Fresh from signing the first client to their Talking Head platform, artificial intelligence company Crowd Media (ASX: CM8) has showcased their latest metaverse integration while also announcing a bumper financial result. 

For the half year ended 31 December 2021, Crowd Media has returned to underlying profitability following a 3-year turnaround strategy after the Company last reported an underlying profit in 2018, before regulatory changes had an adverse impact on Crowd’s previous business model.

Remarkably, under some very stringent financial management to fund their research and development behind their Talking Head platform, Crowd has reported an EBITDA profit of $109k, returning to profitability from the $703k loss in the previous year. 

Making the turnaround even more impressive has been the elimination of debt from Crowd Media’s balance sheet where they have maintained revenue from their legacy mobile subscriptions business. Despite the division slashing jobs to cut costs early in the turnaround, the reliability of its revenue prompted Crowd to reactivate the division which acquired 310,000 new subscribers over the past six months. 

“Following our quarterly report, this half year report is another milestone that represents the fresh wind in Crowd’s journey. With positive EBITDA and operating cashflow, we are strongly positioned to pursue the development and drive the commercialization objectives of our new AI platform,” said Crowd Media CEO, Idan Schmorak. 

“We are growing our team responsibly, alongside strengthening our Subscription division to push the group forward.”

Alongside the uptick of subscribers, Crowd has flagged its intentions to integrate it’s Talking Head platform into the division, having rolled out several interactive demos of avatars that internet users can converse with in real time. 

The newest demo to be released by Crowd includes a billboard the Company owns in Decentraland where users can approach with their digital avatar, and converse with a Talking Head generated by the platform. In this example, the Talking Head is Astra – a fantasy character that offers small talk to collect information that is then analysed to provide a unique daily horoscope. 

The metaverse has been flagged for several months by Crowd Media as a target market for it’s conversational AI as part of their plans to work in the gaming/entertainment sector which is likely to include NFTs in some capacity.

Although they remain largely tight-lipped about prospective customers, the opportunity for gaming is enormous considering NPCs (non-playing characters) are a massive element of gaming in terms of dispensing goods, and providing instructions.

With a range of interactive demos now being showcased by Crowd across healthcare, education and entertainment, further commercial opportunities for their Talking Head platform are likely to be unlocked following Crowd’s debut at this week’s Telemedia 2022 conference in Barcelona

According to Emergen Research, the global metaverse market size was USD $47 billion in 2020 but is expected to reach USD $828 billion in 2028