"his presence would imply that there's some sort of deficiency...

"his presence would imply that there's some sort of deficiency with the actual paid team."

LOL I would take that as a given in light of their achievements to date. Spikenet had a turnover of circa $600k dollars prior to the takeover, presumably on a miniscule marketing budget, at the current rate of progress BRN is going to struggle to match this 3 years down the line, despite a professional sales team. Some might think a company with this rate of progress has no future, especially as the greatest AI boom in history is merrily going on in the background.

Regarding those discussions about deploying Akida, in laptops I have seen no discussion of the application might be, which means imo that no-one really believes it's a serious possibility, but something like that is what they need.