After a recent reverse listing transaction, the ‘Being AI’ group of companies (NZX: BAI) was acquired by Ascension Capital Limited (ACE) after shareholder approval on the 28th of March. Being AI claims to be “Orchestrating exponential transformation” in the AI space consulting companies with AI-powered solutions, with a development team focussing on research in areas like Zero-knowledge proofing, as well as a venture acceleration program currently developing in the education sector.
After an initial $0.030 per share listing, they quickly rose to a $0.11 per share high after increasing over 266.67% over the initial two-week period. They have since slid 24.54% to $0.083 in three days.
This initial bull period was strongly encouraged by the markets’ support, despite Being AI holding no publicly available proof of sales and suspicion from analysts like Clare Capital, who investigated where Being met the funding requirements ($10m NZD) for a listing on NZX.
This came from a combination of unrelated non-AI businesses (Send Global and AGE), which make up the majority of the company. Being AI was only launched six months ago, and as Clare Capital investigated, “As far as we can tell, has no revenue or customers” and is “essentially just an idea at this stage.”
So the question on everyone’s mind is; how did “just an idea” suddenly jump over 260%?
Some analysts believe this is due to the current hype in the market around AI, with OpenAI’s ongoing success with ChatGPT and the announcement of their new video generation software Sora, combined with NVIDIAs path to become one of the most powerful companies of our generation, AI is on the forefront of our minds. New Zealand doesn’t get much exposure to AI companies in our local NZX market, leading investors to seek international markets like NYSE to get their AI fix.
Being’s announcement likely excited a lot of curious investors who quickly wanted to invest in the company and make an easy profit. Google Trends shows search terms related to AI have significantly increased in recent years.
The problem is that, unlike OpenAI, which has made huge developments and is pioneering the LLM space, Being doesn’t seem to have everything to show yet.
Being AI chairman Sean Joyce recently spoke back against Clare Capitals’ report defending their business plan to use AI to transform companies.
With several legacy companies mainly rooted in education, Being does have a path to capitalise on this sector, New Zealand’s education system had an estimated $10.6bn value from IBISWorld in 2023. In the rapidly developing artificial intelligence industry, it isn’t a question of if we will integrate AI with education but when, and Being AI could be leading that race if what they purport to be doing is true.
Current BAI holders may be enjoying the comfortable reward of the initial bull run, but with sceptical analyst reports and a lack of case studies/real customers to show, Being has a lot to prove to keep investors onboard and avoid being branded as a retail pump-and-dump.
Stock traders beware, NZX has issued a Trade with Caution statement.