Weekly Reports | 10:00 AM
This week's In Brief highlights three good news stories from the week past.
- SCX.Ai targets rising demand for sovereign AI inference
- RocketDNA’s inflection point on accelerating autonomous drone usage
- Silex Systems’ offtake deal with Cameco
By Mark Woodruff
This week’s quote comes from American author, journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900–1978): “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
While US investors enjoy their time in the sun, those enduring a chillier period on the ASX might take heart from Borland, whose writings frequently drew inspiration from nature and the changing seasons.
SCX.Ai targets rising demand for sovereign AI inference
Canaccord Genuity describes SCX.Ai ((SCX)) --market cap $26m-- as the ASX’s only listed pure-play sovereign AI inference provider, offering Australian-hosted computing infrastructure for enterprises, technology companies and regulated organisations.
In AI circles, inference (which is expected to account for around 69% of global AI infrastructure spending by 2030) is referred to as the process of a trained AI model using what it has already learned to generate an answer, prediction or other output from new information.
Targeting the rising cost of AI usage increasingly confronting enterprises, SCX.Ai allows customers to redirect workloads to lower-cost Australian compute without rebuilding applications or routing data offshore.
Rather than developing front-end AI applications, Canaccord points out SCX.Ai provides the infrastructure layer sitting under AI tools such as Cursor and Copilot that companies already use.
Founded in 2025 and listed in August 2026 at 30c (now around 25c), the company commenced operations in March.
Impressively, management reported annual recurring revenue (ARR) by July of $6.5m, up from $5.4m in May, while paying customers increased to 49 from 13.
SCX.Ai owns hardware (supplied by US AI infrastructure company SambaNova Systems), as well as the software and customer-access layers that convert computing capacity into billable AI tokens.
The latter addresses the ‘AI bill shock’ problem increasingly faced by enterprises.
In layman’s terms, these tokens are the small units of text or data processed and generated by an AI model that are used to calculate what a customer pays.
It’s felt SCX.Ai’s exclusive SambaNova relationship provides differentiated, purpose-built AI chips and access to hosted open-weight models.
Canaccord believes the investment case for SCX.Ai hinges on its ability to replicate the expected profitability of its first computing node across subsequent deployments.
A “node” is essentially a deployment of SCX.Ai’s AI computing infrastructure. Its first node comprised 10 racks and cost around -$15m to install.
The broker forecasts the company’s first node could generate ARR of $17m-$18m once it reaches around 85% utilisation, with largely fixed costs supporting gross margins of around 80%.
Management has funded the second node from IPO proceeds. Canaccord forecasts four nodes by FY28 at total capex of around -$62m.
Revenue is forecast to grow at an 88% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $76m by FY30, when earnings (EBIT) are forecast at $21m and free cash flow (FCF) at $29m.
Beginning coverage with a Buy rating and an 80c target, Canaccord highlights structural growth in AI inference as the major industry tailwind.
Inflection point for RocketDNA
RocketDNA ((RKT)) --market cap $27m-- operates a managed-autonomy platform primarily servicing the mining industry, allowing customers to automate drone-based surveying, inspection and data collection.
Rather than simply selling drones, Research as a Service (RaaS) explains the company provides an integrated system spanning permanently installed drone infrastructure (an xBot system which captures data), remote operations, mission management and delivery of data into customers’ existing workflows.
Management estimates the Australian mining opportunity for its drones-as-infrastructure model at $302m annually across surface mining operations, tailings storage facilities and pipelines.
Beyond mining, management estimates annual addressable opportunities of $489m in utilities, $387m in oil and gas, $111m in agriculture and $33m in public safety.
Remote operating centres provide supervision, supported by regulatory approvals allowing Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions in Australia and Africa.
Fully disclosing a personal shareholding in RocketDNA, the analyst believes a commercial inflection point has been reached as mining customers increasingly replace existing processes with safer and more efficient autonomous workflows.
RaaS highlights RocketDNA’s “land-and-expand” strategy as particularly important, hence, RaaS sees considerable scope to expand within existing customers and into new industries.
Comparable drone, mining technology and software companies trade on enterprise value-to-revenue multiples ranging from 1.4x to 18.0x, while RocketDNA trades at 2.8x historical revenue and around 2.5x when annualising unaudited June-quarter revenue of $2.53m.
The business model revolves around revenue derived from xBot systems sold or leased to customers, managed drone operations and software, data and integration services.
The company’s xBot systems are permanently deployed at customer sites and provide the physical data-capture infrastructure.
SkyLink coordinates drone fleets and missions, while SiteTube manages access, delivery and integration of customer-controlled operational data. Both SkyLink and SiteTube are owned and developed by RocketDNA, rather than being third-party products.
Once an xBot is installed, management can increase revenue by adding missions, users, workflows and software services without necessarily installing additional hardware.
The company reported 24 deployed xBot systems undertaking 6,338 missions in June 2026, up 45% quarter-on-quarter, while monthly active users (MAU) increased 127% to 1,067.
RaaS does not ascribe a rating to stocks. No target is provided at this stage either with RocketDNA currently on the ‘RaaS Watchlist’.
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