Meta and Alphabet show interest in Australian technology company Ion Video
ASX-listed Australian technology company Ion Video is in discussions with two of the world’s largest tech companies – Meta and Alphabet – about its ground-breaking video technology.
In an ASX announcement today, Ion told the market that it has had initial discussions with senior executives across different departments within Meta Platforms and Alphabet.
“These conversations have been substantive in nature. Ion has responded to requests for further detailed information in respect of the company’s intellectual property,” the announcement said.
In addition, Ion said it has held initial meetings with senior executives of a number of other major global technology organisations.
The announcement said these organisations span a broad cross-section of the content and technology ecosystem, covering social media platforms, enterprise technology providers, streaming and broadcast infrastructure, and consumer electronics. This breadth of engagement reflects the genuinely cross-industry applicability of Ion’s patented technology.
The interest in Ion’s technology by such large companies is important as it shows the potential of Ion’s technology which it says solves one of the biggest structural limitations of the internet: video’s incompatibility with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The issue for AI is that it can analyse a video and identifying objects, scenes or timestamps but in a major limitation it cannot easily assemble new video experiences from existing content. Any modification requires editing and re-rendering, which creates new files and drives significant storage, compute and workflow costs.
Ion’s breakthrough centres on treating video as a single, fixed file, with its patented technology separating the internal structure of the video from the raw audio and visual data that make up the content.
Basically, it turns video from a static file into a programmable data format. It means AI can treat video more like text or code enabling it to compose, personalise and generate dynamically.
Ion Chief Innovation Officer Finbar O’Hanlon (pictured) stressed in the announcement that no commercial agreements, licensing arrangements or partnership contracts have been signed or agreed.
“These engagements are at an early stage and there is no certainty that they will result in any formal arrangement,” O’Hanlon said.
He said during talks, organisations have:
- Attended face-to-face meetings with Ion to review in depth the technical detail of the Company’s technology and intellectual property
- Discussed preliminary commercial terms in respect to potential partnership deals
- Requested and received detailed technical documentation, including Ion’s technology white paper and patent specifications
- Requested supporting documentation of both the Company’s existing granted patent portfolio and its recently filed global patent
- Requested copies of the novelty search and freedom to operate reports associated with each of the Company’s patent families.
