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Speaker 1: It's a rare thing these days that a company lists

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Speaker 1: on the enz X, and even rareer for one that

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Speaker 1: does to be a tech company. But last year Being

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Speaker 1: Ai burst onto the scene with a singular focus.

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Speaker 2: I'm personally a massive nerd, and I love technology, and

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Speaker 2: I love developing things, and I love buildings up and

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Speaker 2: just all the amazing tools and products and platforms that

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Speaker 2: are coming out of the AI space right now.

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Speaker 1: That was David McDonald, group CEO and executive director of

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Speaker 1: Being Ai, speaking on the day he rang the bell

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Speaker 1: to mark the company's launch. This week on The Business Attack,

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Speaker 1: sponsored by two Degrees, We've got a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a change due to some scheduling matters. We're splitting the

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Speaker 1: podcast into two. On Sunday, we talked to a major

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Speaker 1: name in New Zealand's startup scene.

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Speaker 3: Rowan Simpson, is one of the most successful serial tech

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Speaker 3: entrepreneurs in the country and he's distilled what he's learned

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Speaker 3: into a new book, How to Be Wrong, a crash

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Speaker 3: course in startup Success.

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Speaker 1: Make sure you come back for that then, But now

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Speaker 1: we're talking about my reporting into Being Ai.

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Speaker 3: I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin. Being Ai the

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Speaker 3: listed education provider and artificial intelligence development house. Its shares

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Speaker 3: are currently suspended on the inst X. It's independent directors

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Speaker 3: have resigned, So I guess a lot of people are

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Speaker 3: asking what's going on? Can it survive? First off, give

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Speaker 3: us some background about this company's progress so far as

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Speaker 3: a listed company.

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Speaker 1: That's a big question actually, like for a company that

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Speaker 1: has only been listed for about ten months via a

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Speaker 1: reverse listing.

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Speaker 4: Back in April last.

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Speaker 3: Year, Ascension Capital wasn't it was listed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a listed company. It was basically not operating.

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Speaker 1: They backed into that show and they used it to

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Speaker 1: list on the ins X. So that was April last

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Speaker 1: year that they rang the bell, and since then it

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Speaker 1: has been a pretty tumultuous an eventful ride.

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Speaker 4: I would describe it as so.

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Speaker 1: First of all, their their share price shot up, which

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Speaker 1: caused a caused the nz X to issuer please explain,

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Speaker 1: So they had a little help there. That became a

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Speaker 1: little little wrinkle for them to start with. Whether or

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Speaker 1: not that was fair, it was really, you know, up

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Speaker 1: to up to your interpretation. But it was a notable

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Speaker 1: moment for them and a bit of a mar to

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Speaker 1: the start of their of their adventure on the n

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Speaker 1: z X since then, I I'm this morning. Actually a

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Speaker 1: story went live on Business Desk as we record so

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Speaker 1: Wednesday morning where I kind of talk a little bit

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Speaker 1: about what's been going on at the company, and if

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Speaker 1: you read that down the bottom, you'll actually find a

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Speaker 1: kind of list of stuff that's happened in their company.

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Speaker 1: So those include essentially a share price that has struggled

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Speaker 1: over time, sitting at twenty eight cents per share when

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Speaker 1: it was suspended. They've also faced a little bit of

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Speaker 1: criticism from an analyst, Mark Claire that led to some

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Speaker 1: legal proceedings that resulted in Clare Capital making one hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars payout.

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Speaker 4: Although it was a payout that.

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Speaker 1: Was a non admission payout, so I didn't do anything wrong,

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Speaker 1: but here's some money to settle the case.

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Speaker 4: They've had a.

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Speaker 1: Series of kind of underwhelming or stalled acquisition attempts, and

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Speaker 1: they had application for a charter school, which was a

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Speaker 1: bit of a long shot because there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of applications, but that was unsuccessful as part of its

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Speaker 1: education endeavor. Also, as just mentioned, they have a couple

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Speaker 1: of schools on the books. They have a logistics company

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Speaker 1: on the books, but their primary focus reportedly was AI development. Originally,

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Speaker 1: it was planned to be kind of an AI consulting

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Speaker 1: firm with a AI product development firm and an AI

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Speaker 1: investment firm wrapped together in one company. The consulting business

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Speaker 1: was divested from the company at the end of last year.

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Speaker 1: The investments haven't really paid out yet, but again it's

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Speaker 1: only been ten months. And then you've got the product

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Speaker 1: side of things, which appears to be where a lot

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Speaker 1: of the attention from the executive branch has been. So

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Speaker 1: David McDonald, chief executive of the company, who we've had

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Speaker 1: on the podcast when the company first listed, he has

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Speaker 1: spent a lot of time and energy along with his CTO,

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Speaker 1: doctor Nicholas Fourier. I believe it's pronounced, but I could

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Speaker 1: be wrong. And they have developed a AI product that

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Speaker 1: they're kind of hoping to take to market soon. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's been complicated. It's it's been tricky, and I guess

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Speaker 1: that's kind of the story of the first ten months

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Speaker 1: of being AI on the NZX.

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Speaker 3: And the thing about this copany is that it's listed

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Speaker 3: on the inst X, but there's not much publicly traded

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Speaker 3: shares happening here zero point four percent or zero point

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Speaker 3: four to eight percent off. The shares are traded on

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Speaker 3: the inz X. So the shareholding is held, you know,

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Speaker 3: predominantly eighty percent by Evan Christian and his wife Katherine

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Speaker 3: Alsop Smith. David McDonald has ten percent, and then other

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Speaker 3: sort of key shareholders make up the rest. So now

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Speaker 3: I really was excited when an AI centric company said

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Speaker 3: it was going to list on the inz X. Here

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Speaker 3: was an opportunity for the investor community to get on board.

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Speaker 3: They clearly haven't and that raises question marks. And then

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Speaker 3: as your story, which we'll link to, notes, there has

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Speaker 3: been a lot of tension between Alsop Smith and Evan

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Speaker 3: Christian and then David McDonald in their philosophy about where

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Speaker 3: this business is going. And it seems to me as

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Speaker 3: though David McDonald he's very much a startup guy and

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Speaker 3: he's looking around the world at AI. I mean, the

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Speaker 3: company in the last couple of months really has pivoted

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Speaker 3: to AI agents with this treehouse product they're talking about.

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Speaker 4: It's not to be clear, it's not building AI agents.

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Speaker 1: We can talk a little bit about project a project

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Speaker 1: treehouse as they call it, but I do want to

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Speaker 1: talk a bit about that startup thing that you just mentioned,

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Speaker 1: and I think that a big part of what being

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Speaker 1: AI represents is a question for what is public money

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Speaker 1: for in New Zealand, because I guess from McDonald's point

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Speaker 1: of view, it was like this was a way of

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Speaker 1: raising money to fund a startup. He refers to being

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Speaker 1: AI as a startup. In New Zealand, we rarely would

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Speaker 1: refer to any nxex listed company as a startup because

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Speaker 1: that's not what we expect from our listed companies. Of

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Speaker 1: expect them to be a little bit more mature or

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Speaker 1: established and have a path to growth.

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Speaker 4: And so you know, there has to be.

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Speaker 1: A question of is there a different perspective in New

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Speaker 1: Zealand From New Zealand investors, particularly institutional investors, would also

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Speaker 1: retail around what money through the ENZX is for. Is

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Speaker 1: it for seeding a startup? It can be, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's no rules against it, but maybe that wasn't as

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Speaker 1: clearly communicated, or maybe that just wasn't something that people liked,

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Speaker 1: and you know, that could be part of why the

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Speaker 1: company's independent directors. And this is my opinion here because

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Speaker 1: I don't know have any explicit information about why the

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Speaker 1: independent directors have left, five have come and gone over

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Speaker 1: the period of the company being listed. Perhaps they were

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Speaker 1: walking in expecting an established company that they would govern,

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Speaker 1: and what they actually was a startup that needed a

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Speaker 1: lot of time and energy investment to actually get it

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Speaker 1: to run. They wanted a listed company and they got

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Speaker 1: a startup. So I think that's a question that needs

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Speaker 1: to be considered in this situation.

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Speaker 3: It's a classic dilemma for a startup founder. It's like,

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Speaker 3: I want to raise capital quickly, and an efficient way

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Speaker 3: to do that is to do a public offering and

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Speaker 3: try and raise capital once you're on a stock exchange,

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Speaker 3: but then you're open to all the scrutiny and the expectations,

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Speaker 3: and Peter Beck and others have referred to this the stress,

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Speaker 3: the added level of stress and complicating factors it comes

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Speaker 3: when you're listed. It builds a discipline where you have

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Speaker 3: to report every quarter. That is sometimes valuable, but it

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Speaker 3: also means if you're burning lots of cash and you're

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Speaker 3: thinking about pivoting to do something else, everyone sees that,

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Speaker 3: and so the market's confidence can rise and fall, and

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Speaker 3: we've seen a lot of volatility at one point to

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Speaker 3: share price was up over seventy cents. Any idea what

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Speaker 3: caused that?

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Speaker 4: No, not really.

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Speaker 1: You know, there is one school of thought, and again

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Speaker 1: this is not a fact, it's just what people have said,

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Speaker 1: which is this idea of a meme stock. It's become

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Speaker 1: a more common phrase over the last couple of years.

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Speaker 1: But this idea that people use a publicly traded stock

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Speaker 1: and they get a lot of further around it and

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Speaker 1: invest a lot in it and get other people to

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Speaker 1: invest and then try and get out at the top

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Speaker 1: to make a bunch of money, and then the price

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Speaker 1: goes down. See also meme coin in the crypto space.

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Speaker 1: So that's one theory. The other theory is that there

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Speaker 1: was just a lot of excitement about an AI company

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Speaker 1: being listed amongst a certain group of people, and that

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Speaker 1: those people all wanted to get in, and then once

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Speaker 1: they kind of saw the broader investor reaction, that they

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Speaker 1: decided not to.

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Speaker 4: Be in anymore. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know where the truth is, whether

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Speaker 1: that's somewhere between those or if it's something completely different,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, that's the chatter.

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Speaker 3: So it's currently it shares a suspended and this is

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Speaker 3: going on for a couple of weeks now, I guess,

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Speaker 3: So what do you think the future of this company is.

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Speaker 3: Obviously the consulting business is now what's it called now

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Speaker 3: Possible AI Possible AI, So that has been effectively delisted.

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Speaker 3: That is now just a private entity who's running that?

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Speaker 1: So that is run by Nissa Waters, who was part

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Speaker 1: of the founding team. She was brought into being a

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Speaker 1: I to run the consulting basically, and so she's essentially

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Speaker 1: continuing on with that under the new name.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess is a possibility that the thing

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Speaker 3: just delists. I mean, because it's so concentrated in ownership,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't have huge ramifications for a lot of shareholders

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Speaker 3: who have come on in the last year anyway. So

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Speaker 3: maybe the tidiest thing is if the management team and

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Speaker 3: if there's dispute as to what the future of the

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Speaker 3: business is. I mean, this was a collection rather a

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Speaker 3: peculiar collection of things. You had these schools, this logistics company,

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Speaker 3: you had this sort of R and D lab for

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Speaker 3: AI projects. You had the consulting business. I think at

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Speaker 3: the start of where everyone was thinking how is this

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Speaker 3: going to work? And clearly it sort of didn't work

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Speaker 3: particularly well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not so far. I mean, and to be clear,

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Speaker 1: there is some really strong ip within the business potentially,

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Speaker 1: and I refer to it in the story. We talked

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Speaker 1: about it earlier. It's called Project tree House. I don't

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Speaker 1: know what the final name will be, but I'll give

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Speaker 1: a quick description of what it is. So think about

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Speaker 1: open AI's Operator if you're familiar with that. We talked

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Speaker 1: about it previously. It's an AI agent. You can ask

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Speaker 1: it to do something. I'm going on a trip to Paris,

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Speaker 1: book me accommodation and some restaurants. Here's the budget. It

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Speaker 1: goes off and it does it. Open Operator wants to

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Speaker 1: do it by the agent actually navigating websites. And I

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Speaker 1: think I mentioned last week or whenever we talked about

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Speaker 1: Operator that that's kind of a little bit inefficient for

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Speaker 1: a machine to try and operate a website that is

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Speaker 1: designed for humans. What Being AI wants to do is

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Speaker 1: create a place where all of the APIs from different

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Speaker 1: companies come in together so that agents can come in

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Speaker 1: and use more native machine.

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Speaker 4: Language to deliver on what you actually want.

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Speaker 1: So you say, I want go to Paris, give me

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Speaker 1: some accommodation, Da da da, and it goes off into

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Speaker 1: the Project Treehouse World, and it can very quickly go, Hey,

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Speaker 1: all your businesses out there with your APIs plugged into

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Speaker 1: this system. What are some places? Okay, those look good?

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Speaker 1: What's the budget, what's the guidelines? Okay, yep, yep, yep. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I found this. Do you want me to book this

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Speaker 1: for you? And it's much quicker and much more efficient

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Speaker 1: than trying to do it by navigating human centric websites.

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Speaker 1: Essentially how he describes it as he kind of says,

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Speaker 1: Google at the moment is where everybody goes to find

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Speaker 1: to get access to companies and applications. For the most part,

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Speaker 1: what we want to be is kind of the Google

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Speaker 1: for AI agents all in their native language.

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Speaker 4: Well, great idea.

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Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of players that will be

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Speaker 3: going after this space, so it's going to be super competitive.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 3: At the moment, the attention has been on the creators

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Speaker 3: of the agents, so the salesforces, the Microsoft's, the Oracles

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Speaker 3: and out who have all suddenly got these agents. But

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Speaker 3: the key thing is will the integration making them useful

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Speaker 3: cross app and we were at the Samsung launch recently

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Speaker 3: off their new phone, and they were really raving about

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Speaker 3: this cross app interaction where Spotify and your text messages

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Speaker 3: and Google Maps, you can basically speak to Gemini on

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Speaker 3: your phone and mention all of these things and it

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Speaker 3: will pull information from across these apps and put it

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Speaker 3: in one place. To date, that's been hard to do,

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Speaker 3: and this is what the sort of the agent world

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Speaker 3: is bringing us towards. But to do that you have

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Speaker 3: to have this seamless integration in the background. It shares

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Speaker 3: all of that information, all of those inventories, all of

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Speaker 3: the booking systems. That is incredibly complex. So I like

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Speaker 3: where they're going with that, but boy, they've got I

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Speaker 3: think a big hill to climb, particularly now when there

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Speaker 3: certainty about their listing and their ability to raise capital

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Speaker 3: to fund this. There's definitely a question mark over there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, as there are a lot of question marks, like

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Speaker 1: you know, will essentially that technology be spun up into

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Speaker 1: a new private company that you know, that's one possibility

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Speaker 1: that will go to perhaps seek VC or whatever else.

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Speaker 1: But I think also that does there is the barrier

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Speaker 1: of the AI agent contextual understanding between it and it's

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Speaker 1: human as well. So it is also going to rely

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Speaker 1: on a little bit more progress from the AI LLM

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Speaker 1: based companies to actually make sure that they're delivering something

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Speaker 1: that is capable of reaching the level that is required.

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Speaker 1: Then there's the privacy, and then there's the you know,

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Speaker 1: credentials and logging in and using payment systems and stuff

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Speaker 1: like that.

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Speaker 4: So there is still a fair bit of.

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Speaker 1: Integration work I would imagine to go. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: a big bet on a future that a lot of

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Speaker 1: people are saying is likely, and if they can get

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Speaker 1: in there at the right time, with the right tech,

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Speaker 1: into the right people, with the right funding, it has

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Speaker 1: a possibility to be very successful. And McDonald said he's

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Speaker 1: been working extremely hard on this with his you know,

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Speaker 1: like I said, with the CTO up to three am

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Speaker 1: coding to try and build this thing within ten months.

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Speaker 1: So I don't want to downplay the work that's being done.

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Speaker 1: But amid that, you've also then had the tension of

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Speaker 1: the majority shareholders who are out there saying, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we've got a show shareholder value.

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Speaker 4: We've got these.

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Speaker 1: Logistics company that we said we were going to improve

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Speaker 1: with AI.

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Speaker 4: We've got these schools.

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Speaker 1: And we said we were going to improve the world

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Speaker 1: of education with AI, so we need to get going

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Speaker 1: on that as well. And the consultancies maybe not playing

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Speaker 1: out how he wanted it to, and it.

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Speaker 3: Sounds like two different businesses.

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Speaker 1: Really, yeah, I think that was the case. And McDonald

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Speaker 1: is a tech guy. He wanted to build, he wanted

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Speaker 1: to focus on what he was doing, so to be

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Speaker 1: the to be named as the group CEO, maybe that

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Speaker 1: was a slight miscalculation. That's my perception. I can't say

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Speaker 1: that as a fact. So it's complicated because I think

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Speaker 1: there has been a little bit of people have spoken

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Speaker 1: about being AI very pejorative and in conversations sometimes, and

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Speaker 1: I think that you know we're actually talking about is

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Speaker 1: people within an organization fundamentally, and while the organization may

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Speaker 1: have had its troubles, it may not have been, you know,

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Speaker 1: run as smoothly as you would expect. McDonald's view was that, actually,

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Speaker 1: that's just the way that it is in startups sometimes,

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Speaker 1: is that you have these disagreements and you have these

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Speaker 1: kind of you have to work through these problems, and

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Speaker 1: you have to pivot and you have to make decisions.

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Speaker 4: And the problem was they were on the ends of X.

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Speaker 1: They were a public company, and so it made everything

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Speaker 1: a lot more magnified.

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Speaker 3: It's a pivotal time they've really got a make or

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Speaker 3: break situation ahead of them.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of decisions to be made, I think,

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Speaker 1: and there's probably working through it diligently at the moment,

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Speaker 1: and I think I'm going to hopefully speak to them

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Speaker 1: more once the once they've worked through those things and

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Speaker 1: those decisions have been made, So we'll keep an eye

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Speaker 1: on Being AI and see where that startup story goes.

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Speaker 1: If you're interested in learning more about the history Being AI,

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Speaker 1: you can check out some.

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Speaker 4: Of my previous reporting.

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Speaker 3: Links are in the show notes at Businessdesk, dot co,

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Speaker 3: dot MS. You just check out the podcast section.

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Speaker 1: Form follow the Business at Tech on your podcast platform

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Speaker 1: of choice.

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Speaker 4: We're also streaming on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Get in touch with your feedback and topic suggestions. We're

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Speaker 3: on LinkedIn and blue Sky.

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Speaker 1: Don't forget to catch us on Sunday for that interview

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Speaker 1: with Rowan Simpson.

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Speaker 3: See you then,