SEALSQ Corp (LAES)

SEALSQ designs secure chips and sells the digital trust services built around them. Its secure microcontrollers store a device's identity and keys: the VaultIC secure elements for connected devices, secure chips built on ARM platforms, older smart card reader chips, and chips made specifically for Cisco, which it plans to replace gradually with its quantum-resistant chips. Around the chips it sells digital certificates from its INeS PKI platform, meaning the public key infrastructure that issues and manages those identities, and the INeS Box that loads identities into chips on the factory floor; since buying IC'Alps it also sells ASIC design, meaning custom chips built for one customer's product. In 2025 secure chips made up 78% of revenue, ASIC design 20% and certificates 2%; in 2024 chips were all of it. 23242526272829

How it operates

SEALSQ designs secure chips and sells the digital trust services built around them. Its secure microcontrollers store a device's identity and keys: the VaultIC secure elements for connected devices, secure chips built on ARM platforms, older smart card reader chips, and chips made specifically for Cisco, which it plans to replace gradually with its quantum-resistant chips. Around the chips it sells digital certificates from its INeS PKI platform, meaning the public key infrastructure that issues and manages those identities, and the INeS Box that loads identities into chips on the factory floor; since buying IC'Alps it also sells ASIC design, meaning custom chips built for one customer's product. In 2025 secure chips made up 78% of revenue, ASIC design 20% and certificates 2%; in 2024 chips were all of it. 23242526272829

It depends on a short list of buyers: its ten largest customers brought in 63% of 2025 revenue. Cisco is one of the largest, supplied since 2014 under a master purchase agreement that promises Cisco prices no higher than the lowest SEALSQ offers any customer buying the same or smaller volumes, and a share of supply in a shortage no less favorable than any other customer's. The filing also names Thales, Siemens, Toshiba and Landis & Gyr among the customers it serves, and Hirsh and AB Circle as buyers of its card reader chips. Most customers sign framework agreements with no committed volumes, because long-term contracts are not the industry's practice. 30313233343536

SEALSQ reports in US dollars. By customers' billing addresses, North America brought in 10.5 million dollars in 2025, 57.5% of revenue and up 39.8% on the year; Europe, the Middle East and Africa 4.4 million, 24.3%; Asia Pacific 3.2 million, 17.7%, nearly double the year before; and Latin America 94 thousand. The United States alone grew 22% to 9.1 million dollars, leaving out the new ASIC business. The filing singles out Japan, where it won designs with major air conditioning makers, and Taiwan, where it counts more than 25 active customer engagements, many interested in its post-quantum chips for laptops. 373839404142

SEALSQ is fabless, meaning it designs chips and pays others to make them: foundries fabricate its wafers and outsourced assembly and test houses package and test them. It works mainly with two leading foundries, unnamed, placing orders as it needs them without long-term contracts, and names UMC as a manufacturing partner for its new post-quantum chip. IC'Alps brought preferred partnerships with TSMC, X-FAB, ams-OSRAM, Intel Foundry and GlobalFoundries. Its personalization services, which load identities into chips, run from personalization and test centers in Europe and the United States. 434445464748

The specifics

SEALSQ grew out of WISeKey's semiconductor business. Its French operating company, SEALSQ France SAS, once called WISeKey Semiconductors, was founded in 2010 and bought by WISeKey in 2016 for 11.0 million dollars. SEALSQ Corp was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands on April 1, 2022 and is run from Cointrin, Switzerland. WISeKey handed 20% of SEALSQ's ordinary shares to its own shareholders on May 23, 2023, and the shares were listed on Nasdaq under LAES the next day. On August 4, 2025 it completed the purchase of IC'Alps, a French chip design company, after approval from France's economy ministry under the foreign investment rules. 49505152535455

Its bet is post-quantum cryptography, meaning encryption built to withstand future quantum computers. In November 2025 it launched the QS7001, which it calls the world's first commercially available secure chip with the NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms ML-KEM and ML-DSA built directly into the hardware, on a RISC-V processor core. The chip came out of the QUASAR project begun in 2022, and a trusted platform module version, QVault TPM, is scheduled for 2026. The company holds 88 patents and runs a Swiss-based root of trust, the master authority that vouches for the certificates it issues, accredited by WebTrust, Matter, GSMA and Wi-SUN; in November 2025 it launched a second one based in the United States. 5625575859

It names NXP, STMicroelectronics, Samsung, Microchip and Infineon as its chip competitors, and Thales, Digicert, Keyfactor, HID and Entrust in identity services, in a market where, by its count, fewer than 12 companies can design and certify secure chips at Common Criteria EAL5+ or higher, a demanding security certification. It concedes that Infineon, Microchip, NXP and STMicroelectronics developing secure elements of their own puts it at a significant competitive disadvantage, and presents itself as the one player covering everything from the root of trust to the chip, the certificates and the personalization. 606162

Since November 2024 SEALSQ has raised over 575 million dollars in cash, and it ended 2025 holding 417.7 million. Much of it goes into investments around its post-quantum strategy: a Quantum Fund whose allocation reached 200 million dollars by March 2026; stakes in ColibriTD, a French quantum computing service, and EeroQ, an American quantum chip designer; 10 million dollars in WISeSat, a satellite company owned by its parent WISeKey; a 31.9% stake in WeCan Group, a Swiss blockchain company; and Quantix Edge Security, a public and private joint venture in Murcia, Spain, backed by a 40 million euro investment. Its investment policy also allows it to hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, HBAR and WECAN tokens. 636465666768697071

What drives growth, line by line

Semiconductors. The larger segment brought in 14.7 million dollars, 80% of 2025 revenue, up from 11.0 million in 2024, on more sales of its established chips to existing customers. Revenue from the SCR200 smart card reader chip rose 47%, with bigger volumes at Hirsh and AB Circle, and the VIC405 and VIC408 secure elements sold more to smart meter makers such as Landis & Gyr and to users of the P25 radio standard. Trust services, the certificates and provisioning, grew 586% but were still only 2% of revenue, pulled by smart home devices built on the Matter standard. The segment's gross margin recovered to 37%, from 34% in 2024, when inventory costs were high and customers were drawing down their own stock. 72733574757677

ASIC. The new segment, the design work of IC'Alps, brought in 3.6 million dollars, 20% of revenue, in the five months after the purchase closed on August 4, 2025. Its quarterly revenue rose from 1.34 million dollars in the third quarter to 2.3 million in the fourth, after a slowdown in new design requests that the filing ties to lower research spending in the automotive industry. Because it sells design services with very few direct costs, its gross margin was 88%, which helped lift the company's overall gross margin to 47%, from 34% in 2024. 727879808182

Across the company, revenue rose 66.2% to 18.3 million dollars in 2025, after falling 63.5% in 2024 from 30.1 million in 2023; the filing says customers preparing for its next generation of chips were expected to hold back some volumes during the transition. Costs rose faster than sales: the operating loss widened to 39.8 million dollars, mainly because of share options granted to all staff, a non-cash charge of 11.2 million, and research and development spending rose to 12.5 million. 83848586

What comes next, in the company's own words: the QS7001 does not yet generate revenue and none is expected until the fourth quarter of 2026, with the first production revenues from its post-quantum chips anticipated in the latter part of 2026, and it expects the ASIC contribution to grow with a full year of IC'Alps in 2026. It puts the pipeline for the QS7001 and QVault TPM at over 60.0 million dollars for 2026 to 2028, a management estimate it says is subject to conversion risks. 87887889

The read's section on the people who run it is on the People tab.

What the desk infers Inferred

1. Inferred

   SEALSQ's secure chip business is most likely the former secure microcontroller business of INSIDE Secure, which is why its sales to Cisco, one of its largest customers, still run on a contract INSIDE Secure signed in 2014.

   Because

   • The master purchase agreement with Cisco that governs its sales is listed among its exhibits as an agreement between Cisco Systems International and INSIDE Secure, dated 2014. 9031
   • WISeKey bought SEALSQ France SAS, the French chip company at the heart of the group, in 2016. 50
   • The general manager of SEALSQ France and the head of research and development both came from INSIDE Secure. 96
   Confidence 70 of 100Wrong if A filing that traces SEALSQ France SAS and its chip lines to a seller other than INSIDE Secure, or shows the Cisco agreement came to it from another company.
2. Inferred

   One of the two unnamed foundries that make most of SEALSQ's chips is probably UMC.

   Because

   • The filing says it works with two leading foundries as its main chip fabrication partners, without naming them. 44
   • UMC is the one company it calls its manufacturing partner, in its list of the partners and future customers testing its new post-quantum chip. 46
   • The other foundries it names, TSMC, X-FAB, ams-OSRAM, Intel Foundry and GlobalFoundries, are preferred partnerships that came with the IC'Alps design house, not the supply of its own chip lines. 47
   Confidence 50 of 100Wrong if A filing that names SEALSQ's two main wafer suppliers without UMC among them.
3. Inferred

   Since 2025 SEALSQ has become the operating center of the WISeKey group rather than only its chip subsidiary: it now employs the management team and central functions and bills the parent for services, the reverse of the earlier arrangement.

   Because

   • Its administrative costs rose mainly because it recruited its own management team and central functions from January 2025; before, the parent provided them and recharged SEALSQ. 91
   • Its income from services to the WISeKey group rose from 0.2 million dollars in 2024 to 2.5 million in 2025, which the filing puts down to central functions moving to SEALSQ. 9293
   • Its chief executive, its chief financial officer and its company secretary hold the same roles at WISeKey. 1394
   Confidence 60 of 100Wrong if A later filing in which WISeKey again provides and recharges the central functions, or SEALSQ's service income from the WISeKey group falls away.
4. Inferred

   The fall in revenue from 30.1 million dollars in 2023 to 11.0 million in 2024 most likely came from existing customers pausing orders and using up their own stock ahead of the post-quantum generation, rather than from customers lost.

   Because

   • Revenue went from 30.1 million dollars in 2023 to 11.0 million in 2024, then back to 18.3 million in 2025. 83
   • The filing says customers preparing for the next generation of chips were expected to hold back volumes during the transition. 84
   • It says customers were using their existing stock in 2024 and that shipments to them resumed in 2025. 77
   • It credits the 2025 recovery to existing customers, and North America, its largest region, went from 7.5 million dollars in 2024 to 10.5 million. 7339
   Confidence 55 of 100Wrong if An annual report that attributes the 2024 decline mainly to the loss of named customers rather than to the product transition.