Kairos (KAIROS) ICO Analysis: A Blockchain-based Facial Recognition and AI Platform

Executive Summary

Project Description

The world is moving away from the era of passwords and PINs and it is gradually moving towards biometric sensors: fingerprints and facial recognition. Some of the latest smartphones in the market have biometric technology and estimates say that the facial recognition market alone will be worth $7.6 billion by 2022.

Kairos wants to play a crucial role in the growth of the market and they aim to do this by integrating their existing facial recognition technology into the blockchain. They plan to do this with 3 core features, named ‘Human Analytics’. They — the features — will allegedly help Kairos gather unique and practical insights about people and their interactions while they are out in the world. To do this, the features may either be used separately or together. The 3 features are: identity, emotions, and demographics. Identity will be used to search for and authenticate faces, emotions will be used to measure mood and sentiments, and demographics will be used to collate data according to demographics like age, gender, and ethnicity.

According to the Kairos team, the features will not only collect valuable customer data, it will analyze how they feel and react in different situations. Consequently, using the Human Analytics tools outlined above, businesses and corporations will supposedly be able to predict to a certain accuracy the tendencies and preferences of their customers.

By combining their tech with blockchain technology, the Kairos project hopes to open their business up to new opportunities. The proprietary database currently in use is to be migrated to a Blockchain-enabled architecture; they hope this will give their users the opportunity to form communities and benefit from Kairos’ database to a larger extent. The platform is also expected to benefit from this; the blockchain’s architecture will likely help foster organic growth, drawing users with the promise of incentivization.

There will reportedly be two tokens on the Kairos platform, KAIROS and FACE. KAIROS is a security token and it will provide accredited investors with a stake in the company. FACE, on the other hand, is a utility/identity token, and it will power the platform like GAS powers Ethereum. GAS is also expected to reward users that share their personal info, Facebook data, etc.. The brands that seek this data have to pay for access, and the proceeds will be shared via Kairos’ customer reward program.

Existing Product

The company, Kairos, was founded in 2012, and it serves a diverse customer base including IBM, BBC, and IKEA. The project has already acquired IMRSV, an emotional analysis company that owns a tech that is expected to improve the ‘Human analytics’ tool. This is a demo where Kairos analyzes a person’s ethnic makeup.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be 150 million KAIROS tokens and the project hopes to raise $30 million for 40.4% of the total. The tokens will primarily be sold to accredited investors, but there are plans in motion to sell to non-accredited investors through intermediaries. The project has already raised over $10 million during presale. According to Kairos’ Whitepaper, the remaining 59.6% of the tokens will be shared as follows:

• 2.1%: Employee Stock Options.
• 6.9%: Series A Shareholders.
• 22.7%: Series B Shareholders.
• 26.9% Common Shareholders.
• 1.0%: Common Stock Warrants.

The KAIROS tokens sold to investors and the portion that goes to the project’s advisors and ICO consultants will be locked for 6 months. Employee tokens — including the portion earmarked for the CEO and C-Suite — will be vested for 3 years with a one-year cliff.

For every KAIROS token bought, investors will be given allegedly 1 FACE token. In total, there will be 300 million FACE tokens; according to the project, FACE tokens will have no lock-up period and will be traded on multiple exchanges.

Price Per Token

1 KAIROS = 1 FACE = $0.20.

Important Dates

Kairos’ ICO is expected to take place sometime in April 2018, and approved investors can join their waitlist.

Marketing Power

As at the time this post was published, Kairos had over 13,700 members on their Telegram channel, 4200+ followers on Twitter, and over 1,200 subscribers on Facebook.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

Business experts

Brian Brackeen, Founder & CEO

• Senior Project Manager at Apple Inc. for over a year.
• Senior Managing Consultant at IBM for over 7 years.

Ben Virdee-Chapman, CDO

• Co-founder of The Sprezz — a consultancy firm for technology and entertainment companies — for 5 years.

Herwig Gaston Konings, Advisor

• Founding Partner at Security Token Partners — a firm that provides capital investment and advises companies through the entire ICO process — for 3 months.
• Managing Director of Miami Venture Capital Association for a year.
• Co-Founder & CEO of InvestReady, an accredited investor verification service, for over 4 years.

Mario Pazos, Advisor

• Founding Partner at Security Token Partners (see above) for 3 months.
• Vice President of MasterCard for almost 2 years.
• Senior Vice President of Citi for over a year.

Steve O’Hara, Advisor

• Board Member at several firms, including Sunnen Products Company, New World Angels and Clarke Industrial Engineering.
• President & CEO of Angelica Corporation, a firm that provides laundry and linen management services to hospitals, for 7 years.
• Chairman & CEO of Rawlings Sporting Goods, a sports brand, for almost 5 years.

Target market experts

Kairos company has been in the biometrics market for over 6 years, and they have an impeccable record along with notable partnerships. To make their product even better, they paid $2.7 million to purchase emotional analysis company, IMRSV (see above).

Marketing experts

Max Porter, VP Sales

• Business Development at CallFire, a telecommunication firm, for 3 years.
• Senior Account Executive at GoGuardian, a firm that provides online security for schools and their students, for 2 years.

Mario Pazos, Advisor

• Senior Marketing Manager at Sony for over 7 years.

Legal experts

No team member with legal expertise.

Software engineering experts

Brian Brackeen, Founder & CEO

• Kronos Solution Architect at several firms, including Stop & Shop, Ahold and Infocrossing.
• Technical Consultant at ADP, a global provider of cloud-based Human Capital Management solutions, for 9 years.
• Senior Managing Consultant at IBM (see above).
• Senior Project Manager at Apple (see above).

Cole Calistra, CTO

• Enterprise Architect at BJ’s Wholesale Club, a pre-eminent membership retailer, for over 2 years.
• Software Developer at Ahold, one of the world’s largest food retail groups, for 13 years.

Blockchain development experts

No team member with blockchain development expertise.

Token sale structure

No team member with token sale structure expertise. However, two of their advisors — Herwig Konings and Mario Pazos — are founding partners at Security Token Partners, a firm that provides capital investment and counsels companies through their ICO processes. Mario Pazos has also been an advisor to the WaBi project.

Token economics

Same as above.

Conclusion

Strengths

• Kairos is an established company (founded in 2012).
• Strong team (CEO worked at Apple, IBM and ADP).
• Acquisition of strategic partners (IMRSV).
• VC-backed.

Potential risks for investors

• Considerably high hard cap.
• They face stiff competition from big tech companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, among many others).
• No apparent blockchain development expertise on the team.

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Disclaimers:

• Nothing written in this article is a legal or an investment advice.
• Information is provided on a best-effort basis and is subject to change without prior notice. Be sure to verify everything you read with a project team.

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The analysis was produced by Research Center team members: Alexander Hinz, Mark Jedd, Eugene Tartakovsky.

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