Fact Finder
Top 20
Hi All
A little bit of historical context to start with:
Sean Hehir interview with Mark Kennis after 2022 AGM - extract below
Sean: But what I said yesterday at our AGM, I think is very, very true. We spent nine years building this amazing technology. It’s transformational in its capability and powerful, but we were not doing enough in our go-to-market motion. So, I started to build the go-to-market motion, and I laid about five or six steps.
One was clarifying the business model. That was very, very important. Chips or IP?
We clarified that it’s IP.
A really important step.
We do have chips available, boards and things like that, but the revenue streams of the company are gonna be IP.” - (note the admission by Sean Hehir here that they have PoC's available.)
This was six to seven months before Jens Paetau joined Branchip and so it could not have come as any surprise that when Chris Stevens recruited him to his position it must have been on the basis that he would be selling IP not chips.
In his response to the Hans Peter question he states “they do not realize most designs start with a chip for a PoC and later develop an ASIC.”
Apparently at his initial on the job training Chris Stevens failed to mention to him that Brainchip had available the AKD1000 proof of concept (PoC) chip and that AKD1500 was due to tape out within a short while and the AKD1500 proof of concept chips would be available mid year.
If anyone doubts that AKD1000 was a proof of concept chip all they need do is go back to 2020 and listen to one of the many interviews done by the then CEO Mr. Dinardo who on many occasions used this very term 'proof of concept' to describe AKD1000 and stated that it was required by those companies they were dealing with who were deciding whether to proceed with AKIDA and that this was entirely understandable given a company would need to invest 30, 40 or 50 million dollars to design and bring a product to market.
Though the CEO Mr. Dinardo had left by the time Jens Paetau arrived Rob Telson who worked closely with Mr. Dinardo along with Peter van der Made and Anil Mankar and many others also understood the importance of proof of concept chips.
Apparently as part of his own due diligence he missed the statement made by Sean Hehir his CEO that a proof of concept AKIDA 2.0 would likely be produced after the IP was publicly released. As we all know once you settle on the IP design you then have to have engineering work on the layout for the proof of concept chip so from IP to proof of concept chip in hand necessarily takes some time.
For those of you who follow such things the first release of the AKIDA 2.0 specs indicated that 'P' would have a capacity of 50 TOPS however after it was in the hands of the early access customers some further upgrades by way of adding extra nodes were made lifting 'P' to 131 TOPS. It might be thought sensible to not race in and produce a proof of concept chip until you have settled on the IP design but I will leave that to others better qualified to say.
He also appears to have missed the announcement that Brainchip and VVDN will be releasing an AKIDA EDGE Box at CES 2024 and advance orders will be taken thereafter. Sean Hehir CEO has not used the term proof of concept but has described it as something which Brainchip itself will use as a demonstrator with customers.
Clearly having been brought on by Chris Stevens there are lines between which on can read here that Jens Paetau's skill set and or personality may not have met the expectations of the new Vice President of Sales Steve Thorne and that he was likely given a heads up at Christmas drinks closing off the 2023 financial year in the USA that he did not form part of future planning. The fact that he was looking for a position between Christmas and New Year fits neatly with this scenario having immediately before Christmas been talking up his attendance for Brainchip at sensor tradeshows in 2024.
The fact that Jens Paetau has relied upon flawed facts to enhance his job prospects when asked why he was leaving Brainchip destroys his credibility in my opinion but whether he stays or goes is actually not for me to judge as an outsider but if he has been asked to move on by the new Vice President of Sales then his character as evidenced in these posts would not give me pause to doubt the correctness of that decision.
My opinion only DYOR
Fact Finder
A little bit of historical context to start with:
Sean Hehir interview with Mark Kennis after 2022 AGM - extract below
Sean: But what I said yesterday at our AGM, I think is very, very true. We spent nine years building this amazing technology. It’s transformational in its capability and powerful, but we were not doing enough in our go-to-market motion. So, I started to build the go-to-market motion, and I laid about five or six steps.
One was clarifying the business model. That was very, very important. Chips or IP?
We clarified that it’s IP.
A really important step.
We do have chips available, boards and things like that, but the revenue streams of the company are gonna be IP.” - (note the admission by Sean Hehir here that they have PoC's available.)
This was six to seven months before Jens Paetau joined Branchip and so it could not have come as any surprise that when Chris Stevens recruited him to his position it must have been on the basis that he would be selling IP not chips.
In his response to the Hans Peter question he states “they do not realize most designs start with a chip for a PoC and later develop an ASIC.”
Apparently at his initial on the job training Chris Stevens failed to mention to him that Brainchip had available the AKD1000 proof of concept (PoC) chip and that AKD1500 was due to tape out within a short while and the AKD1500 proof of concept chips would be available mid year.
If anyone doubts that AKD1000 was a proof of concept chip all they need do is go back to 2020 and listen to one of the many interviews done by the then CEO Mr. Dinardo who on many occasions used this very term 'proof of concept' to describe AKD1000 and stated that it was required by those companies they were dealing with who were deciding whether to proceed with AKIDA and that this was entirely understandable given a company would need to invest 30, 40 or 50 million dollars to design and bring a product to market.
Though the CEO Mr. Dinardo had left by the time Jens Paetau arrived Rob Telson who worked closely with Mr. Dinardo along with Peter van der Made and Anil Mankar and many others also understood the importance of proof of concept chips.
Apparently as part of his own due diligence he missed the statement made by Sean Hehir his CEO that a proof of concept AKIDA 2.0 would likely be produced after the IP was publicly released. As we all know once you settle on the IP design you then have to have engineering work on the layout for the proof of concept chip so from IP to proof of concept chip in hand necessarily takes some time.
For those of you who follow such things the first release of the AKIDA 2.0 specs indicated that 'P' would have a capacity of 50 TOPS however after it was in the hands of the early access customers some further upgrades by way of adding extra nodes were made lifting 'P' to 131 TOPS. It might be thought sensible to not race in and produce a proof of concept chip until you have settled on the IP design but I will leave that to others better qualified to say.
He also appears to have missed the announcement that Brainchip and VVDN will be releasing an AKIDA EDGE Box at CES 2024 and advance orders will be taken thereafter. Sean Hehir CEO has not used the term proof of concept but has described it as something which Brainchip itself will use as a demonstrator with customers.
Clearly having been brought on by Chris Stevens there are lines between which on can read here that Jens Paetau's skill set and or personality may not have met the expectations of the new Vice President of Sales Steve Thorne and that he was likely given a heads up at Christmas drinks closing off the 2023 financial year in the USA that he did not form part of future planning. The fact that he was looking for a position between Christmas and New Year fits neatly with this scenario having immediately before Christmas been talking up his attendance for Brainchip at sensor tradeshows in 2024.
The fact that Jens Paetau has relied upon flawed facts to enhance his job prospects when asked why he was leaving Brainchip destroys his credibility in my opinion but whether he stays or goes is actually not for me to judge as an outsider but if he has been asked to move on by the new Vice President of Sales then his character as evidenced in these posts would not give me pause to doubt the correctness of that decision.
My opinion only DYOR
Fact Finder
Last edited: