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So what does it all mean. That's the question.
One of the guys that had his picture and name on the aiWare.com site just posted
Hi everyone - I am looking for a new role and would appreciate your support. Thank you in advance for any connections, advice, or opportunities you can offer. #OpenToWork
I will admit, that is the biggest wrench in my optimistic views.
Well we know they have near term plans to vastly improve balance sheet. And we know that they have to do something. So we'll see what happens.
Integration Partners
Looking to get more from your existing tech investments, check out Veritone’s workflow integrations with leading media partners like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dalet and Grabyo, for seamless integration of advanced monetization capabilities to extract even more value from your existing content investments.
Also lists Adobe down below.
https://view.ceros.com/veritone-us/nab-2024/p/1
And BTW Amazon just invested 2.75 bil in Anthropic. What happened to Veri. Can't even get 100 mil.
Just saw marketing brochure for NAB. Says has integrations yes integrations with Dalet, Grabyo and yes AWS. Yes it says AWS. So will say you may be right on that point.
VERI......................................https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=VERI&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p86431144783
have no idea why they put that site up in August in the first place. Still not visible via Google.
Well at least 1st update in over 4 months.
Took off all the people and faces listed in about section of aiWARE.com
https://aiware.com/about
Yeah it's always good to have my optimism tempered.
We are Ying and yang. Your the optimist and I'm the pessimist. And we eventually meet somewhere in the middle. Lol
I expect you to provide all the answers for me KVM. lol
HaHa IR is always useless for information, even for companies that have well established IR departments.
Why don't you pose these questions to investor relations if that still exists at Veri.
I'm sure they would love to explain that and why they don't update any of their websites.
Can still have DMH available for other cloud platforms.
But according to RS and according to AWS, AWS and Veritone partnering on AWS M&E monetization solutions. So remains to be seen how that takes shape. We will see if there is some type of integration, or whether it will simply be AWS including Veritone DMH solution as one option for customers. jmo
But again, if going it alone, why take aiWare off AWS, and why don't they have DMH on AWS marketplace.
Well never mention cloud providers like Google or IBM or Microsoft etc. All have their own Ai platform like AWS. So only way fits is if Veri applications like DMH is running on their platforms.
Another observation about AWS marketplace.
The only Veritone offering currently on AWS Marketplace is Veritone Investigate (DEMS)
We know that Veritone Investigate is basically Digital Media Hub for the private sector.
So why isn't Digital Media Hub on the AWS Marketplace?
Last year Amazon announced AWS for Media & Entertainment launched new Monetization solution area.
Here, you can see that AWS has mentioned Veritone as a partner for this initiative.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/aws-for-media-entertainment-launches-new-monetization-solution-area/
When AWS posted this on Linkedin, I remember Ryan commented that Veritone was contributing to a number of these solutions, and he rattled off several areas where Veritone is contributing.
So when it comes to monetization, that is what Veritone has Digital Media Hub for. It is used for licensing or monetizing content. Well, if AWS is going big into monetization, and Veritone is contributing, then maybe makes sense that Veritone is not going to go ahead to head with AWS with Digital Media Hub. Maybe they have an agreement with AWS to integrate DMH into AWS monetization capabilities, and that is why we don't see DMH on AWS Marketplace.
Speculation I know. But I think we learn more about all of this at NAB, 2 weeks away.
- those marketing positions came out talking about partner marketing alongside AWS and AWS partners.
- when they came out with Veritone IDEMS, it only mentioned AWS.
- the senior director of corporate development updates profile about GTM with AWS
So several pieces of information have alluded to an expanding relationship with AWS.
So the obvious question that I have is why remove aiWare from AWS marketplace? And why no mention of aiWare in the description for "Investigate" on AWS marketplace? I have my hunches (speculation)
And then yesterday, Ryan alluded to being cloud agnostic more than once I believe, indicating that aiWare or underlying capabilities remain available for other clouds.
But Grabyo, like Dalet, is an AWS partner.
I think it's a good sign to see these companies partner with Veritone. Dalet had a relationship with Veritone a long time ago, but then appeared to sever the relationship and I think tried to provide their own AI solution. Encouraging that they appear to have thrown in the towel and came back to Veritone for DMH capabilities.
And based on the job descriptions showing GTM with AWS and AWS partners, could be a lot of AWS partners coming on board.
OK that's what I was trying to find. Small potatoes
Think the annual revenue for Grabyo is under 20M
Veri lists another tech partner. "Grabyo". Appears to be a global co in M&E.
Believe me want to see Veri do well. I got crushed along with everyone else. Don't want hope and speculation. Want to see good revenue growth which up to now have failed miserably on especially with all the money pumped into them with debt and stock offerings.
Not saying Veri won't be successful. Just saying my point of view is factual and not speculative and has history to support.
Right, I addressed that discrepancy in my last post. The fact is, at the time of the debt restructuring, Veritone needed cash, because they just spent 52M in precious cash on Broadbean. So in order to get more cash, they had to reach an agreement with the convertible notes holders. And in working with the notes holders, Veritone has been able to buy back notes at a considerable discount. That has to be pointed out if we are going to mention the higher interest rate on new debt, and the 3M warrants.
But still, if Veritone becomes a successful company and the stock exceeds 36 per share, then there will be the same number of shares outstanding as there would be if Veritone had not done the debt restructuring.
Look at Soundhound again. They have doubled their shares outstanding since they went public.
Not really a wash. Old debt converts at 36 and change. New debt converts at 2 and change. About 100 mil difference. To me that's huge.
I know that handing out 3M in warrants at a 2.5 strike is a better deal for the lenders than the convertible notes being convertible at 36/sh.
But the fact is, the original convertible notes were convertible into 5.5M shares. Now, the remaining convertible notes are convertible into 2.5M shares, plus the 3M in warrants = 5.5M. So the debt restructuring did not increase the possible number of shares outstanding.
What about the millions of dollars in fees to do these transactions when strapped for cash. And insiders can't sell until they actually buy of course excluding RS and CS. If they sold stock would plummet so their hands are tied. Just saying.
"If so rosy where the hell were any insider buys from C suite or BOD when stock was approaching a $1 a share except for the RS purchase. As a matter of fact have been no insider purchases for years."
Ryan purchased over 550k shares at around 7 bucks in August and September 2022. That's only a year and a half ago. And he bought 50K shares back in November 23 for 2 bucks.
When RS purchased the 550k shares, he knew Veritone was going to switch strategy. He knew CS was going to step down, and he knew they would be spending a year or more on a new aiWare roadmap.
But you are right, no insider had taken advantage of the opportunity to acquire the shares when they were under 2 bucks.
But also, never any sales. RS and CS sold some shares a couple years ago strictly for tax purposes and that's it. And if you think that no insiders were buying the shares under 2 bucks because the outlook was gloomy, then why are we not seeing any insider sales now that the stock is rocketing?
Meanwhile, Soundhound insiders can't sell their shares fast enough. Lots of sales at Bigbear.AI. C3 insiders perpetually selling their shares, never buying.
"Things got so bad just a few short months ago that they had to make a usury loan at 14.5% in exchange for their 1.75% debt and had to give away almost 10% of the company."
That debt restructuring was an agreement between Veritone and the convertible note holders. Yes, they exchanged low interest rate debt with high interest rate debt, but if that is to be pointed out, then it is only fair to point out that Veritone has been able to retire a large percentage of the convertible debt at a significant discount. So yeah they are paying a higher interest rate on the new debt, but bought back debt at a discount. Yeah they gave out 3M in warrants, around 7.5% of the company, but that was in exchange for the exact same number of convertible shares that were retired, so it's a wash.
All indications to me is they are going this alone. Yes they have channel partners, but bigger partners like Microsoft and Deloitte and Oracle and Google have ditched them to leave them on their own. And yes even AWS to a lesser extent. AWS ditched them in a big way on recruitment and who knows what else. Granted they are hooked up in some way but until that is or if revealed I'll assume it is just another channel partner relationship. Right now Fed is a bright spot but until those contracts revealed we really won't know and Hiring could be a bright spot but don't really talk about it anymore. Still believe a $25 company at this point once get rid of ad agency and focus on Ai. But I have been personally optimistic for 10 years and have been lied to and BSed only to be let down. Only still in this because have taken such a beating and still believe just ME verticle can make them at least an average ai company and like I said should have value of at least 25 in today's ai craze. JMO
You guys paint a rosy picture and give to much credit to management based on past experience. If so rosy where the hell were any insider buys from C suite or BOD when stock was approaching a $1 a share except for the RS purchase. As a matter of fact have been no insider purchases for years. Where was any partner trying to make an investment in or outright purchase. Things got so bad just a few short months ago that they had to make a usury loan at 14.5% in exchange for their 1.75% debt and had to give away almost 10% of the company. That doesn't sound rosy to me.
I still believe they're positioned exactly where they want to be. They have not executed anything of value for the shareholders and have paid the price. The ultra conservative forecast will serve well now.. Any significant deal from the govt or other announcement that is confirmed by the partner should be the game changer we've been looking for a long time
We still don't even know what that strategic minority investment back in 2022 is all about, other than it concerns aiWare.
That's a good point about Chad Steelbergs new consulting terms. No longer developing, now just providing opinions and advising the CEO. So if some deal were to be centered around aiWARE or AI Solutions Group, the consulting arrangement is already established for whoever the CEO is.
aiWare can be applied to all industries. But Veritone focusing on ecosystem. Meanwhile, Veritone has partners that supposedly working on aiWare in industries outside of the ecosystem. If aiWare spun off into new entity, then better positioned to target all industries instead of just ecosystem. Also, such a deal could serve to provide the remaining Veritone both cost and revenue synergies, as they have alluded to for the second half of 2024. jmo
I'm persona nongrata as far as I know with the steelburgs and the Bantas. But as I've always stated Ryan or Chad are not liars no matter how much I accuse them of such.
I've heard some dialog from one of the Bantas after they bought 7-800K back on Dec 31st.
That coupled with the addition of Zillis on the BOD gives me greater hope than ever before.
If you include the poor condition of the BS they have to act quickly.
I also point to the payoff of the EVANGELIST on July 1st. Also must be a critical date.
Yes that's the way it sounds. Until they announce something we know nothing.
I reread that March 2024 linkedin profile update for the Sr. Director, Corporate & Business Development.
Expanded role to include corporate development responsibilities, business development (lead partner GTM with AWS), and GTM strategy development / execution for our AI Solutions Group
It was the GTM with AWS that initially got my attention, but didn't pay attention to the commas and the entire wording. He is saying that he has an expanded role to include corporate development responsibilities for AI Solutions Group. Maybe considering deals centering around AI Solutions Group.
Hey beni, welcome back. Have you heard anything on the underlying catalyst for the massive volume since the 13th.
Agree, huge potential with the Feds. Even moreso with HR solutions running on aiWare.
Hope upcoming Fed contracts are bigger than the 15 mil. And agree if could be a major player in Fed than should be at least a $25 stock today. BTW nice hearing from you.
I'm the last one to be a veritone cheerleader and have blown off Ryan multiple times
However Ryan is not the blow hard Chad is and given the years of resources to gain Fedramp status the best opportunities are there and further the company should be then valued as an Ai Co which it is not today. pre]n
Yes agree that was strange.
Interesting that he did not mention HR tech once today. And said "by far" what he is most excited about is public sector.
The whole problem with Veritone centering their entire business around aiWare was that it took 10 years for the market to finally get around to seeing the need for it. Corporate America was content to go with cheaper point solutions, and really did not embrace the concept of integrating all their business processes with AI until 2023.
So for 10 years, Veritone has basically been developing a platform that didn't have a whole lot of demand. Looks like 2024 the market is waking up to the concept of platforms that can accept more and more third party AI models and orchestrate them
Remains to be seen the extent to which companies like Amazon, Google, Snowflake etc can just develop their own versions of aiWare like capabilities rather than licensing from Veritone. But all the hints towards AWS are encouraging.
Veritone bought Broadbean last year which was a head scratcher at the time. They did this while Chad was apparently working on a new aiWare roadmap. I could see some arrangement where AWS helps Veritone scale its ecosystem verticals, while Veritone helps Amazon enhance Bedrock.
Today, Ryan emphasized the cloud agnositic nature of aiWare. So leads me to believe that Veritone has not sold its soul to AWS. Could be other business relationships being established. We know Linkedin, owned by Microsoft now calls Veritone Hire a preferred partner.
I just did not expect that we would be three months into the year and still not know the aiWare roadmap, aiWare developments over the year, or much about the fully integrated Veritone Hire. Still think we might learn something from the 10k. And still think there might be other underlying reasons for delaying it. Who knows.
So in 10 years Aiware went from an operating system with billions of end users with 1% of applications developed by Veri to a platform that orchestrates 100s of engines and models and applications I guess the majority of which developed by third parties to software with capabilities all developed by Veri or in partnership with Veri. I guess next step is Veri developed engines and models and applications running on 3rd party platforms like Bedrock etc.
VERI monster beating the market
Just my opinion, but I don't think Veritone's intention is to have aiWare compete with Bedrock.
"Veritone and its partnership with AWS offers customers hundreds of AI engines with capabilities including: transcription, translation, object recognition, OCR, face recognition, text sentiment, geolocation, visual moderation, audio fingerprinting, scene detection, speaker separation, orchestration, text to speech and more.
"
" Built on enterprise-grade architecture powered by AWS Commercial that is CJIS compliant"
In fact, they haven't been marketing aiWare as a standalone platform product since probably 2021 or early 2022.
And can even go way back to my conversation with Brian Alger when he said think of aiWare as a capability instead of a product.
While we have no idea if Amazon is or will license aiWare capabilities, it seems pretty clear that they are gearing up for a go to market partnership with AWS and AWS partners. aiWare capabilities might be just one aspect of a broader partnership involving go to market arrangements with AWS.
I don't know, but I don't consider aiWare to be a standalone platform product competing with the likes of Amazon Bedrock, Google VertiexAI, Snowflake Cortex, etc.
I think all of these other platforms are potential partners or customers where aiWare capabilities can be integrated into their platforms. jmo
Another thought. Once sell ad agency maybe they set themselves up for sale of rest of company.
So the way I sum it up is once they sell ad agency for 100 mil+ will be rid of most debt. Will be left with annual revenue of at least 80 mil. At 10x revenue and hopefully profitable should have 800 mil MC or $15
to $20 share price.
Thank you GBR, listening right now!
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