projects often significantly more affordable, fast to deploy and predictable to plan and budget.

In addition, our solutions can also provide power over existing copper and coax lines to remotely power up network elements and IoT components connected to them (like cameras, small cell and Wi-Fi base stations sensors etc.). Connecting power lines to millions of IoT locations can be costly and very time consuming as well (similar to data connectivity, for the same reason-need for civil works). By offering the ability to combine power delivery over the same existing copper and coax lines that we use for high-speed data, we believe our solutions are solving yet another important challenge in connecting hard-to-reach locations. We believe that combining communication and power over the same existing lines is particularly important to help connect many fifth generation, or 5G, small cells and Wi-Fi base stations, as high cost of connectivity and power is often slowing their deployment.

Since our inception, our business was focused on serving telecommunication service providers, also known as Telcos, to provide connectivity for enterprises and residential customers. Our products and solutions have been deployed with more than 100 telecommunication service providers worldwide, in enterprise, residential and mobile base station connectivity applications. In recent years, as we have further developed our technology and introduced additional products, we turned our focus on serving the wide-area IoT markets. Our operations are focused on our fast-growing IoT business, while maintaining our commitment to our existing Telco customers. In 2023, we introduced new product offering, some of which could serve both the IoT markets and our Telco customers.

We derive a growing portion of our revenue from our existing and new IoT customers. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, our IoT customers in the aggregate accounted for approximately 73% and 65% of our revenues, respectively.

We derive a significant portion of our revenue from a limited number of our customers. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, our top ten customers in the aggregate accounted for approximately 66% and 82% of our revenues.

We have incurred significant losses and negative cash flows from operations and as of December 31, 2023, we had an accumulated deficit of $39.7 million. We have funded our operations to date through equity financing and we had cash on hand (including short term bank deposits and restricted cash equivalents) of $2.4 million and long-term restricted cashand cash equivalentsand restricted bank deposits of $3.4 million as of December 31, 2023. We continue to invest in sales and marketing resources to fuel our growth.

To address many of the most difficult wide-area IoT connectivity challenges, we combine the benefits of fiber-optic infrastructure, where available, with the hidden potential in existing legacy copper/coax wires that already connect billions of locations and devices globally (often at low speed, experiencing interruptions and presenting poor information security, delivering mostly voice, or low speed control signals). However, these lines are readily available at no additional deployment cost and can reach, as we believe, most locations. Using our patented signal-processing software and hardware technology and system architecture, we can “upgrade” these lines, by deriving fiber-grade performance from them, and integrate them with new fiber installations, where available, to create a seamless end-to-end hybrid-fiber network, enabling fast, reliable, and safe fiber-grade connectivity that is rapid to deploy and highly cost effective.

Our technology is both powerful and compact and is built as a relatively small set of feature-rich network elements, that serve as building block in many IoT verticals. These elements include switches, typically enhanced with signal processing SW, concentrators, reach extenders, data encryption elements, power sources and a smart networking software that allows for remote management and monitoring down to the single element and line performance, configuration management making complex network topologies easy to deploy, analyze, debug and remote SW download to help with remote handling of large and small networks.

Our solutions can also provide remote power over the same existing copper lines to power up network elements and IoT components connected to them (like cameras and meters). Connecting power lines to millions of IoT locations can be costly and very time consuming (similar to data connectivity). By offering the ability to combine power delivery over the same copper lines used for high-speed data, we believe our solutions are solving yet another important challenge in connecting hard-to-reach locations. We believe that combining communication and power over the same existing lines is particularly important to help connect many fifth generation, or 5G, small cells and Wi-Fi base stations, as high cost of connectivity and power is often slowing their deployment.

Rapid Deployment and Lower Cost of Critical Connectivity for IoT

We aim to become the global leading provider of cyber-secure, cost-effective and quick-to-deploy hybrid networking for all wide-area IoT applications. Our products work over all types of wireline media on the global data network, whether owned or operated by telecom service providers or a private network operated by enterprises or government organizations. Our products are structured as building blocks for most IoT applications and are feature-rich. This allows for one Actelis platform to often replace multiple other platforms available in the market, allowing for space-saving installation, energy conservation (which we believe results in a greener network), and making network planning easier for our customers. We aim at having our products installed and help accelerate deployment of wire-area IoT projects and applications everywhere.

For example, in one of the projects where our solutions are deployed, we found that 70% of locations are easy-to-reach with new fiber optic installation. Connectivity for such easy-to-reach locations may, as we believe, average $26,000 per mile for new fiber laid on poles, and can take between days to weeks to connect. However, the remaining 30% of locations were hard-to-reach with new fiber optics, and accordingly may require boring or trenching to reach IoT sensors or camera locations. Getting fiber to those 30% of hard-to-reach would require potentially connecting over obstacles, roads, long distances, and may also require obtaining the right of way and permits for extensive civil works. We believe this aspect of the deployment of new fiber optics may cost up to $400,000 per mile, which for this particular project would have impacted thousands of miles of roads, resulting in enormous cost, delay and interruption to traffic.

In another project, we have been selected to provide networking for a major city that has fiber installed to 15% of its traffic junctions, however 85% of its junctions are connected to low performance copper lines susceptible for bad actors to tamper with. Upgrading the entire city’s infrastructure to Fiber would have involved major civil works, permit delays and traffic interruptions for months or years, with a cost that would greatly exceed city’s budget. Our hybrid fiber-copper network allowed for the city to use its 15% fiber deployment, upgrade instantly the performance of its existing 85% copper lines to fiber-grade and join the two under a comprehensive management and security software package from Actelis to create one seamless network, while providing major savings of both time and money.

In another project, we provided our hybrid networking connectivity solution with remote powering over the data lines to 3G and 4G base stations. Looking forward, we believe that a dense grid of 5G small cells would be required to enable global 5G coverage, which, may accelerate IoT deployment in many smart city projects and other dense areas. We believe that connecting and powering these 5G small cells to the network cost effectively and rapidly, in both hard-to-reach and easy-to-reach locations is key to successful and timely deployment for such network.

In 2022, we released our first product family of hardened, hybrid, encrypted fiber-copper product family with 10Gbps switching capacity.

In 2023, we introduced the next-generation product families for hybrid-fiber-copper (or in short “hybrid-fiber”) Gigabit grade connectivity under the product family name, “Gigaline” or GL. Under the Gigaline families of hybrid-fiber networking solutions for fiber, copper and coax environments, we solved new challenges faced by our IoT and telecom customers and expanded our offerings.

Cybersecurity

IoT networks are vulnerable to cyber-attacks as they often carry data related to critical processes and applications, such as provision of energy, water, gas and transportation services, to large populations. We believe that this data requires enhanced security within the network.

Our products all include cyber safety features that we are constantly developing. They currently include network traffic encryption and coding. We have developed and implemented a multi-layered “Triple Shield” technology that includes (i) information coding for resilience and security (for copper wires); (ii) multi-line information scrambling for increased resilience and added security (for copper wires); and (iii) an additional 256-bit hardware-based real-time encryption of data running over fiber, coax or copper — creating end-to-end protection for the entire hybrid network. Our network management software is also cyber-hardened and helps protect the system. Our systems have been selected for deployment in sensitive applications with U.S. DoD and other governments and military organizations, airports, utility companies, oil and gas companies, smart cities, rail and traffic applications globally.

We continue to invest in further strengthening our focus on cybersecurity capabilities and solutions for our customers. We have invested in software and hardware capabilities enhancing encryption of the data carried by our systems; we have introduced encrypted, cyber-hardened network management protocols; we have also introduced encryption of operating systems running on our devices. Furthermore, we successfully completed the certification of our product lines for Federal Intelligence Protocol Standards (FIPS) and were approved by the DoD’s Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) for interoperability and cybersecurity approved product list (APL) in 2024. We are exploring directions to provide software services to our customers that would allow them to flexibly safeguard their critical networks, and intelligently isolate and protect from bad actors attacking their networks. We refer to such objective as Cyber-Aware Networking.

Market Verticals We Address

We execute our vision through a multi-channel, global approach that combines our expertise, with the expertise of our trusted business partners, system integrators, distributors, and consultants.

We operate a vertical based marketing plan where we dedicate efforts and resources to each vertical. The IoT verticals that we have focused on include: (1) ITS; (4) rail; (2) federal and military; (3) airports; (5) energy and water; (6) smart city; (7) education campuses; and (8) industrial campuses. Our products are utilized within networks that have been deployed, for example by the City of Los Angeles, Highways England, Federal Aviation Administration, the US military, including Air Force and Navy, and Stanford University. Our customers benefit from rapidly and cost-effectively enabling their critical IoT functions such as traffic cameras and smart signaling, security cameras, smart parking meters and ticketing, rail signaling and control, electrical substation management and protection, military operations, and many more. To date, we have been most successful in selling to customers in the intelligent transportation systems, rail, federal and military, and airports markets, primarily in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan.

State of IoT Connectivity Market

IoT infrastructure connectivity demand is growing rapidly. We believe there is an urgent need to connect tens of millions of locations with a fast and secure connection. A huge challenge for IoT projects is that implementing connectivity between different IoT points in a network can consume the majority of a project’s cost and time to implement, including unpredictable and unanticipated challenges that arise in each individual project.

According to a report by Facts and Factors (January 2022) Global Internet of Things (IoT) market is expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2028, at a Compounded Average Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24.5%.

According to a report by Grand View Research (December 2022), the smart city market for connectivity infrastructure alone is expected to reach to $6,965.02 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 25.8%. Accordingly, we believe that the number of IoT applications requiring our fast, smart, and secure connectivity is immense and provides us with a great market opportunity to grow our business. From smart transportation systems (smart cameras, smart lights and signals, Vehicle to Everything, or V2X communication) and smart security (cameras and radars), to smart parking, smart rail, power station monitoring, and industrial and warehouse automation, we believe that we are uniquely positioned to address all of these applications in a versatile and flexible manner.

We believe that there is an unserved segment that is extremely large within that market pertaining to the challenges in protecting the interface between the physical security and the cybersecurity of campuses, enterprises, industrial IoT (IIoT), government facilities, Smart Cities and utility plants.

We believe that 5G mobile technology will play a major role in the implementation and scaling of IoT networks. According to research published by ABI Research in January 2021, 5G technology is expected to grow at a CAGR of 41.2% between 2021 and 2027 with a major part of that growth coming from servicing IoT networks. According to Grand View Research, the global small cell 5G network market size was valued at $999.43 million in 2021. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 72.7% between 2022-2030.

5G base stations and small cells need to be deployed in a dense grid of millions of locations and need to be connected to Gigabit speed communication and power. We are addressing these needs for the rapid connectivity and power, aiming at enabling faster and more cost-effective deployment of 5G in IoT.

Recent Developments

December 2023 Private Placement Offering

On December 17, 2023, we entered into a securities purchase agreement (the “Purchase Agreement”) with an accredited investor (the “Investor”), pursuant to which we agreed to issue and sell to the Investor in a private placement (the “Offering”) (i) 301,000 shares (the “Shares”) of common stock of the Company, $0.0001 par value (the “Common Stock”), (ii) 970,187 pre-funded warrants (the “Pre-Funded Warrants”) to purchase up to 970,187 shares of Common Stock and (iii) warrants to purchase up to 1,271,187 shares of Common Stock (“Common Warrants” and collectively with the Shares and the Common Warrants, the “Securities”) for a purchase price of $1.18 per share of Common Stock and related Common Warrant or $1.1799 per Pre-Funded Warrant and related Common Warrant, for a total aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $1.5 million. The Offering closed on December 20, 2023.

Nasdaq Listing Compliance

On August 25, 2023, we received a notification letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (the “Nasdaq Staff”) indicating that we are not in compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(b)(1) due to our failure to maintain a minimum of $2,500,000 in shareholders’ equity (the “Minimum Shareholders’ Equity Requirement”) or any alternatives to such requirement. In order to maintain our listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market, we submitted a plan of compliance addressing how we intended to regain compliance. We had until February 21, 2024 to evidence compliance with the Minimum Shareholders’ Equity Requirement. As of the date of this Annual Report, we have not provided such evidence. In the event that our shares of common stock would be subject to delisting, we intend to timely request a hearing before the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the “Panel”). Formore information about this risk, please see “Item 1.A – Risk Factors – Risks Related to Our Business Operations – Our shares of common stock could be delisted from the Nasdaq Capital Market if we fail to regain compliance with the Nasdaq’s stockholders’ equity continued listing standards. Our ability to publicly or privately sell equity securities and the liquidity of our shares of common stock could be adversely affected if we are delisted from the Nasdaq Capital Market”.

May 2023 Private Placement Offering

On May 4, 2023, we entered into a securities purchase agreement with an accredited investor (the “Investor”), pursuant to which we agreed to issue and sell to the Investor in a private placement (the “May 2023 Private Placement”) (i) 190,000 shares (the “Shares”) of Common Stock, (ii) 754,670 pre-funded warrants (the “Pre-Funded Warrants”) to purchase up to 754,670 shares of Common Stock and (iii) warrants to purchase up to 944,670 shares of Common Stock (“Common Warrants” and collectively with the Shares and the Common Warrants, the “Securities”) for a purchase price of $3.705 per share of Common Stock and related Common Warrant or $3.7049 per Pre-Funded Warrant and related Common Warrant, for a total aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $3.5 million. The Offering closed on May 8, 2023. The Common Warrants have an exercise price of $3.58 per share, are exercisable immediately upon issuance and expire five and one-half years following the issuance.

Our Solutions

We have invested nearly $100 million over the years to develop our patented, multi-layered “Triple Shield” technology, which can serve all connectivity markets. Our Triple Shield technology includes signal processing software that is implementing optimization of multi-line signal coordination, the elimination of interference to boost connectivity performance, the optimization of coding for resilience and security, multi-line data scrambling for low latency, increased resilience, and added security. Our solutions also offer implementation of 256-bit encryption of transmission for data running over fiber or copper for network-wide protection of data. Our technology is packaged into a small set of compact, hardened, feature-rich network elements (such as switches, concentrators and reach extenders) — the MetaLIGHT product family — that are used as building blocks addressing the needs of most wide-area IoT verticals and applications, in a space-and energy-saving fashion. The ability to drive remote powering and synchronization signals to network ends over existing copper transmission lines provides additional significant cost-and-time benefits to network operators.

In 2023, we introduced the next-generation product families for hybrid-fiber-copper (or in short “hybrid-fiber”) Gigabit grade connectivity under the product family name, “Gigaline” or GL. Under the Gigaline families of hybrid-fiber networking solutions for fiber, copper and coax environments, we solved new challenges faced by our IoT and telecm customers and expanded our offerings.

One such product line, the GL800 aims at extending multi-gigabit fiber-grade connectivity to buildings, enterprises, IoT installations, campuses, and 5G/4G base stations.

A second product line, the GL900, extends Gigabit connectivity from fiber installations outside buildings (“homes passed” by fiber) into individual offices and apartments within MDUs and MTUs, without the need for landlord investment in re-wiring buildings with fiber. MDU/MTU market in the US alone is estimated by the company to include more than 18M buildings.

A third product group, GL5000 and GL6000, that was introduced in 2023 includes over 40 variants of hardened, 10Gbps fiber switches to expand our fiber offering into the IoT market.

Our product offering includes our EMS network management software, providing built-in automation to help configure, manage, monitor, safeguard, install and maintain complex, hybrid networks of thousands of elements remotely. Our EMS management Software was enhanced to support these new products and strengthened with advanced security features to support better cyber production and meet DoD demands. Our products are also built for future integration with enhanced security services we may introduce in the future.

We aim to continue developing our technology to include more system-wide security and further hybridity across all types of infrastructure. We will also seek to include cutting-edge computing capabilities to serve all connectivity needs for our IoT customers, in an effective and easily deployable way, while maintaining our commitment to serve our existing Telco customers.

We believe that our strong reputation as a provider of high-quality solutions, and the trust we gain from being recognized as a solid solution provider by prominent customers (such as the U.S. DoD) help us execute our strategy.

Products

We also offer support and maintenance services together with the sales of our product. This includes consulting, telephone troubleshooting and remote support, training, product repairs, and software updates.

Product Specifications

Our products use advanced signal processing implemented at the system level, with an approach that treats multiple copper lines as one multi-line channel, which we believe to achieve the following benefits:

Supporting any hybrid combination of new Fiber infrastructure and existing copper and coax infrastructure, supporting data security an encryption protocols, certified for FIPS by US DoD labs; supporting outdoor hardened environmental requirements dense and compact to save space and allow for flexible location setting.

In addition to these main benefits, we have focused our efforts and implemented technologies in our products in order to achieve the following:

Since our inception, our business was focused on serving telecommunication service providers (Telecom), also known as Telcos, for enterprises and residential customers. Our products and solutions have been deployed with more than 100 telecommunication service providers worldwide, in enterprise, residential and mobile base station connectivity applications. In recent years, as we have further developed our technology and rolled out additional products, we turned our focus on serving the IoT markets. Our operations are focused on our fast-growing IoT business while maintaining our commitment to our existing Telecom customers.

Our Competitive Advantage

We have invested heavily and over more than 10 years in the development of copper technologies and hybrid-fiber communication systems to create a solution that enables high-speed communication over real-life networks of mixed media, securely, reliably, and with Gigabit-grade resilience.

Copper and coax lines are readily available in billions of locations. They are often buried in the ground, running in the walls of buildings or hanging from telephone poles, in bundles of tens or hundreds of wires.

Copper wires were never designed for long-reach, secure, high-speed communication. Attempts to deliver high-speed would encounter many problems, including signal attenuation, cross-talk interference from other lines in the Bundle and from any external electrical sources, variable quality and signal interruptions, and variable latency. Such wires are also relatively easy to tap into physically, and the information is also radiated outside of the cable and may be exposed to security threats.

In order to correct the issues with providing high speed communications over copper wiring, we developed technologies utilizing a multi-line approach, encoding, scrambling and processing the signals at system level (rather than at the single lines level), and finally also offering data encryption, to combat interference, electromagnetic noise, and issues with copper line quality and data security.

The next step was to integrate our existing technologies into hybrid-fiber building blocks, that provide seamless communication over mixed, real-life fiber-copper-coax networks, and many other advantages.

We believe our products offer a unique solution on the market in terms of value, by providing the following:

Rapid installation in hours vs. weeks or months if new infrastructure is needed

Military — grade, DoD certified FIPS cyber protection

We believe that the combination of these advantages provides our customers with a highly cost-effective solution to quickly obtain IoT connectivity anywhere in their network.

We believe that our hybrid-fiber solutions have a significant competitive advantage in several layers: (a) copper performance (speed, reach, link stability and data security); (b) seamless fiber-copper-coax integration and end-to-end data encryption; (c) overall system cyber-hardened design; (d) versatile, compact and feature-dense products with a good fit to the vast majority of applications; (e) very high product and transmission reliability; automatic configuration tools and advanced management of every element in the field; and (f) highly cost-effective when compared to alternatives. We believe that these advantages lead to very good value for our customers for both rapid deployment to all locations, regardless of whether these locations are hard to reach. We also believe that these characteristics provide us with a competitive advantage against many, if not all, companies in our space, such as Cisco, Rad, Nokia, Siemens, Belden and others.

We have hundreds of large, medium and small network operators as end users of our products, including municipalities, railway, airports, electricity, water infrastructure companies as well as other governmental agencies and military customers. We believe that we enjoy a strong reputation for offering reliable, high-performance and high-end products. We expect that the acceptance process for our new products for existing customers will become simpler due to customers positive accumulated experience working with us. We also have many non-exclusive third-party distributors, resellers and system integrators and partners around the world, located in the U.S., Canada, Philippines, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavian countries, Greece, Netherlands, Japan and India. These non-exclusive third-party distributors are used to selling our products, and we believe that they appreciate the reliability of our products and the quality of service and support that we provide. All of these advantages constitute an entry barrier, which we believe may make it more difficult for a competitor to reach a similar status.

We believe that over the past years, we have built a reputation for providing, according to our customers, reliable, high-quality communication solutions with better copper and hybrid fiber performance than other alternatives on the market. A competitor who wants to enter the market will have to compete with our reputation, which has been acquired over a long period by providing long-term quality service to hundreds of network operators and hundreds of thousands of end customers and IoT elements.

Our Sales and Marketing Strategy

We operate through two regions — Americas and International (consisting of EMEA, or Europe, Middle East and Africa, and APAC, or Asia Pacific) in a matrix with a vertical structure that is described below. Our sales and support teams are currently located in the United States, Mexico, Germany, Israel, and India. We also execute our sales and marketing plan through a multi-channel by vertical global approach that combines our expertise with the expertise of our trusted business partners. Our current business partners, as well as the partners we will seek in the future, are system integrators, distributors, contractors, resellers, and consultants. Our business partners are currently located in North America, Central America, Europe, India, Singapore, China, Australia, Vietnam and Japan. Once we identify a relevant business opportunity in a new territory, we seek to partner with local business partners or agents. We believe our strong brand name of high-quality communication solutions, as well as the credibility we gain with esteemed customers such as the U.S. DoD, enhances our ability to provide our products and services. For example, we achieved UL laboratories compliance with FIPS 140-2 cybersecurity standard required by the United States Department of Defence (DoD) and the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) labs approval of the Company’s products for cybersecurity and interoperability, putting the products in the DoD Approved Products List (APL).

We operate a vertical-based marketing plan where we dedicate tailored solutions and individual resources to each specific vertical. Our verticals include Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS), rail, smart city, Telecom, utilities, federal and military.

ITS

ITS include customers who manage road systems such as departments of traffic on either the municipality, county, state, or national level. The types of applications in this vertical that require communication include road cameras, lane management systems, and road signs.

Rail

Rail systems include customers who own and operate traditional inter-city rail lines as well as light rails. Some applications requiring communication in this vertical are central train control systems, rail signals, safety cameras and alert sensors, and rail station communication. We currently have projects within this vertical in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Federal and Military

Our current and future federal and military federal aviation authorities, US military, Air Force and Navy bases, and other government and military facilities. For example, during 2022, we were selected by Norseman Defense Technologies as an authorized sales partner to provide our solutions to all branches of the US Military and Government. The types of applications within this vertical that requiring communication include radars, perimeter security systems, energy systems, offices, laboratories and residences. We currently have projects within this vertical in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Airports

Airports include customers who are either a State or Federal airport agency, or a service provider to the airport industry. The types of applications within this vertical requiring communication are airport security, baggage management, and airport Wi-Fi. Since 2022, we are delivering to our airport integration customer, who is a worldwide market-leader in airport operation technology, with which we signed an agreement to provide our solutions to hundreds of airports in 39 countries.

Energy and Water

Energy and water include customers such as electric utilities, oil companies and water utilities. The types of applications within this vertical that require communication are sub-station monitoring, oil and gas pipeline and refineries, electric and water flow monitoring, and perimeter security. We have projects within this vertical in North America and Europe.

Smart City

We believe the goal of nearly any city worldwide is to become smarter and better serve its residents and visitors. Smart city customers include such municipalities. The types of applications in this vertical requiring communication include security cameras, parking management, energy and water management, waste management, digital signs, and provision of Wi-Fi connectivity. We currently have projects in more than 100 cities, mostly in North America and Europe.

Telco

Telco customers include communication service providers of both wired and wireless services (including 4G and 5G). The types of applications within this vertical requiring communication include enterprise offices, branch offices, residential buildings, educational facilities and back-haul for mobile base stations.

Channel and Territory coverage

The majority of our business is conducted indirectly through various types of business partners, namely system integrators, distributors, contractors, resellers and consultants. Nevertheless, our team often accompanies a channel partner during the selling process to help secure a deal with an end-user. We seek to cover the geographic territories in which we sell, in combination with the target verticals described above. In this effort, we take advantage of existing strong relationships with business partners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific and also seek to recruit new business partners that can help us expand our coverage.

In addition, we maintain a website (atwww.actelis.com) tailored to the IoT strategy and is expanding our marketing initiatives (professional organizations, shows, online targeting, online campaigns and lead generation) to grow our opportunity pipeline.

We operate through two main regional sales teams — Americas and International (consisting of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific)) in a vertical model similar to that which was described in our marketing strategy above and generates its pipeline of leads and opportunities through a combination of channel presence, on-line presence as well as direct touch. Our sales teams are very experienced in the target verticals and have significant competencies in the target networks of decision makers. We intend to invest in expanding this presence and strength.

Software and Services

Our products consist of hardware and an embedded software that function together to deliver the product’s essential functionality. Our products are sold with a two-year warranty for repairs or replacements of the product in the event of damage or failure during the term of the support period, which is accounted for as a standard warranty. Services relating to repair or replacement of hardware beyond the standard warranty period are offered under renewable, fee-based contracts and include telephone support, remote diagnostics, and access to on-site technical support personnel.

We also offer our customers our EMS management software, either as perpetual or term-based. EMS is optional and is being sold separately from our hardware products, and has been sold either as a per-element license, or as a license for a whole network.

Our customers may request added functions and features for their specific need which we can customize for an additional fee.

We also offer our customers product support services which include telephone support, remote diagnostics, and access to on-site technical support personnel. Such support service is sold as a standalone contract or in combination with EMS management software and is offered for a term, usually 12 months with a renewal option.

Additionally, our customers can purchase software support service which allow them to receive some additional features or free upgrades. Such support service is sold as a separate contract.

We offer service contracts at different levels (Silver, Gold, Platinum), which may include different levels of support (remotely or in the field), hardware repairs, spare parts, help with network design, and SW/HW upgrades. Such service contracts are sold separately from the sale of hardware products and may be sold combined with our EMS software licenses. It usually covers periods post the expiration of our warranty period and would be renewed on an annual basis. The cost of the service is derived from the size of the network, and the level of support required.

Competition

We compete in markets for networking and communications services and solutions for service providers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations worldwide. While our hybrid-fiber offerings are unique in our opinion, providing the highest value to network operators, our customer may still elect to implement their networks in other ways.

As such we compete with a number of companies in the markets we serve. Our key competitors include Moxa Technologies, FlexDSL Telecommunications AG, EtherWAN Systems, Inc. and Belden Inc.

We believe the following competitive attributes are necessary for our solutions to successfully compete in IoT and Telecom networking markets, and likewise we believe that we are providing leading products in all the categories below:

Rapid deployment/implementation

We believe that we compare favorably on the basis of the factors listed above. However, many of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical, and marketing resources; relationships with large vendor partners; larger global presence; larger customer bases; longer operating histories; greater brand recognition; and more established relationships in the industry than we do. Furthermore, new entrants not currently considered to be competitors may enter the market through acquisitions, partnerships, or strategic relationships. See “Item 1.A - Risk Factors — New competitors may enter the marketplace and begin to compete with the Company.”

Manufacturing, Procurement and Logistics

We take advantage of the combination of our inhouse skills and those of the third parties we partner with to execute our operational tasks which are planning and manufacturing finished goods inventory, planning and procuring raw materials and delivering products to our customers based on promised delivery schedules.

Our raw material consists of electronic chipsets, FPGA components, modems, and other electronic and mechanical components. Most of those components are procured by our contract manufacturers and we assist them as needed in specific cases. For example, since the breakout of COVID-19, as the world is experiencing shortages of electronic components, we have assisted our manufacturers in acquiring components that are harder to find. We also secure components as have been designated to be the close to end of life by their manufacturers to ensure adequate quantities of future product shipments.

Our products are assembled by various contract manufacturers, located in Israel and in Taiwan who possess the expertise of assembly and quality control required for electronic manufacturing in a turn-key fashion. Some of our products are manufactured to our specifications under an OEM arrangement. The company uses state-of-the-art logistics services from the best providers worldwide and also has in-house expertise in executing such required processes.

We believe that we can add and/or replace our contract manufacturer if necessary. We have successfully transitioned from one contract manufacturer to another in the past, and we believe that a transition would be achievable, if necessary, in the future typically within three to six months.

Warranty

Our products are generally sold with a standard warranty of two years for product defects, as well as technical center support with properly trained personnel, during normal business hours, to address incidents raised customers. Within the warranty agreement, we offer to repair or replace defective products, or software bug fixes. Upon expiration of the warranty period, the customer has an option to purchase an extended warranty contract for an additional fee, typically for one or more periods of 12 months.

Growth Strategy

Global Expansion and Recognition

We intend to leverage (a) the customers, partners, and representatives’ presence in over 30 countries including the Americas, Europe and Asia, (b) brand recognition developed over more than 10 years, and (c) the fact that our products are differentiated, as we believe, and offer unique value — to expand into virtually all IoT verticals, and become the vendor of choice for cyber-protected building blocks for all IoT networking globally.

In order to achieve the right level of global coverage, we continue to expand our network of partners and representatives, as well as reputable advisors, and aim increasingly at partnering with larger numbers of companies with global presence. These can be system-integrators, value-added resellers, contractors, distributors, and consultants. For example, in 2022, we selected Norseman Technologies to serve as a business partner integrator of our products to the Federal and military markets in the US through their acquisition contracts. Additionally, we signed up new business partners in Europe and Asia Pacific, such as in Singapore, China, Vietnam and Malaysia.

We are investing in growing our sales, channel management and support teams, and dedicate resources which specialize in specific verticals in each of the theaters. In July 2023, we hired a new SVP of Sales, Americas who is executing campaigns our sales strategy in the United States, Canada, Central and South America. We continued in 2023 to invest in marketing activities through social media, industry shows and conferences and other online means. We also are investing in lead-generation and management internally and through third-parties who specialize in this practice.

Expansion of Multi-year deals

Over the past years, we entered into several large multi-year contracts with ITS, military, airports, and more that will generate more predictable sales for the next several years. For example, since the IPO, we announced several new deals we won or started to deliver, such as the worldwide airport technology provider, a provider of energy services to a major European city in a major European country, the city of San Jose, California and Northern Ireland railways. We intend to expand this strategy by investing in sales and marketing presence to extend the length these contracts and add many others.

Expansion into Cybersecurity, Recurring Revenue Model

Cybersecurity is essential for IoT infrastructure. Such security must be addressed at the data traffic, switching, and network management level. Encryption is a fundamental building block to achieve the necessary protection, preferably at a low networking layer. Our products are already capable of delivering sensitive information for many critical IoT applications, and we are investing more in making this a strong differentiator, and to have our products recognized as the most cyber-safe IoT building blocks in the growing secure IoT communication market.

Beyond that, we are expanding our cyber-protection capabilities to provide protection not only of the data that is running in the system but also to help protect elements and devices connected to the network, especially in the interface between the physical and cybersecurity systems. We are referring to such objective as Cyber-Aware Networking.

Adding the 5G Connectivity for IoT

A dense grid of 5G small cells is required in order to build a global 5G coverage, which, as we believe, may be key to IoT deployment in many smart cities and other dense areas. We believe that connecting these 5G small cells to the network cost effectively and rapidly, in both hard-to-reach and easy-to-reach locations, as well as powering them cost-effectively is key to successful and timely deployment.

5G networks deployment is slowed down, as we believe, by the challenge to provide connectivity and power to millions of base station locations that are required for an effective 5G network.

Adding Edge Computing Capabilities

Once mass deployment of our IoT connectivity building blocks is achieved, we are planning to leverage our presence in the field to offer our customers the option to host and integrate various applications into our building blocks, many of which will be installed in critical information junctions for IoT networks. Such applications may include video analysis, data monitoring and extraction, firewalls and many others, and would enable our customers, as we believe, to develop recurring revenue models for them as well as for us.

Some examples for such applications that we have been evaluating are:

We began working on such capabilities in 2023, and expect applications to be released starting late 2024.

United States’ Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

In November 2021, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to invest approximately $1.2 trillion to significantly upgrade the United States’ infrastructure. Specifically, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law mandates investing the following amounts: $110 billion to rebuild many of America’s roads and bridges; $39 billion in public transit; $66 billion in high-speed rail; $108 billion to upgrade the nation’s electricity grid; $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water; $25 billion to modernize several US airports; $650 billion in previous authorized funding for roads including nearly $300 billion for the Highway Trust Fund; and $65 billion to ensure that every American has access to high-speed internet through deploying broadband infrastructure.

We believe that this significant increase in infrastructure spending by the United States Government will likely result in investments in our communication infrastructure solutions, as these spending initiatives are aimed at our targeted verticals.

Growth through Mergers and Acquisitions

We continue to evaluate potential growth through mergers and acquisitions opportunities in situations where we believe that a transaction will fill business gaps or add key business operations without requiring us to wait years for marketing and sales cycles to materialize. The resulting combination of our existing products and services, new key personnel, and strategic partnerships through M&A could provide new offerings to our existing market.

If we target businesses in the same sector or location, we hope to combine resources to reduce costs, eliminate duplicate facilities or departments and increase revenue. We believe this strategy will provide for accelerated growth and maximize investor returns.

Environmental

We are not aware of any environmental laws that have been enacted, nor are we aware of any such laws being contemplated for the future, that impact issues specific to our business.

Human Capital Resources

As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately 49 employees and contractors, of which 43 were full-time employees, including 19 in sales and marketing, 22 in research development, engineering, and operations and 8 in general and administration. We have approximately 34 employees and contractors in Israel, 11 in the U.S., 3 in Europe and 1 in Asia. Our U.S.-based employees are employed through a Professional Employer Organization, providing employee benefits and services.

We believe our culture and principles enable us to attract, retain, motivate and develop our workforce as well as drive employee engagement. We believe an engaged workforce leads to a more innovative and productive company that serves its customers better. Our employees work to ensure that our products and services connect and protect our customers critical infrastructure. A testament to that is the long-term retention of many of our employees and their loyalty to us. We measure each one through a goal setting and measurement system to maximize our enterprise value and employee career potential.

We support and strive for ethnic and gender diversity.

Legal Proceedings

From time to time, we may be involved in various claims and legal actions arising in the ordinary course of business. To the knowledge of our management, there are no legal proceedings currently pending against us which we believe would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial position, results of operations and, to the best of our knowledge, there are no such legal proceedings contemplated or threatened. Regardless of outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Government Regulation

Our products are required to be certified for safety and local standards in each country that we sell in as needed. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan our products are UL certified (safety), EN (emissions Regulation), VCCI (Japanese emissions standard), CISPR (European emission standard), ICES (Canadian radio frequency emissions standards), ETSI (European electromagnetic compatibility standard), CFR (US Federal Broadcasting Regulation), as well as IEC (European Safety Standard). We have also received the JITC (Joint Interoperability Test Command) certification of meeting certain cybersecurity standards required by the U.S. Department of Defense.

We are subject to numerous federal, state, provincial, local, and foreign laws and regulations relating to the storage, handling, emission, and discharge of materials into the environment, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; the Clean Water Act; the Clean Air Act; the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; and similar laws in the other countries in which we operate. While we believe that our existing environmental control procedures are adequate, we will continue to evaluate and update our procedures as needed to address new or changing aspects of environmental matters.

Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of trade secrets, patent, trademark and copyright laws in the United States, as well as intellectual property licenses and other contractual rights (including confidentiality procedures, contractual provisions, and non-disclosure and assignment-of-intellectual property agreements with our employees, independent contractors, consultants and companies with which we conduct business) to establish and protect our A.I. technology, intellectual property and proprietary rights, trade secrets, databases, and our brand.

We have registered Actelis Networks as a service trademark in the United States, and we are the registered holder of the domain name Actelis.com that includes “Actelis Networks, Inc.”. We also have 17 registered patents in the United States; 5 registered patents in Europe, 1 registered patent in Mexico, 1 registered patent in Indonesia, and 1 WIPO patent application, all of which in the general area of high-speed carrier class Ethernet service and transport over bonded VDSL2, G.SHDSL as well as Fiber covering various aspects of our technology. While we continue to consult with counsel on the advisability to seek patent protection of some of our algorithms, we rely heavily on trade secrets to protect our intellectual property around our technology.

Without accounting for any potential patent term adjustments or extensions or other forms of exclusivity with respect to our U.S. issued patents, 4 expire between 2024 and 2026, 5 expire between 2027 and 2030, and 8 expire between 2031 and 2038. Any patent issuing from the pending WIPO patent application will begin to expire in 2041. With respect to our European patents, 3 European patents are expected to expire between 2024 and 2026, and 2 European patent is expected to expire between 2027 and 2038. Our Mexican patent is expected to expire in 2026 and our Indonesian patent is expected to expire in 2028.

We continue to maintain our intellectual property and confidential business information in a number of ways. For instance, we have a policy of requiring all employees and consultants to execute confidentiality agreements upon the commencement of an employment or consulting relationship with us. Our employee agreements also require relevant employees to assign to us all rights to any inventions made or conceived during their employment with us in accordance with applicable law. In addition, we have a policy of requiring individuals and entities with which we discuss potential business relationships to sign non-disclosure agreements. Lastly, our agreements with clients include confidentiality and non-disclosure provisions.

Corporate Information

We were incorporated in Delaware in 1998. We completed our initial public offering on May 17, 2022 and our common stock is currently listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “ASNS.” Our principal executive offices are located at 4039 Clipper Court, Fremont, CA94538, and our telephone number is (510)-545-1040.

Available Information

Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). We are subject to the informational requirements of the Exchange Act and file or furnish reports, proxy statements, and other information with the SEC. Such reports and other information filed by us with the SEC are available free of charge on the SEC’s website atwww.sec.gov. or on our website at*https://actelis.com/*when such reports are available on the SEC’s website. We use our website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. The contents of the websites referred to above are not incorporated into this filing.