I’ve been where you are mate, you’re emotional and it’s understandable. The share price is dogshit, we’ve had very little news, and the mood is pretty ordinary.
Lets take a step back though and have a look at it with a different perspective.
Manipulation
There are plenty of sophisticated commercial traders looking to make a dollar. They don’t care how this dollar is made, they just look for opportunity and drive it has hard and as far as they can. This happened on the way up to $2.37, and it’s now happening on the way down. They dont care about fundamentals, progress, partners, whatever - they just look for weakness and they exploit it. This is happening right now in the form of shorting. The bottom is when they can push it down no more.
Team
Our team and BOD consists of some very experienced industry experts. Some with 20+ years in companies which we aspire to be like - I'm taking about ARM. Why would these people that know industry, that know the tech, leave these longstanding senior positions, to join a start-up unless it was something special? I had a chat with Antonio recently and I was astonished by his career and achievements. These people aren’t idiots and can easily smell a dud when its put in front of them… instead, they left their previous roles and joined us.
Technology
This has been validated time and time again. Socionext, Nasa, Mercedes, Renesas, Megachips – nobody denies that it works. We’ve seen the demos first hand – Akida is something special. Apparently too special as it caught many of our EAPs off guard, and they’re now having to hit the drawing boards to see how they can better use it. This was how it was explained to me by someone within the company at least anyway.
Patents
We have plenty of these and assuming SNN edge computing will take off how we expect it to, then I think were in a great position here. Sooner or later other organisations will start to bump into these, and they will be forced to adopt IP licences of some sort. Personally, I suspect this is the reason why Intel recently partnered up with us.
The Illusive EAP
Now one of two things is happening here:
1. The company is lying to us and the market – in which case the company is doomed. Now I can’t see why they would commit suicide like this, especially when we’ve seen revenue from the original participation fees, and they would have no need to if the tech was good (which it has proven to be); or
2. They are telling the truth – now let’s assume this is the case. We have been told that there are a dozen plus “household names” under NDA, and they are working with Brainchip engineers to implement Akida into their product (future offerings or otherwise). They’ve had a couple of years now and must be getting closer to concluding their engineering works. Again, take this with a pinch of salt as I’m just a stranger on the internet, but I have had conversations with a person who works in Brainchip on more than one occasion who has told me to my face, that nobody has dropped out of the EAP, and that these companies are taking longer than Brainchip had expected.
Partnerships
I have been known to be critical of these, and I’m the first to admit it. But the reality is that reputation damage is a massive risk for all organisations, and risk management is a field that I happen to work in. Before a company decides to get into bed with another, they would absolutely be doing their due diligence. The fact that Intel and Arm and partnered with us speaks volumes to this and in my eyes was a significant de-risking for us.
They are giving their customers access to our product, and in doing so are endorsing it – What would they do that? I think its because they see widescale future use cases and adoption and want to get their tax from it.
Last month I met with a good chunk of the Senior Team, and along with some others engaged and effectively vetted them for a good two hours. The next day I bought more shares. I may be a sucker that got talked around, but I believe that they had confidence in the company, the product, and each other. Despite Sean's terrible speech at the AGM, he seemed confident in their plan, and almost revoked himself in the “ASX Investor” interview the day prior. They truly believe that sales are coming – and they are the ones that know what's going on behind the NDA.
I’ll wrap this up now, but aside from nothing being announced, nothing has changed.
I see a company with a product, a great team, a plan, and commercial interest (I was told hundreds of NDAs exist). I see a company that has tight lips and doesn’t release information that may inadvertently affect these NDA potential customers. I also see a company that is being aggressively shorted.
Unless you’ve done the research here, you really wouldn’t think its anything special. But I remain hopeful that those who have will be rewarded when the cover starts being peeled off.