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I would guess so. Non execution by management also impacts this POS.
Yeah, the EC questions are useless, and so are the prepared remarks. Back in March, RS said demand was exploding for aiWARE, and all applications. Absolutely nothing to substantiate this. No "disruptive growth" as they have alluded to for months.
Everyone is disinterested because they have zero credibility.
Before they changed the Chad consulting agreement, he had remaining customer goals and analyst goals that he would have had to earn. Instead, they amended the agreement, to where he gets essentially the same money without having to achieve those goals. So something happened.
But everyday that goes by with nothing on aiWARE, it's looking more like smoke and mirrors, and the whole deal with the amended consulting agreement was to buy him off of the Chairman position.
Not even anything new on Veritone Hire. Sick.
Of course, I hope Banta did not bail. But have to say, this is the first time I have not seen Banta listed on Yahoo.
But will also say, that I would not blame Banta for selling. This company is running on thin ice with its balance sheet, and no signs that Zemetra is executing.
To add insult to injury, in just over a month they are going to be writing a $1M check to Chad Steelberg. On top of the millions he has already received, and on top of the 50 grand a month he gets. To not have anything for shareholders to justify this consulting arrangement is disgusting as far as I'm concerned.
Looks to me that Banta is considered a passive investor, and therefore not subject to 13D. Instead they are subject to filings under 13G. If a top institutional holder sells his stake, there is no requirement to disclose the sale.
there's no requirement for a Schedule 13G investor to disclose selling their holdings.
So again, don't know how Yahoo arrived at this. Banta was asking questions during the May earnings call.
The stock had a run up to 7 plus in the back half of March. I guess it's possible that Banta took advantage of this run-up. Wish I would have. But I don't know how Yahoo collects their data. Especially since there is no filing.
As of March 30, 2024, Yahoo no longer lists Banta in Top Institutional Holders.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VERI/holders But they could be wrong of course. I have not seen any filing. The last filing I saw showed they added shares.
Looks like Banta bailed
New position for Associate Client Support Specialist
mentions nothing about Amazon or AWS
https://www.veritone.com/vacancy?gh_jid=5989275003
But for whatever reason, these YouTube videos about the position mention Amazon but can't understand what they are saying.
VP of Global Services at AWS.
refers to Veritone as a "customer", but says Veritone is revolutionizing the generativeAI landscape with the help of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Then he says "Our latest venture integrates Amazon Titan Multimodal Embeddings into our search pipeline, enhancing video retrieval capabilities."
This post concerns the recent AWS blog post describing how Veritone is updating their video search pipeline. So why does he say "our search pipeline"?
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7196169669882355712/
Somewhat interesting that the about to be board member, Michael Keithley was CIO/CTO for CAA for 25 years. Then he was CIO for its main competitor UTA for 7 years.
In March of this year, UTA hired Eric Iverson as CTO. He is connected with RS on Linkedin and came from AWS and Amazon Studios.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eriverson/
There has been no PR about Veritone working with UTA. However UTA CIO Eric Weinstein, provided a testimonial for Vertone Voice. https://www.veritonevoice.com/api-real-time-voice/
Weinstein worked at UTA until 2022, when he became Chief Development Officer for Candle Media. It was in 2022 when Candle Media and Veritone collaborated on the Cameo for Kids.
I guess the point of this post is that Veritone does have some standing in this vertical. Is Michael Kethley joining the board of a sinking ship? And why thus far Veritone can't seem to grow revenues and attract reputable investment.
The prospects for Digital Media Hub are encouraging, but the stock price says it all in my opinion. They need to announce a balance sheet fix and evidence of material revenue growth. Their current guidance is lame. Hard to grow your business without adequate cash to fund it.
your comment:
Seems Ai market not warming up to an operating system(Aiware) as evidenced by Veri Ai consulting Group.
From the May 7th consulting group PR.
By combining human expertise with aiWARE™ technology, the newly formed group will empower businesses on their digital transformation journey through custom AI strategy development, AI workflow solutions and innovation workshops.
For all of 2023 and so far in 2024, Veritone has put out many PRs that did not mention aiWARE. Now forming a consulting group centered around AWS expertise. So why do they decide to describe their new consulting group as a combination of human expertise and "aiWARE technology".
If aiWARE going no where why bother to bring it up in this PR? Why not just say consulting business based on AWS technology?
We know they have a new version of aiWARE that they say nothing about. Why even have a new version of aiWARE. If aiWARE sucks why not just sunset it. We know aiWARE has done nothing for revenue growth, done nothing for shareholders. What do they expect from this new version of aiWARE?
Maybe the new version is created based on AWS requirements and AWS standards, and made to be more compatible with AWS technology and Bedrock. Maybe that's the new aiWARE roadmap that they were working on for all of 2023.
Yeah things don't look good right now. But to me it looks like self inflicted harm by not being focused. Just hope there is a strategy behind this. Looks to me like they have sold their soul to AWS. Any success for Veritone going forward looks to me to depend on what it is that AWS is going to do in return for Veritone. Remains to be seen.
Good question. And took aiware off AWS market place. Have a new version and don't announce it
Also have to write that 1M check to CS for all the value he has created.
No worries, now onto starting the consulting business. lol
All this makes me wonder what they were thinking when they bought Broadbean. They bought Broadbean knowing they would then have a bloated employee count, and incur integration costs, and run into a cash crunch before any revenue and cost synergies kick in.
Only thing I can think of to try to make sense of the Broadbean purchase at the time is if it was strategically planned alongside the new aiWARE roadmap involving a strategic partner like AWS.
I think AWS may have an interest. Bedrock is generative AI related. aiWARE can take generative AI models and orchestrate with cognitive models and Domaine specific models. Should be an interest their to help them scale as long as Veritone has loyalty to AWS. We will see
Well look at their history. Their two major acquisitions have been Pando and Broadbean, HR related. Think the only acquisitions specific to the enhancement of aiWARE platform itself were Atigeo and Machine Box, both costing peanuts. Wasted a lot of time and investment in energy vertical, although guessing the energy initiative helped them with development and proving of aiWARE.
But interesting that they spent all that money on HR acquisitions, and still haven't fully integrated Broadbean and now starting AI consulting business. As a whole, their history just doesn't make sense to the investment community.
could be. Seems clear to me now that in whatever form it takes, the aiWARE roadmap involves AWS. Veritone doing a lot of evangelizing for Amazon (AWS). Sure don't see anything in return. But like you say, maybe aiWARE development and integration with AWS still a work in progress.
Deloitte has a tight relationship with AWS. Maybe dropping the CortexAI name and now will be consulting on behalf of aiWARE brand instead of CortexAI for all the industries outside of Veritone's ecosystem. Speculation and wishful thinking I know.
But Veritone starting this consulting business as a very small company with limited resources. Need more that just Veritone consulting to scale aiWARE.
While we often talk with customers about individual AWS services like #Rekognition, #Transcribe, and #Bedrock - many times the best route for our customers is to turn to a partner who has already crafted these building blocks into a complete solution of their own. Often, our customers may not even realize they are using the latest AWS technology under the hood to power their business. For this reason I'm even more appreciative of our partner Veritone
To me, it sounds like he is appreciative of aiWARE. Saying that instead of having to sell AWS building blocks individually, the building blocks are already within aiWARE. When he says customers may not even realize they are using the latest AWS technology, sounds to me like the advantage of aiWARE. Can quickly add and replace AI models as needed without disrupting the customer's business.
Probably the best plug for Veritone from AWS that I have seen to date.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7194376323148963840/
Lack of focus main reason for 1x revenue valuation in my opinion.
18M unencumbered cash, so currently pursuing all these different business verticals with no resources.
Spend 52M on Broadbean a year ago, and still haven't fully integrated yet, and now announce going into the AI consulting business. All while trying to run an advertising business, public sector business, and M&E business. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Plus all businesses above leveraging aiWARE, a platform that still is yet to gain any traction.
Add to that, in any interview with RS, he never states how Veritone differentiates. He would rather talk about AI for Good, or talk about the old days in the ad business.
Could be ad agency but not sure how that increases revenue synergies. Plus revenues would drop considerably
they also have that 15M liquidity covenant on their debt facility
Could be right. With about 18M left in unencumbered cash, if they wait until September, going to be running on fumes.
Maybe so, and also think maybe it has something to do with the non dilutive transaction.
As we discussed on our last call, we remain on a near term pathway and are progressing to vastly
improve our liquidity position on a non-dilutive basis."
They mention aiWARE sometimes but they don't seem to want to call it their own.
Here's a list
1. Took aiWARE off AWS Marketplace
2. From that job posting a couple months ago for Sr Marketing Manager for AI Solutions Group
Veritone and its partnership with AWS offers customers hundreds of AI engines with capabilities
3. Veritone Investigate
Built on enterprise-grade architecture powered by AWS Commercial
4. Illuminate
Built on the Proven Enterprise AI platform, aiWARE
5. Redact
Veritone is the creator of the only operating system for AI, enabling fast to market extensibility of automated redaction capabilities
6. PR -Veritone Launches AI Consulting and Services Group, Achieves AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner Status
By combining human expertise with aiWARE™ technology, the newly formed group will empower businesses on their digital transformation journey
I still find it odd that Veritone is not adding Digital Media Hub to AWS Marketplace.
That blog post by AWS included Tim Camara, Senior Product Manager on the Digital Media Hub team at Veritone.
The blog post was posted by Veritone on Linkedin, and that post was reposted by an AWS Research Engineer.
I am thrilled to share the work my team and I did to improve the multimodal search experience for our customer.
Maybe Amazon is going to use DMH / aiWARE for their customers as well. We know AWS demonstrated an AWS branded version of DMH.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7194069116293423104/
Veritone today added Redact to AWS Marketplace
Doesn't say aiWARE
But says, "Veritone is the creator of the only operating system for AI, enabling fast to market extensibility of automated redaction capabilities"
Why not say "creator of aiWare"? Once again, for some reason anything having to do with AWS, they are skirting around any description that aiWARE is Veritone's
Whatever this non-dilutive transaction is, get the news out there. Execute on behalf of shareholders for once Veritone management.
This was a Deloitte/Intel PR from April 9
"Deloitte has deployed over 35 of Intel’s OpenVino™ AI models in their CortexAI platform to drive greater time to value and efficiency for their clients"
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/press-releases/deloitte-intel-help-enterprises-optimize-ai-genai.html
Hard to say. Maybe sunsetting CortexAI, but the underlying tech is is being applied to another platform or being rebranded? Who knows.
Don't think so. I saw a Deloitte post the other day that mentioned the sunsetting of CortexAI. I think that serves as not a good reflection of aiWARE prospects, but still ask why pay CS another million and 50k a month. Just don't know what value he provides anymore. Looks more like Veritone just bought him out of the Chairman role. I don't know.
agree. But they seem to have some loyal customers like CBS and Iheart. Why does RS stay at the helm? With aiWARE being nothing significant, not taking off like they envisioned, why doesn't he pass the baton to another CEO. Particularly since he dropped his salary to a buck. So he's basically getting stock grants for compensation and dependent on the stock.
To clarify my last post. I think Bedrock focused on LLM generative AI models. aiWARE has been all about cognitive models. It was early last year when Veritone announced Veritone generative AI. So I think there is advantage and interest to combine LLMs with cognitive AI models to target specific use cases. But what do I know. I guess I do know that investors and partners are not tripping over themselves over aiWARE
Well cpeter7, a while back you mentioned Bedrock being more for foundational LLM models/generative AI. I had responded that I did not think that Bedrock limited to LLMs. But I think you were right. I had a conversation with Google Gemini on that and it said Bedrock more for foundational generative AI models than cognitive models. But Veritone using generative AI LLMs via Bedrock to integrate with and enhance Veritone aiWARE applications. I think aiWARE can complement Bedrock with more domain specific applications. And I think Amazon would be interested in that. But so far no evidence.
but still forking over a mil to CS here shortly. why?
Yes, it's an obvious question. There were supposed to be partners developing on aiWARE outside ecosystem. What happened to Deloitte reseller agreement. Nobody asks them about this. aiWare just did not take off like CS projected.
still don't know why they are going to write a 1 million dollar check to Chad Steelberg on July 1st. No tipping point in sight.
If nothing else, they have made progress on expenses. Maybe might move the stock or at least keep a floor at current levels.
One of the conferences is with EF Hutton. There has been an EF Hutton guy liking Veritone Linkedin posts for some time now.