The Brainchip Story -Chapter One

Chapter One.
The Brainchip story is not one which is well known by the general public for a number of reasons not the least of which is the fact that Brainchip for obvious commercial reasons has been operating as much as possible under the radar to protect its commercial and intellectual advantage in the field of Spiking Neural Network technology. Recently however with the signing of its first commercial Intellectual Property Licence agreement it has moved out of the shadows of being a start up in self-imposed stealth mode to becoming a major international semiconductor provider heralding a new error of artificial intelligence at the edge and far edge both here on Earth and in Space. The journey to this point commenced over twenty years ago when Peter van der Made commenced to formalise his ideas for how to conceive artificial general intelligence. These ideas were developed by him until in 2008 when he filed the foundational Patent number 8250011 for what was to become Brainchip’s spiking neural network technology known as AKIDA.Along this journey other visionaries joined him and in 2015 as a result of Peter van der Made’s previous experiences with the venture capital model Brainchip Technologies Ltd was born out of a reverse takeover of the dormant minerals explorer Aziana on the Australian Stock Exchange. Supported by Mick Bolto Chairman, Adam Osserian Non Executive Director, Anil Mankar Chief Operating Officer and Senior Engineer and Neil Rinaldi Non Executive Director, Peter van der Made commenced the journey towards the commercialisation of his original idea for artificial general intelligence.This caused much excitement among investors on the ASX and many captivated by the idea of artificial general intelligence bought shares priced purely on a collective vision of what the future could hold for Brainchips’ technology. In October, 2015 an investor presentation by the company announced the introduction of SNAP. SNAP was the first iteration of SNN technology and stood for Spiking Neuron Adaptive Processor. The business model involved initially the sale of the intellectual property however the early high expectations were not to be delivered. There are lots of reasons but suffice to say having the most advanced revolutionary technology in the world can be a hard sell to a world which is happy with the status quo and who have no idea what you are talking about and no interest in learning. In short SNAP in all its variants was ahead of its time and not market ready and Moore’s Law had yet to reach breaking point.On 1 September, 2016 the company completed the acquisition of a French based company Spikenet Technology which specialised in Ai computer vision technology with a view to accelerating up take of SNAP technology as a video processing solution.Spikenet had a relationship with Cerco Research Centre where Dr. Simon Thorpe (now a member of the Brainchip Scientific Advisory Board) undertook research with others and in that position had developed the JAST learning rules. The term JAST was made up from the first initials of the four inventors and Brainchip saw the benefit these rules would bring to the development of its technologies and on 20 March, 2017 entered an agreement which gave them exclusive rights to the JAST learning rules.Bringing together the expertise of Spikenet, Brainchip and the JAST learning rules on 12 September, the company produced a new video processing product which it named Brainchip Studio. It was a very impressive product and was unlike anything else available on the market and on 21 August 2017 Brainchip announced that it had been awarded New Product of the Year for 2017 for Video Analytics by Security Today’s panel of independent experts.Shortly after this on 12 September, 2017 the company announced an upgrade to Brainchip Studio called Brainchip Accelerator which was capable of 16 channel simultaneous video processing, with ultra low power and 6x speed boost to Brainchip Studios CPU-based Artificial Intelligence Software for Object Recognition and performance levels 7 times more efficient than existing GPU accelerated deep learning systems.Brainchip Accelerator went on to also win an industry award however the market place in which it was released was already dominated by well known global brands and proved to be impenetrable until the then new CEO Lou Dinardo announced the signing of what was in effect a Heads of Agreement with Gaming Partners International to develop a system built on Studio technology for game table security in the Casino industry. The agreement involved the upfront payment by Gaming Partners International of $500,000 as well as an additional payment of $100,000 to cover engineering works.These payments were made and it was full steam ahead and the project was reportedly on track and successful demonstrations of the prototype had gone down well at a Gaming Industry conference in the USA.The saying ‘never seems to be able to catch a break’ comes to mind as not long into the process of designing and building this table gaming solution Gaming Partners International became the subject of a successful takeover bid by a Japanese gaming company and in the wash up of that takeover the Japanese owners were not interested in pursuing this direction as their principle reason for acquiring GPI was to add GPI’s chip technology to their playing card business. After much negotiation it became obvious to Brainchip that it was a zero sum game trying to revive the project although both parties have agreed to revisit it in the future.