I have followed the strange and uncertain path of BRN since 2015, through card patterns, Studio accelerators, and so forth, until the Akida idea emerged and we settled down to the main game. Peter and Anil have made something very close to magic and it needs to be presented with zing.
We Apple tragics remember the times when Steve Jobs would put up on screen the early Macintoshs, as primitive as Caxton’s printing, and call them “insanely clever”. We laughed with him, were enchanted and we bought. He was a magician, who carried his immense knowledge lightly.
The observation I would make of our US executive team is that they don’t quite convince. Where is the wit? Where is the joyous lightness of being that should go with this amazing achievement? When I heard Hehir’s first talk, after a couple of months into the job, I was underwhelmed - he seemed to miss the essential quality of the chip. Later he made a more comprehensive talk about the way ahead, but it could have been any Silicon Valley executive, in its earnest optimism. In the latest interview he looks pasty and unkempt and speaks without appealing vivacity.
Japan, with its constrained resources and consistent quality of elegant engineering, seems a better fit for Brainchip’s clever minimalism. The US is too large and clumsy, epitomised by the recent rush into ChatGPT, with its unsustainable need for power.
There are seriously high achieving people in the BRN team, bur where is our charming magician, lighting the way to the coming wonderland? Could Duy-loan Ley, beautiful, bright, carrying her deep knowledge lightly, be our advocate? Something in the current set-up is not working.
