BRN Discussion Ongoing

[newpunta]

SEEMS to be lots of compensation/gift packages for Directors and ex- Directors ............... and I would support this if generated from company profits.
This does not look good and is not how business works from my understanding.
Workers are entitled to bonuses on the proviso the company generates profit .......... we cant even generate an income yet they think it's Christmas.
If we need more time to be a success so be it, I can be more patient - but watching this mob reward or attempting to reward themselves makes me sick when it is clearly not the right time to do this.

 

[GazDix]

This is a question I guess will get an email about later:

I was wondering if the company can look at using the 'non price sensitive' announcement section on the ASX by announcing how many companies are engaging in Brainchip's Akida and in what product areas / geographical location and industries? In this way, as shareholders we have an idea of how hard working the company is, but also without compromising partnerships we have.

I guess that this AGM made me aware that links we have found with companies who publicly announce how ‘great’ we are, will probably not end up as IP contract signatures seeing they may love our tech, but are unlikely to adopt it seeing they are singing our praises. Our dot joining with organisations that don't sing our praises are more likely to get through.

Also Viana reiterated that we are still in development/introduction stage. Many of us investors have to change our time horizons, although many of us here knew that a while ago.

Content with the AGM. I am glad there was humility shown with an undercurrent of optimism. Didn't agree with some questions. The guy who said he was a CEO and doesn't understand why we don't have revenue forecasts I thought was dealt well with by Sean. I would've lost my shit. This guy doesn't understand at all how tech companies operate.

Viana speaks well and is very likeable. I like how he explained why they don't announce partnerships. He explains concepts well.

I have felt really bored wth the company lately, but I know as an investor this is the time to buy if I had the funds.

But mostly I am happy that our CEO has seemed to have morphed into Christopher Walken but with a ponytail.
If he does the 'Weapon of Choice' Fatboy Slim dance, I will sell our unit to buy more shares.

 

[Slade]

Thank you to those shareholders who asked questions today. I thought they were very good questions and well articulated.

 

[Foxdog]

Responding to a grandchild who told me I was being unrealistic about Brainchip’s chances I asked her to think of the progression of the inflatable tyre. The concept of air acting as a spring inside an inflatable tube was a brilliant first move, but the process of developing the protective outer case was necessary, after which car manufacturers had to completely redesign their brakes, steering and suspension (the ecosystem) to take advantage of the newer, faster, smoother world.



As roads were made smoother speeds increased, requiring windscreens, lights and better tread patterns, etc.



Now the tyre is so brilliantly engineered that, for normal drivers, it is almost forgetters, but vital. To help her understand edge computing I instanced her father, driving hard around Phillip Island. Each tyre is a haptic sensor, feeding information to the neuromorphic computer inside the helmet, with its additional visual and auditory sensors. The helmet processor has to act as fast as possible (no time to refer to manuals), so no latency..



That is an analogy for Brainchip’s course. Akida 1 was the inflatable tube, Akida 1.5 had the next level of outer casing, and Akida 3 has the emerging tread patterns and side wall design, to enable real speed and grip. And so it will go on, with the neuromorphic system-on-a-chip remaining a fundamental component, so ubiquitous it will be overlooked, but vital to every application.



Despite the stumbles so far, I still think Brainchip has a great future. I have been in for many years, was able to participate in the legendary 6 cent capital raising, and hold firm. I see the arrival of Duy-Loan Le is perhaps the best corporate move in the last year.

With due respect, you can afford to be optimistic with a 700% odd gain in your investment. Others who may have invested on Sean's comments from the last AGM may not feel quite as chipper about BRN's prospects. DLL has done nothing notable, as yet, with regard to commercialization success.

 

[MadMayHam | 合氣道]

What? They're not showing us what's for lunch? How are we to assess the tablecloths?

Jokes aside, IMO not a very impressive AGM I must say (granted I did miss a part of Antonio's and Sean's speech as I'm at work).

The good;

1. There's visual confirmation that board seems to be on board with Sean's plan (can someone enlighten me what L-tip is? To me it sounds like a, erm, how do I put it... marital aid?)
2. There seems to be some aspects of the plan which have yet to materialise. Hopefully they will be executed well.

The bad;

1. Sean, despite his many years in the industry, doesn't present well. He's always looking down at his script and doesn't make much eye contact with his audience. I believe that as CEO of what is essentially still a (pre-revenue) startup, he should maybe attend courses on public speaking. Also, he doesn't seem to be able to empathise with the audience (which Antonio did well). There are studies that have shown that empathy makes a speaker more persuasive so this is why I think it's important. Also although Antonio had already led the discussion and recommendation of the first few resolutions, Sean still couldn't get the procedure right and handed the mic to Antonio before his part was done.
2. Again, the "NDA wall" seems to have blocked any meaningful answers to the most pressing questions. I feel that a ballpark figure could have been provided at least to assuage some of our concerns. For example, after explaining that everyone the Company deals with signs NDAs, Sean could have added that they were (for example) between 500-1000.
3. Still no full clarity on EH RSU issue. But what was discussed seems to support the theory I put forward which what 1 or 2 other posters also seem to have concluded in this forum.

Edit: Thanks @mrgds LTIP when typed out looks glaringly obvious, but when called "el tip" in speech was what I found confusing.

 

[Mccabe84]

Did they say the time frame on Akida 3000 as they’re talking it up already?

 

[mrgds]

What? They're not showing us what's for lunch? How are we to assess the tablecloths?

Jokes aside, IMO not a very impressive AGM I must say (granted I did miss a part of Antonio's and Sean's speech as I'm at work).

The good;

1. There's visual confirmation that board seems to be on board with Sean's plan (can someone enlighten me what L-tip is? To me it sounds like a, erm, how do I put it... marital aid?)
2. There seems to be some aspects of the plan which have yet to materialise. Hopefully they will be executed well.

The bad;

1. Sean, despite his many years in the industry, doesn't present well. He's always looking down at his script and doesn't make much eye contact with his audience. I believe that as CEO of what is essentially still a (pre-revenue) startup, he should maybe attend courses on public speaking. Also, he doesn't seem to be able to empathise with the audience (which Antonio did well). There are studies that have shown that empathy makes a speaker more persuasive so this is why I think it's important. Also although Antonio had already led the discussion and recommendation of the first few resolutions, Sean still couldn't get the procedure right and handed the mic to Antonio before his part was done.
2. Again, the "NDA wall" seems to have blocked any meaningful answers to the most pressing questions. I feel that a ballpark figure could have been provided at least to assuage some of our concerns. For example, after explaining that everyone the Company deals with signs NDAs, Sean could have added that they were (for example) between 500-1000.
3. Still no full clarity on EH RSU issue. But what was discussed seems to support the theory I put forward which what 1 or 2 other posters also seem to have concluded in this forum.

Ltip ......... Long Term Incentive Plan

 

[Cyw]

Did they say the time frame on Akida 3000 as they’re talking it up already?

Not directly but I think Sean did say that we can expect a new product every 12-18 months.

 

[FlipDollar]

What? They're not showing us what's for lunch? How are we to assess the tablecloths?

Jokes aside, IMO not a very impressive AGM I must say (granted I did miss a part of Antonio's and Sean's speech as I'm at work).

The good;

1. There's visual confirmation that board seems to be on board with Sean's plan (can someone enlighten me what L-tip is? To me it sounds like a, erm, how do I put it... marital aid?)
2. There seems to be some aspects of the plan which have yet to materialise. Hopefully they will be executed well.

The bad;

1. Sean, despite his many years in the industry, doesn't present well. He's always looking down at his script and doesn't make much eye contact with his audience. I believe that as CEO of what is essentially still a (pre-revenue) startup, he should maybe attend courses on public speaking. Also, he doesn't seem to be able to empathise with the audience (which Antonio did well). There are studies that have shown that empathy makes a speaker more persuasive so this is why I think it's important. Also although Antonio had already led the discussion and recommendation of the first few resolutions, Sean still couldn't get the procedure right and handed the mic to Antonio before his part was done.
2. Again, the "NDA wall" seems to have blocked any meaningful answers to the most pressing questions. I feel that a ballpark figure could have been provided at least to assuage some of our concerns. For example, after explaining that everyone the Company deals with signs NDAs, Sean could have added that they were (for example) between 500-1000.
3. Still no full clarity on EH RSU issue. But what was discussed seems to support the theory I put forward which what 1 or 2 other posters also seem to have concluded in this forum.

I initially wrote a longer post about my thoughts on Sean but have deleted it.

My revised comment is that I don’t rate Sean.

 

[Xhosa12345]

where's wilzys dumpster fire GIF, thats about all i can say.

I think they have kicked the can that far down the road, they lost it....

 

[suss]

Last year:

Over-hype, under perform.

This year:

Under-hype, over perform?

 

[Fullmoonfever]

Wasn't able to watch AGM...working.

So, had to rely on sneaky viewing of TSEx post updates.

This kinda sums up pre AGM to wading through comments as it happened.

 

[Dugnal]

For those not able to attend the AGM in person like myself, the Lumi online viewing and voting option has been excellent.
Should of issued them with some shares ._.

Yes agree...It worked very well, I was impressed.

 

[Dr E Brown]

I liked the complete honesty today. (As far as they can be)
There is recognition, at last, that the company was rudderless in terms of commercialisation previously. I think if you have been invested a long time and don't have rose tinted glasses that was obvious.
I am convinced by Antonio, I am not entirely convinced by Sean. He seems much more comfortable talking about the technology and ecosystems but the rest of the CEO's role, not so much.
Both Antonio and Sean clearly expressed their frustration at the current state of affairs. Both must have had their eyes opened leading upto last years AGM, but could not say it. It is also clear that whilst Akida 1.0 is good, we had not really engaged with prospective customers to see if that is what they wanted - hence another 6-9 month delay to a major uptake of the technology. Having said that, without Akida 1.0 we would not have known what we now know, so a small silver lining.
My thoughts are that if Megachips was in on the back end design, then they have customers who want the technology as designed, so once testing is complete, we may see some adoption from their customers, BUT, we wont know about it until revenue comes in.
The good news is that portability and scalability has been proven, so hopefully the timeline of 2 - 4 years to adopt the technology is now reduced and we should see more IP licences in the next 12 - 24 months.

I would love to hear our Director of Sales speak about the technology and what he is finding in the market place - it is his job to close the deal so to speak.
Overall, the company is a hold for me, for another 18 months, but with the expectation of more positive momentum, which will include more partnerships and some IP licences, with significant revenue to follow.

Clearly just my opinion. You should form your own.

 

[jk6199]

From todays AGM

Shorters 1 vs BRN 0

Every time I buy more while the shorters and lack of sales hold it down, the price still goes down more?

I’m starting to feel like Homer Simpson getting buzzed every time he tries to take the pie off the window shelf.

I’m a big BRN supporter but even I have my time limits for other private reasons. I was getting excited by the talk of the second half of this year. Now that seems early.

I’m sober, probably feel better tomorrow with a slight hangover.

Good luck to all!

 

[robsmark]

One comment that Sean made is playing my mind. Perhaps someone with better knowledge in this space can enlighten me... When asked if he knew of any devices currently on the market with Akida onboard, he responded, and I paraphrase, that he did not know and the company wasnt privy to this information from its customers? Did I mishear this? If so I call bullshit. How else would they know how many IP licenses have been sold and what royalties were due?

 

[skaggle]

From todays AGM

Shorters 1 vs BRN 0

Every time I buy more while the shorters and lack of sales hold it down, the price still goes down more?

I’m starting to feel like Homer Simpson getting buzzed every time he tries to take the pie off the window shelf.

I’m a big BRN supporter but even I have my time limits for other private reasons. I was getting excited by the talk of the second half of this year. Now that seems early.

I’m sober, probably feel better tomorrow with a slight hangover.

Good luck to all!

not much of a soccer person but I think its referred to as an own goal.

 

[Diogenese]

I liked the complete honesty today. (As far as they can be)
There is recognition, at last, that the company was rudderless in terms of commercialisation previously. I think if you have been invested a long time and don't have rose tinted glasses that was obvious.
I am convinced by Antonio, I am not entirely convinced by Sean. He seems much more comfortable talking about the technology and ecosystems but the rest of the CEO's role, not so much.
Both Antonio and Sean clearly expressed their frustration at the current state of affairs. Both must have had their eyes opened leading upto last years AGM, but could not say it. It is also clear that whilst Akida 1.0 is good, we had not really engaged with prospective customers to see if that is what they wanted - hence another 6-9 month delay to a major uptake of the technology. Having said that, without Akida 1.0 we would not have known what we now know, so a small silver lining.
My thoughts are that if Megachips was in on the back end design, then they have customers who want the technology as designed, so once testing is complete, we may see some adoption from their customers, BUT, we wont know about it until revenue comes in.
The good news is that portability and scalability has been proven, so hopefully the timeline of 2 - 4 years to adopt the technology is now reduced and we should see more IP licences in the next 12 - 24 months.

I would love to hear our Director of Sales speak about the technology and what he is finding in the market place - it is his job to close the deal so to speak.
Overall, the company is a hold for me, for another 18 months, but with the expectation of more positive momentum, which will include more partnerships and some IP licences, with significant revenue to follow.

Clearly just my opinion. You should form your own.

Hi Dr,

I'm think your comment that the company had not sufficiently engaged with customers can be viewed in the light that the Akda "engineering" version was distributed to EAPs and the design modified in response to feedback. As Sean said, Akida 1 had a limited field of application.

Akida 1 was produced starting in late 2021.

There was talk of LSTM, but then transformers, which only emerged in 2020, became more widely known after the commercial chip production. I haven't got a full understanding of transformers, but f\From what little I've been able to glean, I believe transformers are simpler and more efficient than LSTM. I don't know the details of Akida 2, but I understand that it is capable of performing time-based functions (speed, direction, speech, ...) on-chip, relieving the CPU of these tasks, hence further expediting the process.

And development is ongoing - we continue to work with customers to develop silicon which improves their products in a meaningful way.

So, from the meeting, we learned that in the real world Akida 1 was found to have a limited scope of application but is being incorporated in chips (Renesas, MegaChips), and, from the real world, we learned that the technological environment is not treading water, skipping from LSTMs to transformers in the blink of an eye.

The remarkable thing is that BrainChip has the agility to switch from Akida 1 to LSTM to transformer in such a short time.

This is a much harder journey then most of us, shareholders and company alike, anticipated, exacerbated by the global economic conditions and other factors.

There are major barriers to entry for the customers of IP licensing - licence fee and cost of designing and manufacturing chips. This excludes most smaller potential customers. They will need to obtain chips from MegaChips.

Otherwise we could monetize our model libraries, and possibly licence our Akida simulation software for commercial use.

 

[alwaysgreen]

Summary of the AGM:

We have an amazing product but we are struggling to sell it. We have no other information we can provide other than we hope that the generation of Akida will be successful. No promises!

We all knew Akida has struggled commercially based on the last few quarterlies so this is nothing new.

Now it's whether or not we as holders, have the nerve to hold on for the next 12 -18 months to see if Akida 2.0 will actually sell. If it struggles to sell as Akida first gen did, we don't have anything else to offer so it would be lights out for the company.

It's still a big gamble but high risk can come with large rewards. Decisions, decisions.

 

[Lex555]

One comment that Sean made is playing my mind. Perhaps someone with better knowledge in this space can enlighten me... When asked if he knew of any devices currently on the market with Akida onboard, he responded, and I paraphrase, that he did not know and the company wasnt privy to this information from its customers? Did I mishear this? If so I call bullshit. How else would they know how many IP licenses have been sold and what royalties were due?

From my understanding, he said they would know and due to NDA’s we’d find out about it in the financials.