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and they don't care about the stock price. Remember, they have another 10 years left of cash on the balance sheet.
Once again, for a 38 minute interview, he briefly mentions aiWare, but spends no time telling anything about it. Just sticks to M&E, Government, and HR.
Also new board member statement from CFO Ingram Micro. Just seems more applications and services oriented.
I look forward to bringing my expertise as they work to transform their cutting-edge technology into industry-leading applications and solutions.
RS says "disruptive growth" and "Despite lingering uncertainty across financial and consumer markets",
- we look to the start of 2024 as an inflection point in our growth trajectory.
IMO, only way for them to see any kind of growth is for some sort of strategic transaction to be executed, either involving aiWare or Veritone, a transaction that would add major credibility to the platform and Veritone business.
Noticed RD "message from the CEO" today. Again, no mention of aiWare or AI platform. All applications and services.
Except they are not hyping aiWare, which is very odd imo. In fact, they really are not hyping anything in public since RS took over.
Just unsubstantiated hype during the earnings calls, such as "disruptive growth" " "well on our way to being dominant in enterprise AI", etc.
It really does look bad, I know.
But they've taken aiWare out of the narrative. They just are not going to talk about it. It used to be a vertical. Now it's a division. When it comes to social media posts like Linkedin or Twitter, Veritone is acting as if aiWare doesn't exist. And without aiWare, Veritone is finished, unless they pull a rabbit out of a hat in HR or government. So the stock is trading as if Veritone is essentially going to go under. So the narrative of RS is taking the stock down. And they don't care obviously.
I've never seen such apathy for the stock price, the shareholders, analysts, and financial community in my 35+ years in the market.
In November,
Veritone established at least 3 more accounts on "X", formerly Twitter.
Veritone Public Sector. Veritone Hire. Veritone Media & Entertainment. Each account is locked, so in order to follow them, you need to get their permission.
Not sure what this indicates, if anything. Their regular Veritone account on X hardly gets any attention when they post, so don't know what they expect to accomplish with 3 more accounts.
Wonder why these big companies like Salesforce and SNowflake are just integrating the capability of accessing unstructured data into their products.
With this upgrade, Einstein Copilot will be able to retrieve information from unstructured data
and not even ready until February.
Salesforce's Data Cloud Vector Database and Einstein Copilot Search will be in pilot in February 2024, while Einstein Copilot will be generally available at that date.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/with-ai-upgrade-salesforces-einstein-copilot-will-handle-unstructured-data/
and aiWare.com already has Salesforce package.
They passed on that alleged non strategic asset sale. Were offered over 100m. But said it would have taken too long to close. So instead go for the high rate loan and rack up more debt. Lol
If you had to guess what is behind the disruptive growth comments, or just pure bs
Think there has been a lot of confusion over the years of what they want to be. Used to be all about aiWare and wanted to only have 1% of the applications. Then bought pandologic, a total deviation from strategy. Then started buying little fill in technologies like vocal id and tracker. Then bought broadbean. All gives the appearance of no focus. Where would Veritone be if 100% focused all the way through.
And another thing. They used to brag about how fast they could develop an application like illuminate. Based on that they should have 100 applications.
But certainly a head scratcher that they drop over 50M on Broadbean, money they can't afford to part with, knowing they would have to seek more capital, and to this day, spend time fussing over the likes of Orchard Clips and AirSpeeder. No Veritone Hire page. No PR on any Veritone Hire new business. No aiWare news.
Just Digital Media Hub and Redact.
Deloitte is another example. Why no investment from Deloitte or similar.
That point is one of the main reasons Veritone wallows in penny stock land.
This is a lame answer but from everything I have learned about aiWare from Chad S is that he wants aiWare to democratize AI. Meaning no favoritism or bias. Cloud agnostic.
OpenAI pretty much married to Microsoft and Azure cloud.
I remember back when Chatgpt came out and was all the rage, RS made a comment on Linkedin, something to the effect of we'll watch and let the giants fight it out with these LLM's, we're agnositc, and can accept any application or AI model. And back in August he said the LLMs won't be differentiated, but the differentiation will come from orchestrating LLMs with domain specific models.
Of course, that stance does them no good if it leads them to bankruptcy, or wiping out the shareholders. But any major investment from one of the major players creates bias.
But that still doesn't explain why Veritone could not take an investment from the many other cloud agnostic players. Snowflake is an example.
But bottom line is that it is a good point. Veritone at 2 bucks a share, swimming in debt, with no reputable backing.
Only thing we have now is that the lenders now have the option for a significant stake in Veritone. They could make a lot of money on those warrants.
I can see why aiWare itself as a product has not brought in meaningful revenues to date, if it has always been in development and being deployed as proof of concept.
But now we are at the end of Chad's year as a consultant, and we are seeing the giants move towards aiWare like features. So the trial period should be ending now. jmo. If nothing between now and March, then they are finished.
This conversation reminds me of this quote by CS.
From an overall business standpoint, today, industry titans, such as Amazon, FedEx, Microsoft and Disney are not only our customers, they are also our partners and in many cases, evangelists. As customers, they have literally hundreds of millions of dollars being exchanged across our aiWARE-enabled solutions and trust us with some of their most critical business operations from hiring to customer acquisition to core technology. As strategic partners, together, we are developing new applications and capabilities into aiWARE that extend and expand the use of AI nearly every day." - Chad Steelberg May3rd, 2022
The last sentence: "As strategic partners, together, we are developing new applications and capabilities into aiWARE that extend and expand the use of AI nearly every day."
So now we are seeing these "industry titans" come out with aiWare-like features. And RS and Zemetra have alluded to 2024 disruptive growth for the last 2 earnings calls.
But the most glaring problem as you have pointed out. Why no investment from these titans? Why does Veritone have to secure a high interest rate loan, and be strapped with debt? If developing aiWare together, then why Veritone still going it alone?
We also have heard nothing about the strategic minority investment yet, but they are still carrying it on the books for the same value.
I guess that's possible, but in my opinion would be the most bearish scenario. But with the stock at 2 bucks, it is currently probably the most credible scenerio.
I still believe they have more plans for aiWare than just in-house.
Another example. Why wouldn't they talk about aiWare in this PR. Only say Veritone Generative AI.
https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/veritone-achieves-a-three-peat-in-the-deloitte-technology-fast-500tm-awards-2023-11
Right. I should have clarified. aiWare is mentioned in each PR at the bottom in the "About Veritone" section. But they no longer mention aiWare in the body of the PR.
They did mention aiWare in the recent DOJ PR, but that was only in reference to their 2021 ATO designation for aiWare.
And they no longer mention aiWare when it would be opportune to mention aiWare, like when they say joining Amazon Center of Excellence, or when they wrote the blog about what algorithms Pandologic uses. It is obvious to me that they have avoided aiWare all year when they are communicating to the public.
Seems clear that they are not concerned with the brand name aiWare any more. They would have been marketing it heavily this year. jmo
Their latest app, Digital Evidence, makes no mention of aiWare.
They just say: LEVERAGE AI
Access an ecosystem of hundreds of AI engines within Veritone Evidence, such as Transcription, Translation, Facial Recognition, Object Detection, Text Recognition, and more.
https://www.veritone.com/applications/evidence/
https://unlock.veritone.com/resource-library-evidence-solution-brief?_gl=1*i2shrm*_gcl_au*MjA2NDcwNzU5Mi4xNzAyMjIzMzY0
Just like their investor presentation : Deliver best-in-class ecosystem to drive
operational efficiencies, accelerate decision
making and increase profitability
And none of the PR's anymore refer to aiWare.
Probably explains why we have heard nothing on aiWare.com. Seems like what ever "ecosystem" they are referring to, it is going to be something else.
agree, everything about them indicates money is no problemmo. "Disciplined financial Stewardship". And the November investor presentation actually says 750+ employees
Sorry 165+ million
Spent 155+ million on pando and broadbean and bought broadbean 6 months ago and still haven't updated website to reflect the combination, Veritone hire. Don't even list recruiting as one of their industries. But take time to announce orchard clips.
Meanwhile, what a POS
Looking at some of their growth drivers they list in the November presentation.
Deliver best-in-class ecosystem to drive
operational efficiencies, accelerate decision
making and increase profitability
Well best in class ecosystem has to be aiWare, and "Deliver" implies that it hasn't been delivered yet. So maybe means they announce aiWare 3.5 soon.
Market ability to integrate and orchestrate
disparate data and workflows
Again, this has to be aiWare, and implies they are going to start marketing aiWare, or aiWare capabilities.
Showcase expanding market applications of
solutions across core verticals to existing
customers
They have been very limited on showcasing the usual applications they do have. All we here about is DMH and Redact. So maybe they start coming out with new applications.
Convert trial customers, particularly in
government and regulated industries, to longterm customers
This could be significant, and could include aiWare license agreements with some of the big players. We have no idea of the extent of their trial customers. And I'm sure the "paying" customers are not happy when others are getting free trials. But when RS says that the beginning of 2024 will be inflection point in growth trajectory, maybe "trial periods" end at the end of this year.
Last two quarter Zemetra has said "2024, which will be when Veritone pivots back towards vertical growth from existing software and services "
Implies that they "pivoted" away from Vertical growth in 2023, and now are going to "Pivot" back. Well they obviously didn't care about the success of their aiWare platform this year. Maybe all these companies like Google got on board in 2022, but then needed a year to develop and integrate. And it's in line with Chad's consulting schedule, so maybe 2024 all about ending the trials and going live with aiWare and partners.
Then in both quarters, they speak of "disruptive growth" for 2024. Again, I know of no other catalyst unless aiWare.
Still say the most interesting thing (and Frustrating) to me in 2023, has been the changing of the narrative, which meant to stop talking about aiWare. F@#ing "WIlderness Guide"
Meanwhile, they start aiWare.com in August, and still don't say a word about it.
And the silence while all these other companies start to talk about similar features to aiWare.
Could you imagine if they didn't "change the narrative" and Chad Steelberg were CEO right now? He would have gone on every interview he could talking about aiWare.
Everything they were preaching about for years, is now starting to happen. And they are dead silent.
Don't recall that employee.
This probably means nothing, but on aiware.com, click on "AI Models". Scroll down to the various company logos. You can click on any of the logos, but the Google logo is the only one that when you click on it it leads you to a Google Cloud page for signing up for Google Cloud and VertexAI. https://cloud.google.com/?hl=en
All other logos when you click on them just lead you back to the aiWare.com page.
Yes. Bottom line though, don't see why the lenders would pay anything more into a sinking ship.
Anyway, now that this is out of the way, maybe they will finally announce any catalyst for the alleged disruptive growth.
On another note, seeing AL Brown liking some Linkedin posts concerning Google AI. As discussed before, Google VertexAI also aiWare-like.
It reminded me of the PR Veritone released in May of 2022, concerning Google and Globo.
“Globo selected Veritone aiWARE for its flexibility to run multiple AI models on each piece of content within a secure, network-isolated environment.
Why did they need Veritone? Why didn't Google just provide these services.
https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/globo-south-americas-largest-media-company-selects-veritone-to-provide-automated
my understanding is it's 40M additional. This is a renegotiation of $50M in convertible notes right?
So the lenders had already paid Veritone 50M. Now they are going to pay Veritone 77M but Veritone is going to pay back $37M to retire the 50M
I guess the lenders would also want this feature removed if they thought the stock was going to go up significantly.
If Veritone were able to repay the loan in shares, then obviously a higher stock price would mean less shares paid to the lender.
wonder why that was changed.
I would think that Veritone would want the option to repay the loan via shares. I could see that the lenders would not want this option if they thought the stock will continue to go down. But if the lenders thought that Veritone had no future, why would they fork over another 77M?
I see that they removed the option for Veritone to be able to repay in the form of stock.
The Term Loan is not repayable with the Company’s common stock, $0.001 per share (the “Common Stock”) as was initially set forth in the Commitment Letter.
"But to not even tease how aiWARE can improve how these models are deployed or why aiWARE is a competitive advantage is weird."
Yeah, the recent PR of Veritone joining the AWS Center of Excellence is another example. If you did not know Veritone, you could read that PR and at the end of the article still have no idea what Veritone does.
But in the blog, to not even suggest how aiWare can provide more options, is telling.
I have speculated that the new debt facility, while an effort to raise needed cash, also serves as a resolution for the convertible note holders. In 2 days, they will have their warrants for 3M shares. Maybe Veritone starts talking then. Getting down to crunch time for whatever catalyst it is that gives them a new inflection point for growth trajectory at the beginning of 2024. Either that or it's all BS. But if BS, then it is amazing that they would set themselves up for failure once again with all this talk of growth trajectory and disruptive growth for 2024. I don't see ANY disruptive growth potential for this company unless it concerns aiWare. And we know they refused to talk about any catalyst during last earnings call, so still holding out hope that something is there. jmo
New aiWare update. Version 3.48.2.1 Deployment- 12/12/23
Yesterday, Veritone posted a blog explaining their proprietary algorithms behind Pandologic, or Veritone Hire.
Once again, not a mention of aiWare. 2023, in my view, has been all about the separation of aiWare from Veritone. They simply don't talk about it anymore.
Yet continue to develop and add enhancements to the platform via aiWare.com.
On another note, the deadline to lock in the Debt facility is in 2 days.
So I don't know where it is getting the information, or just like they say "hallucinating".
But another thing I noticed is that it knows nothing about aiWare.com. In fact, if you do just a regular Google search, you will find nothing on aiWare.com, and nothing about any of the contents within the site.
Veritone has made it so that aiWare.com and its contents are unsearchable.
I don't know. I just asked it again, and it came up with this. Sometimes when you ask it, it says it can't do it. When you ask it, seems like it gives you a different answer every time.
Here are some of the latest patents assigned to Veritone:
October 2023:
US Patent No. 11,502,445: System and method for predicting battery state and behavior for optimized battery operation and increased battery longevity.
September 2023:
US Patent No. 11,493,764: System and method for controlling battery impedance actuators for optimized battery operation and reduced power dissipation.
US Patent No. 11,488,676: System and method for synchronizing battery power delivery across multiple battery control systems using a mean field game representation.
August 2023:
US Patent No. 11,460,632: Methods and systems for classifying a multimedia file using interclass data.
July 2023:
US Patent No. 11,417,354: System and methods for neural network orchestration.
June 2023:
US Patent No. 11,389,900: System and method for redacting content.
May 2023:
US Patent No. 11,357,855: System and method for generating a transcript of a multimedia file.
April 2023:
US Patent No. 11,333,517: System and method for identifying content in a multimedia file using a plurality of models.
These are just a few of the latest patents assigned to Veritone. For a complete list, you can visit the USPTO website and search for patents assigned to Veritone, Inc.
You can also find more information about Veritone's patents on their website: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2013090539A1/ko
I hope this information is helpful!
Well, I've concluded that a large percentage of the info I am receiving on BARD is fabricated garbage. lol