Artificial intelligence has been transformational for just about every industry. It’s also been wildly profitable for investors in stocks such as VERSES AI (CBOE: VERS) (OTCQX: VRSSF), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO). Even more exciting, the AI story is far from over.
Analysts at McKinsey say the AI market opportunity to swell to $17 trillion to $25 trillion by 2030. And, according to Grand View Research, the global AI market could grow from about $137 billion in 2022 to more than $1.81 trillion by 2030. Plus, consider this. Artificial intelligence-related spending will make up about 8% to 10% of IT budgets this year, according to Wedbush. “This demonstrates a remarkable acceleration in AI spending after it comprised less than 1% of IT budgets in 2023,” added Seeking Alpha.
VERSES AI, for example, is taking a different approach in its quest to build a truly transformational Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) model. Rather than take the “scale up” approach, VERSES AI is modeling technology after nature’s blueprint. In contrast to the “artificial” approaches to intelligence, VERSES AI’s technology is rooted in what is known as Natural Computing.
This approach doesn’t merely mimic nature; it seeks to understand and implement its fundamental processes. Natural Computing explores the computational mechanisms found in nature to design new algorithms, models, and architectures. Unlike traditional computer programs that follow rigid rules, or current AI systems that lack memory and accuracy. VERSES AI’s Genius combines the power of natural algorithms, knowledge modeling and data transformation to create a more flexible and intelligent system.
Here’s More from VERSES AI Inc. (CBOE: VERS) (OTCQX: VRSSF)
VERSES AI Inc., a cognitive computing company specializing in next generation intelligent systems, provides a corporate update.
“As we work towards getting Genius into the hands of more developers and publish meaningful research that paves the way to our upcoming benchmarks, we believe that VERSES is well positioned to influence the direction of the AI industry,” said Gabriel René, CEO of VERSES.
“Recent commercial agreements, strategic funding and recognition by respected research firms like Gartner are signals that others share our vision and support our alternative approach to creating intelligent systems,” continued Mr. René.
“Genius is a new class of software and the problems we’re tackling, along with their solutions, are as much logical as they are technological. We are now more clear and more focused than ever on how to deliver Genius and the benchmarks.”
Commercial Projects
VERSES recently entered into the first joint smart cities project with Analog, an edge computing company focused on seamlessly connecting people, places and things using smart sensors and mixed reality devices. This project is centered around taxi fleet management in Abu Dhabi with the objective of, utilizing Genius, to optimize fleet operations while minimizing congestion and emissions.
This pilot project is the first in a series of commercial projects that VERSES and Analog, both G42-funded companies, are in talks to develop together in Abu Dhabi with expected initial generated revenue for VERSES of approximately US$3,000,000. Leveraging Genius, future initiatives in Abu Dhabi intend to focus on projects in key sectors such as smart mobility, healthcare, and energy.
VERSES CEO Gabriel René and Analog CEO Alex Kipman recently conducted a webinar to discuss this agreement as well as their visions. The replay will be available on VERSES’ website.
Operations & Financial Updates
James Hendrickson was promoted to Chief Operating Officer to lead the internal organization to meet the staffing, operations, and financial initiatives that prepare VERSES for the future. Operations have already become more streamlined resulting in a 30% reduction in monthly costs and steps are being taken to prepare the Company for easier access to US investors and US markets.
Former Chair Jay Samit moved to an executive role with VERSES as Head of Global Partnerships and Michael Blum was announced as the new Independent Chair. Mr. Blum is a co-founder and president of Hedgeye Risk Management, a premier independent investment research house whose customer base advises more than $10 trillion in assets and operates in close to 100 countries. In 2014 Mr. Blum co-founded Firefly Space Systems which designed and developed space launch vehicles for small payloads working with, among others, NASA, DARPA and Boeing. Previously, Mr. Blum was the co-founder and chief operating officer of hedge fund, Falconhedge Partners LLC. Prior to this, he spent seven years in Silicon Valley including at Paypal developing business and product strategy. Mr. Blum received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Studies (honors) from Yale University.
Genius Rollout
VERSES began its Genius beta program earlier this year and is continuing to work with a targeted group of developers and expects the program to expand with new partners this quarter.
The Company also announced completion of a research collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which successfully demonstrated cross-platform interoperability between Digital Twin (DT) systems for lunar explorations. The project is part of a research phase of the Genius beta program. VERSES, in partnership with the Spatial Web Foundation, worked with JPL researchers to model data using Spatial Web standards with the objective of allowing government agencies, private sector aerospace entities, and universities, each having different technology stacks, to collaborate in a unified real-time simulation of the lunar surface.
Research & Benchmarks
VERSES research team led by Chief Scientist Dr. Karl Friston, published more than 25 papers in Q3, among which is a paper titled, “From pixels to planning: scale-free active inference,” which introduces an efficient alternative foundation to deep learning, reinforcement learning and generative AI called Renormalizing Generative Models (RGMs) that address foundational problems in artificial intelligence (AI), namely versatility, efficiency, explainability and accuracy, using a physics-based approach. RGMs are a versatile “universal architecture” that can be configured and reconfigured to perform many or potentially all of the same tasks as today’s AI but with far greater efficiency.
The paper describes how an RGM achieved 99.8% accuracy on a subset of the MNIST digit recognition task, a common benchmark in machine learning, using only 10,000 training images (90% less data than conventional testing). Sample and compute efficiency translates directly into cost savings and development speed for businesses building and employing AI systems.
This and other research lay the foundation for providing results against several industry benchmarks including the previously mentioned Atari 10k Challenge and Melting Pot Challenge.
Events
VERSES research presented 12 accepted papers at the International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI), the largest conference dedicated to Active Inference, a field pioneered by VERSES Chief Scientist Professor Karl Friston. IWAI organizers informed the Company that attendance at the sold-out event increased by 40% year over year and the number of papers submitted increased by 70%, which indicates that Active Inference is gaining momentum among AI researchers. Themes explored across the research include advancing the foundational capabilities and efficiencies of Active Inference, multi-agent systems, real-world applications, emotional and social intelligence, ethical and sustainable development as well as transparency and explainability.
At the Digital Twin Consortium in Chicago, Michael Wadden presented a keynote entitled “Digital Twin Interoperability for Lunar Exploration” based on the VERSES work with JPL.
Spatial Web Protocol, Architecture and Governance Standards
On July 24, VERSES announced that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA) P2874 working group voting members approved the Spatial Web standards: Hyperspace Modeling Language (HSML) and Hyperspace Transaction Protocol (HSTP).
The Spatial Web is a hyper-connected, ethically-aligned network of humans, machines, and intelligent systems. HSML and HSTP provide standard formats for structuring multidimensional information in a unified format that includes the rules, requirements and restrictions that govern how AI and related systems can interact. The final steps before IEEE publication later this year include addressing comments from the non-approval votes and verification by a review committee. Future plans for the working group is expected to include developing reference implementations and exploring governance requirements for various industries.
Genius will be the first product to support the Spatial Web standards.
Gartner
VERSES was recognized in Gartner’s “2024 Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence” report. Listed in the section of the report titled “First-Principles AI (FPAI)”. The report states that First Principles AI is “Transformational” and “On the rise”. In the discussion of “Why this is Important”, the report states that “FPAI instills a more reliable representation of the context and the physical reality, yielding more adaptive systems. This leads to reduced training time, improved data efficiency, better generalization, and greater physical consistency.”
According to the “Business Impact” section of the report, “FPAI helps train models with fewer data points and accelerates the training process, helping models converge faster to optimal solutions. It improves the generalizability of models to make reliable predictions for unseen scenarios, including applicability to nonstationary systems, and enhances transparency and interpretability, boosting trustworthiness.”
Other related developments from around the markets include:
Nvidia reported revenue for the second quarter ended July 28, 2024, of $30.0 billion, up 15% from the previous quarter and up 122% from a year ago. For the quarter, GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.67, up 12% from the previous quarter and up 168% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.68, up 11% from the previous quarter and up 152% from a year ago. “Hopper demand remains strong, and the anticipation for Blackwell is incredible,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA achieved record revenues as global data centers are in full throttle to modernize the entire computing stack with accelerated computing and generative AI.”
Microsoft announced the following results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year: Revenue was $64.7 billion and increased 15% (up 16% in constant currency); Operating income was $27.9 billion and increased 15% (up 16% in constant currency); Net income was $22.0 billion and increased 10% (up 11% in constant currency); Diluted earnings per share was $2.95 and increased 10% (up 11% in constant currency). “Our strong performance this fiscal year speaks both to our innovation and to the trust customers continue to place in Microsoft,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. “As a platform company, we are focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of our customers across at-scale platforms today, while also ensuring we lead the AI era.”
Sunrun, the nation’s leading provider of clean energy as a subscription service, announced today that it has expanded its support for the energy grid in Texas with a partnership with Tesla Electric, a retail electricity provider operated by Tesla Energy Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc. The partnership has already enrolled more than 150 Sunrun customers in an aggregated power program and will scale up enrollments while dispatching stored solar energy from at-home batteries to rapidly increase available electricity reserves on the grid during periods of high consumption.
Cisco reported fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ended July 27, 2024. Cisco reported fourth quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $2.2 billion or $0.54 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.5 billion or $0.87 per share. “We delivered a strong close to fiscal 2024,” said Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco. “In our fourth quarter, we saw steady customer demand with order growth across the business as customers rely on Cisco to connect and protect all aspects of their organizations in the era of AI.”
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