A common theme in the technology industry is disruption. A better chip supplants an older model or a more effective vaccine makes another obsolete. Then some companies soar while others file Chapter 11. At Breakthrough Tech Profits part of our mission is to keenly watch and wait for such disruptions to make you money and guard you from losses.

Disruption is one reason the tech sector can keep rising while the rest of the market waffles along. A disruption doesn’t have to be revolutionary to generate massive profits. In this issue we suggest several companies profiting from low-profile disruptions.

Consider USA Technologies, which is revolutionizing an old, mundane business—vending machines. Getting a Snicker’s bar from a vending machine shouldn’t depend on having the correct change or perfectly crisp dollar bills that the machine won’t reject. And don’t you just hate when a machine eats your money but leaves you hungry? USA Technologies fixes those annoyances by turning machines cashless, as analyst Alex Pape explains. Consumers get a better experience and buy more, while businesses substitute processing clunky cash for an electronic payment that moves quickly to their bottom lines.

Another disruptor is nanotechnology, highlighted in a story by Ben Shepherd. We haven’t heard much from the nanotech sector in a while—remember a decade ago it was a major tech buzzword. One reason for that is nanotechnology didn’t spark as big a revolution as pundits predicted. But nanotechnology has worked its way into hundreds of products, so it’s been a quiet revolution.

The sector is about to undergo a disruptive change sparked by NVE Corp., which has a new spin on nanotech sensors. The sensors are used in several medical applications and will greatly increase the reliability of critical healthcare devices that, until now, have relied on less dependable components. And that’s just the beginning of NVE’s potential, as Ben explains.

You should also brace for a disruption in antennas. Millions of smartphones and other portable computing devices use antennas to stay connected to each other and the Internet. Today’s antennas need to broadcast more data faster in a variety of bandwidths. Devices don’t just need better antennas but more of them. That’s turning into a big and profitable business for a company called Airgain, as Joe Duarte writes.