Our next company puts humans first, creating quality artificial intelligence solutions that offer patented solutions for energy savings, data compression and more. In May 2019, AlIIS was born. A machine-learning AI that is giving new life to imaging platforms by giving access to cutting-edge advancements.
Here with us today is the CEO and Co-Founder of NexOptic, Paul McKenzie. Hello again, and welcome back to The Market Herald.
TMH: Happy to see you again, Paul. Diving right into things, you were quoted saying there have been “significant AI performance upgrades throughout 2022.” Can you walk us through what those have been?
PM: Sure. I’m happy to. So in artificial intelligence, there’s a lot of training that goes on, machine learning. So in our case, algorithms perform better and better over time, so we’ve had a lot of efficiency improvements, a lot of which allows us to operate our AI with less energy and better results, more responsive, and so we’re constantly improving, but we’ve made major advancements in that regard, and that’s allowed us to file new patents write new algorithms. So lots of progress there.
TMH: Reading up about the ‘All Light Intelligent Imaging Solutions’ has been interesting; in a way, it seems like a one-stop solution for the technologically advanced and the ‘common folk.’ How does this technology save money while reducing the carbon footprint of cloud operators?
PM: That’s a direction we’re steering the company towards significantly. You mentioned all light-intelligent imaging systems. That’s an acronym for ALIIS, which is the brand of our sub-brand of our company, which all of our AI falls under, and there’s a lot of common ground in our solutions, although there’s a variety of algorithms that we patented and continue to patent and continue to prove on the achievements that we’re able to do through our AI allow us to go into many verticals and offer solutions. So the one you mentioned was energy savings. So that’s specifically geared towards streaming companies like Netflix, for example, or cloud storage providers. So without compression, we wouldn’t have Netflix.
The data would be just too big, but companies like Netflix and many others and many smaller ones are storing video data for a variety of purposes and the cloud providers that offer them that service, it’s very energy hungry, very power hungry. So when you’re watching a movie at home, it’s significantly more than just the power from your TV set substantially more. So by helping to compress the codex or the technologies that actually compress the video but our algorithms strip out extra image noise that’s redundant to the human eye, will not distract from your experience of watching videos, and we can help the codex compress them substantially more efficiently. So that allows for a lot of power savings on the back end.
TMH: This past year seems like it was an internal growth year. Can you fill us in operational challenges the company went through and how NexOptic was able to overcome these hurdles?
PM: Our first customer is in the medical imaging field, and that’s also an area where we think we can add a lot more customers and so it was really just improvements and upgrades to efficiencies to performance and also getting in front of a lot of potential customers and clients and demonstrating to them what we can do and how we do. So that continues for us. Also, we had an opportunity to raise capital, and I and several of the directors all participated. We ended up collectively accumulating millions of shares of ownership in the company. So we’re very committed to future growth.
TMH: I know you recently welcomed Joel Sutherland to assist in corporate development and commercialization initiatives, and Wayne Cho has stepped into the role of CFO. How have the new additions been settling in?
PM: In addition to those two gentlemen you mentioned, we also added to our tech team as well. So we’ve got additions on all aspects of the company, but specifically, Joel Sutherland was previously an investment banker financial analyst, both sides of the border actually, Canada and the US. He was with large Canadian banks and then, more recently a number of years with Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. So he brings us a lot of capital market experience, a lot of connections and a lot of business savviness and in the case of Wayne Cho, our new CFO he was born in Korea. He’s native to Korea, but after high school, he did his university education here in Canada. He spent a number of years with Deloitte and their risk consulting group, so he advised large companies and multinationals. So because we have a Korean subsidiary and because of his background, we’re very fortunate to have him.
TMH: You briefly just mentioned that, and I see you have a South Korean subsidiary with an office in Seoul but what role does that office and your Korean colleagues play in NexOptics growth strategy?
PM: They play a major role for us. They’re extremely connected. The gentleman who runs that division subsidiary for us came to us through our chairman, who used to run Lexmark, which was the IBM Spinout. He had some very successful tech startups as well, and he got those companies into signing contracts with very large companies in Korea and throughout Asia. So they bring a strong depth of experience in getting commercial transactions and deals. So the important thing and it’s not too difficult to get into a company to start to have a discussion. I’m talking about the big companies, and I would say that the biggest advantage we get with the Korean subsidiary that we have is getting us into those right rooms and getting the conversation started where we can really get traction.
TMH: Before I let you go, is there anything else you would like investors to know?
PM: I would say, Brieanna, that internally, it feels like we’re on the verge of growth. We’ve been talking to a lot of companies. We hope to be onboarding a number of those soon. So that’s our goal, and stay tuned.
Thanks for your time, Paul, and we will talk soon.
Again, we have been speaking with Paul McKenzie, Co-Founder and CEO of NexOptic, the tri-listed company. For more information, go to nexoptic.com or check out the TSXV, where you can find them under the ticker symbol ‘NXO’.
A special thanks to you, our viewers, for joining us today. I’m Brieanna McCutcheon, and this has been The Top Line.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by The Market Herald.
