Clifford wrote:  POET still appears to be a Research and Development enterprise, funded by the shareholders, with no apparent end in sight

I agree with the first part of your statement and I can only hope that they will continue to expand the applications and integrate new state of the art devices as they become available from industry. You have however totally ignored the fact that they have developed the advanced optical engines very quickly and are now in talks to license these products. And they did this on a very small budget. 

Let's make a couple of quick comparisons with a company that most here are familiar with.

Lightwave Logic operating expenses for 2023 was just over $21 million USD

We expect to continue to incur substantial research and development expense developing and commercializing our photonic devices, and electro-optic materials platform. These expenses will increase as a result of accelerated development effort to support commercialization of our non-linear optical polymer materials technology; to build photonic device prototypes; working with semiconductor foundries; hiring additional technical and support personnel; engaging senior technical advisors; pursuing other potential business opportunities and collaborations; customer testing and evaluation; and incurring related operating expenses.

Net loss was $21,038,032 and $17,230,480 for the year ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively, for an increase of $3,807,552 due primarily to increases in salary and bonus expense, non-cash stock option and RSA amortization…

We expect that we will incur approximately $1,830,000 of expenditures per month over the next 12 months.

So now on subject of compensation:

Michael Lebby

2023 - $1,346,381

 In 2021 he received a bonus of $2,629,600