All right, welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom here at our Worldwide Broadcast Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I'm Steve Darling from Proactive with another live stream event, and this time with Nextech3D.ai as we take a look at some technological advancements the company has made over the last little while. This obviously after the announcement recently of them going on to Amazon Seller Central and what that all means for the company. Lots happening, so let's get started and bring in Evan Gappelberg. He is the CEO of Nextech3D.ai. And Evan, it's great to see you again. How are you?
I'm good. I'm good. Great to be back with you, Steve.
Yeah, it's been a whirlwind of activity over the last little while, as you've mentioned. You're on Amazon Seller Central. There's lots of things going on. But this is more of a technical look at some of the advancements the company has made.
Yeah, so I wanted to take a minute, Steve, to address our shareholders about what's gone on in the past two years, really, and what to expect as we go forward into the future, and then, of course, we're going to do a demo of our real groundbreaking AI technology, but I want to thank everybody for joining today with me, and I really want to start by acknowledging the current challenges that we've been facing together as shareholders.
I know that many of you are valued investors, have seen significant losses with Nextech3D.ai. Believe me when I say that I feel the weight of that very, very deeply. Over the past two years, we have taken dramatic steps to navigate this period by reducing our headcount quite dramatically from over 100 people two years ago and a burn of CAD 3 million per month to about a dozen now.
A dozen, that's right, about a dozen employees, talented, committed individuals, and our burn now is about CAD 100,000, so if you think about that, we've been very busy positioning ourselves for a brighter future by reducing our headcount and our burn, which allows us to execute on our future vision for the remainder of 2024, 2025, and beyond, and we have been very fortunate, as I've mentioned a few times, with our shares for services program, just so that it's in perspective for everyone.
In 2023, we generated around CAD 2.5 million in that program, and in 2024, about another CAD 2.5 million, so that's about CAD 5 million that we've been able to generate through that shares for services program, which really has kept us going while we work on getting cash flow positive. Today, though, I really want to make you think about the future.
I want you to think about the future with confidence and with optimism, which is really where I am today. The journey we're on, it's not without hurdles. It's filled with lots of challenges, but also immense opportunity. And I'll address the past, but more importantly, I'll lay out our vision for the future and why I firmly believe that Nextech is poised for incredible growth.
I want to talk again for a few more minutes before we get started with the demo about the 3D modeling market. We partnered with Amazon, as Steve mentioned. It was two years ago. Our expectations for growth were quite high, as they should have been. I mean, they are the biggest player in the E-Com Marketplace. And we landed them as a client. We've generated about $5 million in revenue over the last two years.
But the markets don't always move as fast as we hope. The adoption of 3D models in E-Commerce has been slower than anticipated. And this has impacted our revenue growth. I mean, there's no doubt about it that we kind of have been flatlining in terms of our revenue growth. That said, this isn't a story of failure. It's a story of a market still in its early stages. We are pioneers. We've been talking about it for five years.
But it's actually just getting started for Amazon. And Amazon remains and will continue to remain a critical partner. And we're confident that as the adoption rate picks up, and I believe it will, our foundational work will position us as a leader in the 3D modeling for E-Commerce space. We're playing the long game here. And we're ready for when this market really takes off.
Now, let's get to today and to the future. Today, we're going to talk about FOTOgpt. It's really ChatGPT for product photography. These images that we're going to show you on screen in just a minute are not random AI-generated images. These are images of products, specifically E-Commerce products, so this is the wheelhouse that we've been playing in, and we've been feeding our AI our expertise in making 3D models, and now the AI has gotten good enough to be able to create images that are quite spectacular, photorealistic. The shadow, the lighting, the image, it's just on another level. There's competition out there, which is actually healthy, but our technology is head and shoulders above the competition, so when we think about the future, we are pivoting to the future, a future that's incredibly bright.
And if you think about FOTOgpt, which, again, we're going to demo a little bit, it's a fully AI-powered photography and soon-to-be video studio. If you think about all the conversations I've had with you guys, it's been about getting our 3D modeling to be 100% done by AI. And we really have not been able to accomplish that. That's not been something that anyone else has been able to accomplish either. But we have been able to accomplish FOTOgpt, which is 100% AI-generated photography. So if we look forward, in December of 2024, we are launching FOTOgpt, the API, which enables seamless integration for businesses around the world to use our technology. It's like ChatGPT, except for photos. And so if you think about how ChatGPT took off, we see a potential viral run with our FOTOgpt.
And then in Q1 2025, the FOTOgpt app will be launched. That's going on the App Store, bringing cutting-edge AI photography to consumers and creators alike. These launches really do mark a new growth phase for Nextech and Toggle. We're already receiving very positive feedback from early adopters. The demand is real. With that, I want to go into showing you the tech. I want to do a little presentation, a little screen share. I'm first going to show you what we have today, what we've built. Then I'm going to go into a short deck, which is going to have a view into the future. Without further ado, let's go into Toggle. Steve, are you able to see my screen?
Not yet. No, we just got to—there it is. We've got it now. Yeah, you're good to go. Just make it large size. You're good to go.
OK.
We'll make it full screen.
Great. Thank you. So I'm in Toggle. This is our AI studio that's now being turned into FOTOgpt. I'm just going to click on one of the 3D models that we've created. And again, what our platform does, which other platforms don't do, is our platform works with 3D models and 2D images. So it works with 3D and 2D. The benefit of the 3D model is if you look at this, you get a 360 view.
With a photo, it would just be one view. So with this 360 view, I can open up my photography studio. And it pops a screen, which all of a sudden allows me to choose my file type. So PNG or JPEG. I'm going to pick a JPEG. My crop preference, rectangle or square. I'm going to keep rectangle. Resolution, I always like to go 4K, which is the highest. Choose a background.
I could do a transparent background or a colored background, and then we're going to have lifestyle images, but for now, I'm just going to do a colored background. I'm going to do something. I'm just going to pick yellow as a random color because it's bright, but obviously, you can pick any color you want, including custom colors. Now, here's where it gets interesting.
We've created the ability to have your frame size match Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Etsy, so again, we're making photos right now using our AI photography studio from our 3D model, and you're able to take those photos and import them onto not just Amazon and Shopify and Etsy, but also social networks, including Facebook, Facebook cover, Facebook story, Facebook shop ad, Instagram story, Instagram Reel, Instagram square, TikTok video, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube. It's all pre-programmed to size.
So you pick what you want to create based on what platform you're creating it for. And then if you look at the bottom of the screen here, the popular position. So our platform automatically takes eight photos of the 3D model. Now, I don't need eight photos for this presentation. But I'm going to delete most of these. I'm just going to use one. Maybe I'll use this side one over here. So I'm just unchecking all these. And so now we have the yellow background, which is quite amazing. And there is the chair. These are the photos. And you could see all these different angles that I've been able to select. Actually, it just made the eight different photos, even though I unselected them. So I got to tell the tech team. It's a little glitch.
But if you look at these photos, that was instant. We have the Toggle watermark on the background so that people can't just take these. They have to pay for them. But the point is that these can now be downloaded and used in your marketing. And these photos are incredible. I mean, it's super easy to do. And so what's coming is when you're going to be able to put this chair into a scene where I'm going to show you a video, actually. And we'll get into--I'm going to stop sharing.
Yeah.
Yeah. Is it still sharing, guys, or no?
Yeah, it's just on you now, Evan.
It's just on me. OK, good. So Steve, did you have any questions, anything that popped into your mind while you were watching?
Yeah. So maybe the part about the usages of it. Who are your main customers? Who are you looking at to potentially do what you just did there? Because it's not for everybody, but it will be for a large amount of people. So who are you looking for?
So it kind of is for everyone, if you think about it, because you saw how easy it was. It was just click. So you don't need any skills. So in that sense, it is for everyone.
I'm good.
But in terms of business use case, if you think about anybody that has any business, they all have products. And they all need photography for their products. And so, like I said, we can do this with 3D models. But we also do it with 2D as well. So you could take a picture on your phone, load it onto the platform. And the magic is we could change the background, cut out the background. So if you take a picture in your office or at home of your product, previously, you needed a light box. You needed lighting to create a white background. I've done that before. It's a pain in the butt.
And it takes a long time. This allows you on the fly to take a picture, load it onto the platform. The background automatically gets cut out. So all you have is the product shot. Then you replace the background with whatever color and soon-to-be lifestyle image that you want, making it look professional studio quality is the key. Lots and lots of applications, Steve, if you think about how many photos get generated on a regular basis. I'm going to now go into our deck, which, tell me when you see.
Just one more question real quick before you do that. How do you get to those people? What's sort of the plan for getting to those people?
So we're working with influencers. We're working with the platforms themselves, like Amazon. We are actually going to be launching FOTOgpt on the Amazon marketplace. That's in motion right now so that all the Amazon merchants, you saw the Amazon logo. So they'll be able to create photos for their listings using FOTOgpt. So again, this is product photography, custom design. And what's so unique about it is that we are creating the shadows and the lighting and the crispness of a professional photography studio that you just don't get from snapping a photo and/or even using a light box and taking a picture yourself.
It's very hard to do, which is why people spend thousands of dollars. The average spend on a website for product photography, Steve, is $25,000. With our tech, it would be $20 a month. If you're a professional, maybe you're going to pay $50 a month. But it's that big a difference versus paying $25,000. So are you able to see my screen?
No, we're still on you. We're going to put it back up now.
Oh, OK. Tell me when you could see.
There you are. We've got it now. We've got FOTOgpt.
OK, great. So FOTOgpt transforming product photography. So we see this as a first-mover advantage in a multi-billion dollar market that is absolutely exploding. Everyone knows that AI is the future. There's no doubt about it. The genie's out of the bottle. So you have a number of applications within the AI marketplace. You have text generation, ChatGPT. You have image generation, FOTOgpt, video generation, which FOTOgpt is going to offer in Q2 2025, audio generation, and other applications.
So it's a massive market. Today, it's growing at around 38% compounded annual growth rate, expected to be around $60 billion by 2030. 75%, and this is a key statistic, of online buying decisions rely on photos. So if you think of all the online shopping that's going on and that's going to continue, photography is going to be a very big component.
And so bringing AI-driven 3D and 2D lifestyle images directly to businesses is positioning us as pioneers and really offering a unique capability that very few competitors provide. If you look at the evolution of photography, it began in the early 20th century. Old movies, you saw these big kind of clunking cameras. There used to be a Sears catalog back in the day. I mean, it's important to put things in perspective, Steve, where things have come from.
Even when I was growing up, there were these massive catalogs that would show up with pictures in them. And it was kind of pretty cool because you don't really see all those pictures back then anyway. So now you had the rise of commercial studios in the 1950s and 1960s with film. And you had studios set up, film cameras, advanced lighting, and you had high-quality images.
The digital revolution began in the 1990s. Kodak got unseated from their throne, and all of a sudden, there's this transition from film to digital cameras, and then you had instant previews. Photoshop was introduced, which allows you to retouch and manipulate images, and then today, we're at really the dawn of a new era. The future of product photography is AI, and it really is important to differentiate between random images and product photography.
We live and breathe product photography. We're not making random images, so there's a bunch of companies on the screen here. These are all bigger players in the space, and we are going to market, and we're going to be part of this group of companies, which collectively is worth many billions of dollars, so there's a big opportunity there. We're revolutionizing the future of E-Commerce visual content.
So it's a platform that lets you create stunning professional-grade lifestyle and E-Commerce images in seconds from any 3D object file or, and this is important, Steve, 2D image on your phone. You just take a picture without ever stepping a foot in a photography studio, without having to hire anybody. That's what FOTOgpt is. Now, I'm going to show a little video. And this is the sneak peek at the future. And I'm going to try and narrate a little bit.
But you're going to create captivating lifestyle images from your 3D models. Using FOTOgpt's 3D product studio, you simply upload your model, describe. So there'll be a text prompt, just like ChatGPT, describing the ideal setting in a few words. And our AI brings it to life with high quality. So it's ChatGPT with the photography piece as well. I'm going to just turn the volume.
All this should look very familiar because this is what we just demoed. But now we're about to see the future and where we're taking this. OK, so this is what's not on the platform that I wasn't demoing for you is a text box.
Right.
Design a dark gaming room with a neon cyan and pink lighting for a cyberpunk vibe. Keep the decor minimal for a clean, futuristic look. That is going to be the future of this platform. And this is really the FOTOgpt. So that was pretty cool. You saw four different images pop up. So it kind of gives you options that you can choose from. So it doesn't stick you with just one. It gives you four different. Now, if you look at the picture quality here, it's off the charts.
I mean, this is as good as photography gets. You're talking about an AI-generated scene with the proper shadows, the proper lighting. You cannot tell that this wasn't done in a studio. I mean, it looks so futuristic that you might be like, wow, that's so futuristic. It's got to be AI. But other than that, it's pretty amazing. I mean, to me, I'm blown away that this is just AI creating this, Steve.
Yeah, well, it sure brings.
Yeah.
Yes, someone brought up on the site, this is mainly for Toggle, correct? But the two companies are connected, obviously.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so basically, Toggle and Nextech, yeah, are connected, but yeah, this is happening in Toggle, and obviously, Nextech is participating in building this and launching it and marketing it, so it's really a joint effort, so what you just saw was a 3D, and this is really the same thing, only it's 2D, so it's very important that our investors understand that we're stepping out of the 3D world, which is a niche market that's growing, but it's still small relative to 2D photography, which is just massive, so I'm just going to play a similar video that shows you the 2D image and the way the platform works with that. Again, it's the AI text box that you type in what you want, and then look at that, Steve. I mean.
So just a case scenario here. Normally, someone would have to take a product outside and just throw something in behind. So just the speed, is it what you're talking about? And the execution of it is very seamless and inexpensive?
Yeah, the speed is instant. I mean, you're literally sitting at your desk. I mean, you take a photo. You don't have to be in a studio, and the AI is able to create a scene for you, and you're able to upload that onto your website all within minutes, as opposed to if you've ever done any of these things, it takes weeks and costs thousands of dollars because you need a professional. If you try and do this at home, you simply can't. You end up spending half your day, and it just doesn't come out, so this is professional-grade photography in minutes for pennies on the dollar. It is game-changing technology, truly is, for product photography. I'll just finish the video real quick.
OK.
Yep. So.
Yeah. So Evan, maybe you could sort of, oh, you got some more slides here you want to do?
Yeah, a couple more slides, Steve. Just wanted to talk a little bit more about the competitive advantage that we have, realistic shadows and lighting. That's something that our competitors can't do. If you look at the textures, the detail, the customization, I mean, if you look at the couch and the scene with the wood floor, it just looks like a picture. It looks pretty normal.
That couch is actually the main event. That's the thing you're selling. But you see the lighting coming in from the windows, and you see how it hits the wall, and it hits the floor. Those are the things that only we can do. That's really the differentiator. You would see something similar where they wouldn't have that lighting bouncing off the wall, the floor. It would just be like one-color wall kind of thing.
And when you start to move up the food chain in the world of photography, people know the difference. The average consumer isn't really sure maybe what they're looking at. But people that are looking to replace current technology or current photographers, they look for every detail. Here's an example, Steve, where this is a treadmill. You see the treadmill on the left. And you don't see a leg coming out of the back of that treadmill.
If you look at the color and you look at the lighting, the first treadmill is a competitor. They created a modification of the product, which is a no-no. There's no realistic shadows or lighting. And it's only 2K resolution. FOTOgpt preserves the texture, details, photorealistic shadows and lighting at 4K. So it just looks way better, way more realistic than the competition. And that's a critical competitive advantage that we have.
Here's a ring. You could see the ring is, again, a 3D model that we created. Look at that background where you see the lighting. You see the water droplets. It's all AI-generated. It's amazing. Here's another scene. You have a chandelier. There's a light, a couch. Again, the lighting coming in from the window, hitting the curtain, hitting the wall, hitting the floor, hitting the picture. That's all AI-generated. Here's a watch. You could see the lighting and the shine. I mean, this is just so crisp, so picture-perfect. And yet, it's being done by an AI algorithm. It's hard to believe, Steve.
Yeah, that's great.
So FOTOgpt, it's really about speed, scale, low cost. Businesses don't wait. They create. They don't wait for the photography to get done. They create it themselves. You don't need to have any expertise, which means you could hire somebody for minimum wage, essentially, to create this for you, as opposed to paying a photographer $75 or $100 an hour or whatever it is.
So the radically reduced turnaround time, scalability for large product catalogs. So you could do massive amounts of products and no dependence on specialized skill, which I actually think is one of the biggest benefits. I mean, there's so many. But you just don't need a photographer. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's going to disrupt photographers' income because you're not going to have to pay. The same thing happened to copy editors when ChatGPT showed up on the scene.
And the same thing now is happening with photography. So right now, the AI can create a gradient background, a white background, infographics, white with shadow, transparent, lifestyle images. I mean, it's just getting started, Steve. And this is going to extend to video as well. So our business model, and this is really important for our investors to understand, we're launching in December a seamless integration with FOTOgpt's API.
So you can access all this technology, all the advanced AI-driven image generation tools through an easy-to-use API, integrate with any platform. And it really maximizes the efficiency by automating image generation tasks. So if you think of any kind of marketing agency, Steve, if you think of any E-Commerce business or site, they can plug into our API, pay us a monthly subscription of $20 or $50 a month, and go to work. It's really that simple.
And then in December, actually in Q1 2025, the next era of photography is FOTOgpt as a mobile app. So in addition to the API, which is launching next month, we're going to introduce a mobile app for businesses on the go. So that really gives you the ability to take a picture and have it all kind of on one device. So you're not uploading from your phone to your desktop or laptop. You're using your phone and taking the picture on your phone and then using FOTOgpt. And so we're just getting started, Steve. Our mission is to continually push the boundaries of AI-powered image generation, making high-quality visual content more accessible and integrated for businesses worldwide. And we're very, very excited about this. And that's it. That's our presentation.
Yeah. So a couple of questions here from people in the audience, if that's OK, just real quick stuff. You're obviously going to get the ones about the share price. But you've dealt with that a bit earlier. You talked about that off the top of that so people can go back and take a look at that. They want to know, obviously, the announcement about Amazon Seller Central and what that sort of means for the company as far as Amazon suggesting that Nextech is one of their suppliers.
Yeah. So we're getting some inbound business from the Amazon listing. It doesn't feel like a flood of business. But we are getting some business. I would say there's an uptick really inside and outside of Amazon in the 3D modeling market. In general, people are looking for 3D models. We're talking to enterprise companies outside of Amazon that want to turn their CAD files into 3D.
And they really love the photography piece of it, where they could take their CAD files and use our photography studio to convert all those CAD files into beautiful photos that they can then use for marketing. So we're seeing a pretty broad group of businesses that are looking for 3D. There's really nothing, let's just say, new happening there. The new thing is the photography studio. The 3D business, as I said, it's moving slower than I anticipated. But we are positioned for the future as that business, as adoption continues to grow.
So will it be, Evan, somebody else wants to know sort of how the subscription model will work going forward and the fact that it could be used like on Instagram or other things like that, like those kind of platforms?
Yeah, exactly. So if anyone has ChatGPT, we're launching FOTOgpt as a free product to start. So we want it to go viral. We want it to go big. We're going to be hiring influencers. We're going to be marketing this aggressively. And so the idea is we're going to give it for free for 30 days and possibly 45 days so that people start using it just like they were using ChatGPT. And then they're going to stop being able to use it for free and have to subscribe. $20 a month is a ridiculously low price. It's hard for me to even agree to that. But that allows us to really capture a lot of customers very, very quickly. $50 a month would be for a power user, somebody who's, let's say, a marketing agency.
And we just see an enormous amount of usage and demand. Our costs are going to be fixed, so basically, our cost of running this platform and supplying this service is going to be fixed. I don't want to put a number out there just yet, but it's very, very low, and that allows us to be able to offer this very low price and really capture market share, but again, it's going to be like ChatGPT free, and then it turns into a subscription.
OK. Let's just, as we're wrapping up here, let's talk about sort of timelines again. You mentioned that this is all sort of launching in December, so maybe give everyone an update on where you see the rest of the year working into then into 2025.
Yeah, so I want to say to our investors that when you look at 2025 and beyond, I mean, the future from where I'm sitting is quite bright. I want to be clear, though. The road has been tough. I mean, it's undeniable. But the destination is worth it. Markets like AI photography and video are growing at a breakneck speed. And we're investing, and we've been investing heavily to ensure that we capture a significant share. This isn't just a pivot. It's an expansion of our vision. By staying the course, you will be part of a company that not only is adapting but thriving in the face of challenges. Before we wrap up, I do want to express gratitude for your continued trust and support. We're building something special here.
We've always been focused on building things that are pioneering, things that are bleeding edge. Your patience, I believe, will be rewarded. As we approach these new milestones in December and again in Q1, our team is fully committed to delivering value for our investors, our partners, our customers. Let's just look ahead together. The future of Nextech is bright, and I couldn't be more confident because we do have the shares for services, which allows us to continue to move forward without having to really raise any additional capital. We did do a small capital raise, but that's in the rearview mirror as we move, and that was really at the suggestion of an investor, but we are self-sustaining with our shares for services, and we have a very, very bright future, I believe, with FOTOgpt.
All right. Evan, we'll leave it there. Thanks very much for the update. I know it's been a lot of hard work put into this. And hopefully, those folks that follow the company and others that are interested will take this and take a look at the technology that the company has created and also look forward to seeing that launch in December as well. It should be a good one. So really appreciate your time today. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Steve. We'll be back in December when we launch.
All right. Sounds good. There's Evan Gappelberg. He's the CEO of Nextech3D.ai. I'm Steve Darling with Proactive. Thanks for joining us once again for another livestream event. We'll see you soon.