One of the most concerning aspects of BrainChip right now isn’t the technology or even the lack of near term revenue it’s the consistently poor quality of communication coming from the company.
Shareholders should not have to interrogate announcements, trawl forums, or conduct independent internet searches just to understand what the company is doing. Clear, concise, unambiguous communication is not a high bar, particularly for a company that positions itself as a world leader in neuromorphic AI. Yet that is exactly what is missing.
The obvious question is: why hasn’t the board recognised that shareholder communication is woeful and needs urgent remediation? This is not a complex problem to diagnose or fix, but it first requires management to ask some very basic questions of itself:
Do shareholders believe our communication is fit for a supposed industry leader?
Is it clear, informative and unambiguous?
Is it within our power to improve it?
What are the benefits of doing so?
Why do shareholders continually seek more information?
Is that information available, and should we be distributing it proactively?
What makes this situation even more troubling is that the issue has already been acknowledged at the highest level. The Chairman himself has previously conceded that the company’s communication with shareholders has been inadequate and gave an undertaking that it would be improved. He has also publicly stated that “no one in the company is happy with the performance — no one.”
Those admissions matter. They confirm that shareholders are not imagining the problem, and that management is aware both of the performance issues and the communication shortcomings. Yet despite those acknowledgements and commitments, little has changed in practice.
These are not radical questions, they are fundamental governance questions. Yet the company appears unwilling to act on them. Instead, BrainChip increasingly comes across as arrogant and self important, showing little regard for its shareholder base. By refusing to self reflect and implement simple fixes, management continues down a path that actively fuels shareholder frustration and distrust.
This is clearly illustrated on this forum. There are two camps: one arguing reasonably that communication must improve, and another content to piece together fragments of information and conclude that “everything will be fine.” That latter approach is essentially an all or nothing strategy based on hope rather than evidence, and it mirrors the company’s own communication style far too closely.
The consequences are not trivial. Management’s ongoing commitment to a “minimal communication” approach is actively damaging the company’s reputation. More importantly, it is leading shareholders to question management’s collective ability to execute on the business plan. That is a serious red flag. It should be addressed head-on either by dispelling it with better transparency or by acknowledging weaknesses and demonstrating change.
Instead, we get silence.
There are also well known internal issues within the upper levels of the company. While internal conflict can occur in any organisation, it has happened repeatedly here. The centre of this universe remains the inventor of the technology and his long standing difficulty dealing with challenging personalities and situations. This isn’t speculation, it has been acknowledged internally. The fact that the founders do not even speak to one another should give shareholders pause. Don’t take my word for it, ask the company yourself and see what answer you get. It will likely be thin or deflective, but the question is worth asking.
Ultimately, BrainChip needs to wake up to the reality that it has eroded confidence, not just in its communication, but in its ability to execute. And if management cannot get something as basic as shareholder communication right, it is entirely reasonable to ask: what else isn’t working?
Fix it now Sean. Stop with the self sabotage and put fixes in place that shareholders deserve from a group of well paid public company employees!
