This Tom Richardson in the Financial Review has a real bee in...

This Tom Richardson in the Financial Review has a real bee in his bonnet about Brainchips...

BrainChip’s founder takes chips off the table

Tom Richardson - Markets reporter and commentator

Artificial intelligence business BrainChip is such a favourite of retail investors its valuation sat at $878 million on Monday, although plenty believe it’s wildly overvalued given the lack of revenue and commercial products.

Disclosures show its interim chief executive and founder, Peter Van Der Made, took the opposite approach to retail investors last week, selling 2.57 million shares on-market at an average price of 54¢ for cash proceeds of $1.39 million. Van Der Made has another 173.7 million shares where they came from.

The business lost its last permanent chief executive in March, when Louis DiNardo had his role terminated with immediate effect. DiNardo left with 11.8 million shares and 57.5 million share options exercisable at different dates in the future at prices no higher than 22.5¢, although it’s unknown whether he’s been selling shares like his replacement.

On April 30, another substantial shareholder named as the family trust for Anil Shamrao Mankar and Meena Anil Mankar reduced its stake from 7.2 per cent to 6.1 per cent. It was only in December that the same California-based family trust cut its stake from 15.1 per cent to 7.2 per cent.

Amid all the selling, BrainChip boasts it is on track to deliver a revolutionary new edge-computing chip so smart that it can mimic the human brain’s processing. According to the company, this means it’s competing with the likes of Intel, IBM and Nvidia at the same time as retail investors promote its potential on forums such as Reddit and Facebook.

All this potential, but it can’t even attract a new permanent chief executive at the same time as the founder sells.