BRN Discussion Ongoing

Easytiger

Regular
FYI , Just to be clear, Re Sean and others, being able to purchase shares. At the recent Perth gathering , Sean acknowledged the difficulty of being allowed to purchase shares , since Black Out periods would be so extensive,as a result of their current privileged inside information.

Simples
Not sure how this stacks up with the company response to the ASX speeding ticket.
 
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MDhere

Regular
Ok when sorting out my emails I found a section where I had been trying to find a report from wevolver after I heard a brainchip podcast in late July / early Aug mention it but I could never get my hands on it as I assumed it was only avail by subscription. Well bowl me over, today I was able to finally get my hands on it - Here is a snippet of it! -

2023 Edge AI Technology Report. Chapter X: Future of Edge AI​

What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence and Edge Computing?​

Event-based Processing & Learning: BrainChip’s Neuromorphic AI Solution​

BrainChip is one of the pioneers of bringing neuromorphic computing to the edge. While traditional neuromorphic approaches have used analog designs to mimic the neuron and synapse, BrainChip has taken a novel approach on three counts.
  • Firstly, their design is a fully digital design that is portable and reliable.
  • Secondly, not only do they support spiking neural nets, but they have applied event-based execution to traditional convolutional networks, thereby rendering neuromorphic computing mainstream today. This allows current CNN/RNN models to run much more efficiently and drives far more capable performance on extremely low-footprint, low-power devices at the sensor.
  • Thirdly, delivering on-device learning allows for personalization, customization, and other learning untethered from the cloud.
Brainchip’s Akida neural processor is offered as IP and is configurable from energy-harvesting applications at the sensor edge to high-performance yet power-efficient solutions at the network edge. It is sensor-agnostic and has been demonstrated on a variety of sensors.
As a self-managed neural processor that executes most networks completely in hardware without CPU intervention, it addresses key congestion and system bandwidth challenges in embedded SoCs while delivering highly efficient performance. With support for INT8 down to INT1 and skip connections, it handles most complex networks today, along with spiking neural nets.
This led NASA to select BrainChip’s first silicon platform in 2021 to demonstrate in-space autonomy and cognition in one of the most extreme power- and thermally-constrained applications. Similarly, Mercedes Benz demonstrated BrainChip in their EQXX concept vehicle that can go over 1000 km on a single charge.
In the latest generation, Brainchip has taken another big step of adding Temporal Event Based Neural Nets (TENNs) and complementary separable 3D convolutions that speed up some complex time-series data applications by 500x while radically reducing model size and footprint, but without compromising accuracy. This enables a new class of compact, cost-effective devices to support high-res video object detection, security/surveillance, audio, health, and industrial applications.
While neuromorphic computing is still discussed as a future paradigm, BrainChip is already bringing this paradigm to market.
 
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Diogenese

Top 20
Not sure how this stacks up with the company response to the ASX speeding ticket.
Given the number of NDAs, it's difficult to imagine the blackout curtains being opened any time soon.
 
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Iseki

Regular

Just a gentle reminder that the supposed chip MCU by Renasas containing Akida is according to the provided press release supposed to be released to market December 23

It’s supposedly on 22nm architecture
Using RISC V technology to compete with Arm M85 offering if I’m not miss understanding it.
Can you please provide the link that asys "released to market"/
Cheers
 

manny100

Regular
I would think its pretty well certain there would be NDA's with various armed forces given the internet goes down when infrastructure us hit.
AKIDA avoids the journey to the cloud, private/secure/interference resistant, real time and requires little power.
 
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Gies

Regular

Nice article and a good mention of Brainchip.
And Chapman thanks for liking
 
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Know we've all see the recent video and transcript below for those that like a read through if not previously posted.


Catching up with Brainchip CEO, Sean Hehir

November 9, 2023
Brainchip, BRN

BrainChip (ASX:BRN) interview​

We caught up with Sean Hehir, CEO of BrainChip (ASX:BRN). Sean brought us up to speed on the 2nd generation Akida platform and the traction that has been getting recently. He also spoke about BRN’s capital structure and upcoming milestones that investors can look forward to.

Check out our recent investor webinar on BrainChip here!

Disclosure: Stocks Down Under/Pitt Street Research directors own BRN shares.


TRANSCRIPTION​


Marc: Hello. And welcome to Stocks Down Under. My name is Marc Kennis, I’m one of the co-founders. And today we’re joined by the CEO of BrainChip, Sean

Hehir. Morning Sean.

Sean: Morning, Marc.

Marc: We’ve spoken before about 18 months ago I think, about BrainChip obviously, but for people that don’t know BrainChip just talk us at a high level through what the company does.

Sean: Sure. What we do at BrainChip is we create intellectual property for people that are going to create custom chips that can do AI inference on the edge. When we say the edge that means outside the data center. And there’s a big movement in the industry to go away from everything in the data center to inference outside the data center.

So, things whether that’s automobiles, medical devices, hearing aids, things like that, industrial applications. So, we create intellectual property for people that want to build custom chips. Specifically, what we do, we have a way of doing this which is called neuromorphic. We’re the first company in the market to commercialize a neuromorphic approach.

Marc: And in terms of commercializing the technology, can you talk us through the model there? How does that work?

Sean: Sure. Our model is very simple like all licensing and IP companies. We sell a license originally, we charge some support in engineering for people who need help building their chips. And when the chips come off and are created we collect royalties. It’s a business model that over time creates a very attractive P&L.

Marc: And recently you announced the second generation of Akida, which is the actual product. Tell us how that’s different from the first generation and what it allows customers and prospects to do that they couldn’t do with the first generation.

Sean: Sure. I mean, it’s a wonderful question, something I could talk about all day. If you look at my comments I made at this last year’s AGM, Generation 1 as we call it the first release of IP is a world-class product. However, it’s very narrow in its functionality or very narrow in its use case.

So, we have some customers and prospects there. But when I talk about the pipeline later on the majority of [inaudible 00:02:04] interested in Generation 2 and why. Some of the things we did in Generation 2 were at the customer request meaning, “We want certain things that you don’t do in there.” Specifically, a lot of the industry is on 8-bit support and we were on 4-bit support. So, now we do 8, 4 and 2. So, that’s a big thing.
Some customers just say, “Hey, my models are on 8-bit. I wanna keep them in 8-bit.” So we did that. We included long-range skip connections, which is something that the industry wants.

Marc: What’s a long-range skip connection?

Sean: What is a long-range skip connection?

Marc: Mm-hmm.

Sean: It’s a term when you talk about the ability to do certain things with models without getting overly technical. But it’s a very common way to do things and we needed to include that. We support PyTorch, ONNX, PyTorch. Most of the models in today’s world are created in two major frameworks, TensorFlow or PyTorch, and now we support ONNX, PyTorch, which is critical. So, if anybody has a model it’s easy to put it onto Akida.

So, those are the things that kind of we’ve said, “Okay, the market spoke to us, customers spoke to us, said, ‘Please include these functionalities.'” So we’ve done that. Secondly, then, we’ve included some breakthrough kind of algorithm called TENNS, which is the ability to do things with the element of time called spatio-temporal neural networks.

When you read some of the materials, the breakthroughs are incredible, the ability to do much more with less, lower power consumptions, less parameters, and outstanding performance. So, we’re seeing a lot of interest in the pipeline for TENNS. And we’ve also included something called an encoder for vision transformers. So, that’s a lot of things that people can do that they couldn’t do before.

Marc: And so, if we bring that down to what we can see in everyday products, for instance, everyday functionality, or bring it really down to, say, products, where will we see Akida in a couple of years and what type of products? And looking at those products what does Akida allow that particular product to do that wasn’t available before?

Sean: Sure. So, you know, typically when people engage with us they start with an idea in mind. They have a product and they want certain types of functionality. And they want some AI inference capability. And they want to do it outside the data center. They don’t wanna have a network connectivity. They don’t wanna have large power. So, they want to do something.

So, I can just talk about some of the customers and things that we talked to. We’re seeing interest for things in hearing aids such as denoising and clarification. We see things from customers and interest in industrial for IoT or vibration analysis to say, “Hey, here’s the signature for preventive maintenance.”

We’re seeing interest for wearables such as I’m wearing on my wrist right now. We see interest in automobiles and various parts of the automobile. So, we’re seeing a whole variety of things that people are interested in across a lot of verticals.

Marc: So, just as an example the hearing aid?

Sean: Yes.

Marc: Akida in that use case would basically filter out what is voice or what is noise and skip the noise and just bring out the voice of whoever you’re talking to?

Sean: That’s correct. At an incredibly low power, very efficient way, low number area in the piece of silicon.

Marc: And so, if you go back in your announcements one of them said, “We’ve announced the second generation but the customers’ prospects are waiting for the actual platform to be available.” So, in terms of engagement, in terms of attraction, what are you seeing now that is different from a couple of months ago?

Sean: If I look across our pipeline of all the engagements, about more than half…much more than half, probably three-quarters of it is all around Generation 2. So that tells me it’s something that people really, really wanted to have. So, the interest level is incredibly high in Generation 2. If you look at the analyst reports that we got when announced Generation 2, overwhelmingly favorable and very strong position in the market.

Marc: And how far along in your sales funnel would you say some of these prospects are? Because it’s one thing to be interested and a second to look at it and start testing with it, but at the end of the day, of course, you want revenues out of that. So, can you shed some light on the sales funnel for some of these groups?

Sean: Sure. So, these are very serious engagements. These are engagements for customers that have timelines to create product. So, they’re not just saying, “Hey, show me this, and let’s figure out if there’s something to do.” Many of these customers have real projects to say, “I have a date somewhere out in the future to get something done with a timeline. We’re gonna create an evaluation. We’ve got budget to do that.” So, they’re very serious engagements.

And then when we engage, it takes a fair amount of time, typically it starts with a customer sharing their models with us. We’ll run some models and share the performance data with them and say, “Here’s what you can expect from us.” And so we do it that way. In addition, then we might turn over a board or a system and let them run themselves.

So, they take a fair amount of time, but we’re deep in several, several engagements. Again, what I wanna point out is, these aren’t just explorations, they’re projects where people have defined budgets and defined timelines.

Marc: And so, you don’t do that unless you’re very serious about actually implementing that.

Sean: Yeah, because it’s going to take a fair amount of resources on their half, too, right? They’re gonna have to dedicate some technical resources to do these evals.

Marc: And if you could sort of segment the interest from all these groups into industries, which one would you say, which industry would you say is sort of dominant among your prospects?

Sean: I think it’s relatively distributed. And it’s along the ways I’ve just talked about, a fair amount in wearables, a fair amount in hearing aid, a fair amount in industrial, and a fair amount in automobiles.

Marc: In one of the initial deals, I think it was MegaChips that was probably two years ago, almost, that was one of the big ones in terms of the first license fees coming in, right?

Sean: Mm-hmm.

Marc: How has that progressed the MegaChips collaboration? And as a classical example of a license fee and royalty model, how far along is that one in terms of mass production, which means which would mean royalties for you guys?

Sean: Yeah, so, we don’t talk about the customer themself in their progress, right? You know, it’s their business. Now, we work with MegaChips. We are in constant contact with MegaChips. We support MegaChips. But I really can’t comment on where they are in their revenue streams right now.

Marc: But it’s fair to say that sort of in general, when you’re looking at companies like this, they pay you a license fee, maybe more at a high level, and what sort of delay is there between getting that first revenue in from licenses and actual sort of royalties from mass production?

Sean: It certainly takes time. So, when somebody is gonna build a custom chip, it takes a fair amount of time. And typically, IP selection is pretty early in as part of that process. So, once they decide to buy their IP, then they’re gonna have to go ahead and complete the design of their chip.

And that takes anywhere from 6 to 12 months. And at that point, then, of course, when the chip comes back, they’re gonna do some tests, QA, and then eventually it goes into their end product, and then it goes out to market. So, it could be well over a year, two years at times.

Marc: If we change focus a little bit to the balance sheet. So, I noticed you’ve got about 17 million in cash. You’re burning roughly at four quarter. Can you remind us of the deal or the structure of the deal with LDA Capital for your funding purposes?

Sean: Yeah, sure. But before I do, I wanna add one more thing if I could to the last comment. Because, you know, I’ve got a lot of questions on this trip that I’m on right now about a recent announcement we did on a commercial model. We announced something with a system in our grader called VVDN. And in that, VVDN is going to create an Edge box. An Edge box is gonna be very small in its form factor. It’s gonna include our chip, the Akida 1000 in that chip, in that box. The box will be used for all kinds of use cases.

Some of it could be for security, some could be for retail monitoring, and things like that. It’ll be sold predominant by VVDN. We will sell it as well. We’re not gonna sell in volume with our salespeople. We’re gonna put it up on our website for people who wanna buy it. So, people have asked me repeatedly, “Is that a change in our business model to a chip versus IP?”

The answer is no. We’re doing that for a couple of reasons. We really wanna just prove out more workloads into the market, right? And there’s been an ask from system integrators to do this. So, we’re gonna do this with VVDN, and we might do it with others right now. But it’s not a shift in our business model. So, I wanna be clear about that. We’re just gonna try this and get some workloads out there. So, you’ll see some revenue, but we’re not expecting to be big revenue off the hardware side.

Around LDA, your question about, “How does it really work?” It’s a very favorable and friendly way for us to do our fundraising. What we’ve done, we provide a certain number of shares to LDA. We specify a period of time that they can really start to market. We set a minimum price that they can’t sell below. And they take 8.5% for that service. All the details are in our financial filings if people wanna know more.

Marc: And so, going forward, you’ll still be using that structure or other sources of funding that you’re looking at?

Sean: You know, as a CEO and our CFO and our board, we’re evaluating all options for funding, and needs, quite frankly.

Marc: Sorry, and…

Sean: And the need, right?

Marc: And the need. Yeah, of course. Yeah. All right. Last question. What can investors look forward to in terms of sort of milestones in the next 12 months?

Sean: I think the next 12 months are critical for BrainChip, right, in a lot of ways. Now, when I came here two years ago, I think it was roughly two years this week, actually, the company was just really exiting its R&D phase. Now, we had just released a chip, but there was, you know, minimal sales, minimal salespeople.

We had minimal marketing presence. We had just realized, you know, our Generation 1 was narrow and focused. So, this last period of time, a lot of work went to creating Generation 2, which we believe is the product that the company is gonna be built on for the coming years.

We revamped our entire sales organization. We now have sales presence around the world. We have people in Korea, Japan, Israel, Europe, United States.

We’ve got a world-class marketing organization. So, we’re in that position now, where we’re now we talked a little bit about the pipeline as well. We’re in a very different position than two years ago. So, the next 12 months is critical. So, what can people expect from us? Certainly more partnership agreements.

That’s a critical part of our success. I made a comment at the AGM that we’re gonna accelerate our product development. So, look for more product announcements from us. And also look for announcements around engagement so we’re hopefully gonna be winning.

Marc: Exciting times then.

Sean: Very exciting times there.

Marc: Good stuff. Thank you very much, Sean.

Sean: Thank you, Marc.
 
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Perhaps

Regular
Dedicated to a rainy and cloudy Saturday. A DFD (Database For Detectives) containing Brainchip employees and associates. Well known management not added:

US:


France:


India:

Australia:

Germany:

Israel:
 
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Perhaps

Regular
Weekend lecture for dedicated fans. Akida pressed into neuromorphic lyrics:

1700312604616.png
 
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Frangipani

Regular
Zach Shelby’s Imagine 2023 Keynote (September 27) is now online… From around the 12 min mark, he reiterates that Edge Impulse is focusing on Digital Health and Industrial Productivity and talks about some of the customer use cases they are working on. No mention of Brainchip as far as I remember, except on that slide that was shared here before, but nevertheless an interesting presentation.


31A7D2E7-87CA-41EA-9DDF-B03074076871.jpeg




 
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Worth a listen and especially for me as it’s only a few minutes long


Definitely is worth a watch 👍


“To stay ahead, we’re going to create a new state of the art — just as America has before — leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains — which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire, and can be changed, updated or improved with substantially shorter lead times"


Just imagine "multiple thousands" (100's if they hope to outscale China?) of autonomous weaponry and all connected to something like Optus internet 🤔..

Or maybe they have "real" autonomous, genuine, ridgy didge Far Edge, in mind?..


Coincidentally, there's Northrup Grumman promotional material, sprinkled through the page of the article..

The World is going to become, a little more scary in the future..
 
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charles2

Regular
Given the number of NDAs, it's difficult to imagine the blackout curtains being opened any time soon.
Allow me to offer a different perspective.

All senior management is aware of inner company dealings, contract bids, new engagements, goals, budgetary issues and product developments.......and other goings-on that the company is sworn to secrecy....NDAs and the like, buyout and merger feelers, bond offerings and stock offerings

Balance that against the fact that we read about insider buys and sells frequently in other companies. All the time really. I believe there are newsletters that track these potential 'indicators'. So ask yourself how could an insider ever buy or sell in the open market if they know so much that is both positive and negative for that specific company.

Well there are rules...blackout (quiet) periods before and after earnings, pending announcements that an average investor would expect to alter the perceived value of the company (that you shouldn't be sharing with your brother-in-law broker).....ie things that you could be sent to jail for. You know...your product doesn't work, inklings of fraud, government auditors appearing unscheduled....you get the picture.

Well BRN.AX has rarely triggered any of these conditions outside of certain earnings blackouts and major announcements such as tape-outs or IP sales.

Insiders can buy and sell frequently regardless of what Sean MAY have led some shareholders to believe.

And insider buying shows great confidence in the company's prospects.

So management, let's pony up and demonstrate some confidence.
 
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Quiltman

Regular

This really is an excellent article, thanks for sharing. While it does not explicitly say BrainChip, we do know from the recent podcast (ie. all announced relationships are still active) that development with Mercedes- Benz continues ... and this does look very promising, fitting with all that we know.

A couple of extracts :

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius revealed the company’s vision for a future where every Mercedes-Benz car is equipped with a state-of-the-art “super assistant” powered by artificial intelligence. Set to be fully implemented by 2025, this cutting-edge technology aims to revolutionize the driving experience by making every journey more convenient and safe.

Expanding on the promising advancements in AI, Mercedes-Benz envisions a super assistant that goes beyond traditional in-car assistance systems. It will be capable of learning and adapting to individual driver preferences, offering a personalized experience like never before. By analyzing data collected from various sensors and cameras, the AI-powered assistant will enhance driver awareness, predict potential hazards, and provide real-time recommendations to enhance safety on the road.

Q: What is the “super assistant” announced by Mercedes-Benz?
A: The “super assistant” is a cutting-edge technology powered by artificial intelligence that will be equipped in every Mercedes-Benz car by 2025.

Key Terms and Jargon:

– Artificial Intelligence: In the context of the article, it refers to technology that enables computers or machines to mimic human intelligence and perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
 
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This really is an excellent article, thanks for sharing. While it does not explicitly say BrainChip, we do know from the recent podcast (ie. all announced relationships are still active) that development with Mercedes- Benz continues ... and this does look very promising, fitting with all that we know.

A couple of extracts :

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius revealed the company’s vision for a future where every Mercedes-Benz car is equipped with a state-of-the-art “super assistant” powered by artificial intelligence. Set to be fully implemented by 2025, this cutting-edge technology aims to revolutionize the driving experience by making every journey more convenient and safe.

Expanding on the promising advancements in AI, Mercedes-Benz envisions a super assistant that goes beyond traditional in-car assistance systems. It will be capable of learning and adapting to individual driver preferences, offering a personalized experience like never before. By analyzing data collected from various sensors and cameras, the AI-powered assistant will enhance driver awareness, predict potential hazards, and provide real-time recommendations to enhance safety on the road.

Q: What is the “super assistant” announced by Mercedes-Benz?
A: The “super assistant” is a cutting-edge technology powered by artificial intelligence that will be equipped in every Mercedes-Benz car by 2025.

Key Terms and Jargon:

– Artificial Intelligence: In the context of the article, it refers to technology that enables computers or machines to mimic human intelligence and perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Thanks for reposting and doing what I can’t be arsed to do lol
 
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IloveLamp

Top 20
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IloveLamp

Top 20
Great interview

Rene Haas / Jim Cramer

 
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