The Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN) share price is rebounding strongly from last week's selloff.
In afternoon trade, the semiconductor company's shares are up 14% to 28 cents.
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Why is the Brainchip share price rocketing?
Investors have been buying its beaten-down shares on Monday following the release of an announcement.
According to the release, Brainchip has been granted a new patent in Australia.
The company advised that patent AU2022287647 was granted on 04 May 2024 by IP Australia. It is considered by management to be a valuable intellectual property (IP) asset that facilitates low shot learning.
It highlights that the company's Akida IP and MetaTF tools seamlessly transform contemporary neural networks into event-based or spiking networks.
This patented technology synergises with the converted spiking networks, enabling the streamlined deployment of edge learning algorithms and unlocking use cases that conventional artificial intelligence (AI) tools or solutions cannot attain.
The claimed invention facilitates one/low shot learning. This means that already learned higher end features can be utilised when learning a new class with one or only a few samples of information in a supervised or semi-supervised way while retaining other neuron/classes.
The company explains that learning is performed by adding neurons to the final layer of a previously trained network to represent a new class, with the neural network weights of the added neuron being trained with only a few samples while the remainder of the network remains unchanged.
What could it be used for?
Management has highlighted a few areas in which it believes this technology could be used.
One is biometric face recognition. This would be by adding a new person's face as a new class without retraining the entire model.
It also believes it could be used in speech recognition. This would see it add new spoken words or commands to a pre-trained model without retraining the entire system.
A third use case could be anomaly detection in industrial systems. This would see it add a new class representing a site-specific anomaly without retraining the entire dataset.
Brainchip's under-fire CEO, Sean Hehir, appeared pleased with the news. He said:
This patent confirms our leadership in the field of one/low shot learning as an alternative to traditional machine learning processes, which are by contrast extremely inefficient, expensive and energy intensive. This patent illustrates why our neuromorphic technology is perfect for Edge AI applications where one/low shot learning, ultra-low power consumption and efficiency are key differentiators for customers seeking competitive advantages.
Following today's news, Brainchip's portfolio now comprises 20 issued patents. It also has 23 pending patent applications across various markets. Though, interestingly, this is down from 30 pending applications in December.
