Brand Engagement Network Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Brand Engagement Network's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 1 1 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Susan Zhu, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining Ben's Q4 and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are CEO Paul Che and CFO and COO Waleed Kiari. The company's Q4 financial results were disseminated prior to this call and are available on the Investor Relations website at www.investor.bendinc.ai. During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, including statements about our business outlook, strategies, and long-term goals. These comments are based on management's plans, predictions, and expectations as of today, which may change over time. The company's actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties. for more information about the risks and uncertainties involving forward-looking statements and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied by forward-looking statements. Please see the risk factors set forth in Ben's most recent annual report on Form 10-K as supplemented by the risk factors in its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates and the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. As a reminder, this call is being webcast from our Investor Relations website, and audio replay will be available on the website in a few hours. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul to share a Q4 update. Over to you, Paul.

Thank you, Susan. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. Before we delve into our quarterly updates, I want to address the broader AI landscape and the recent turbulence sparked by DeepSeek. The rapid rise has raised awareness on AI training and run costs, scalability, and market dominance, triggering both excitement and volatility in the market. While DeepSeek's open source model is making headlines, It merely reinforces what Ben has long championed since the beginning. AI doesn't have to rely on massive, expensive, GPU-heavy infrastructure to be effective. Last July, we demonstrated how small language models, retrieval augmented generation, and industry-specific training can create a scalable and secure AI platform at a fraction of the cost. Unlike many large-scale AI systems that rely on costly, difficult-to-procure, energy-intensive GPUs, Ben's platform can run efficiently on CPUs. The smaller computational footprint makes our AI more accessible, affordable, and scalable, enabling businesses of all sizes to leverage it without expensive infrastructure. Ben's approach and architecture also gives businesses the full control of customers' AI experience, while integration with legacy applications enables the automated processes that truly drive efficiency and enhanced customer engagement. This brings me to another critical issue shaping the AI industry, data privacy and security. The concerns surrounding DeepSeq are not just about AI dominance, but also about where and how user data is stored and used. Lawmakers and consumer advocates have raised alarms about foreign access to personal information And the U.S. government is now considering banning DeepSeq AI on government devices due to national security risks. At Ben, we've prioritized data security from day one. Our AI platform operates within a closed-loop system, ensuring user data remains protected and never enters public training sets. This security-first approach has led us to provide key insights to California Assemblymember Carl DeMaio on his proposed bill AB364 to strengthen consumer data protections. The bill would require AI and social media platforms to disclose where user data is stored, mandate explicit user consent, and prohibit foreign-controlled entities from handling sensitive healthcare, financial, and geolocation data. This commitment to security and efficiency has guided our work at Bend, and we continue to see strong traction across key verticals. In Q4, we reached two major milestones that positioned Bend for further growth in the automotive sector. First, we signed an agreement with Michiana, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, making them our first pilot dealer in the automotive sector. Since they already use dealer.com software, which is fully integrated with our AI platform, this partnership allows us to seamlessly deploy our AI power agents, enhancing customer engagement and streamlining dealership operations. This integration allows dealerships using dealer.com to leverage Ben's human-like AI agents across their websites, apps, web browsers, and life-size kiosks. We anticipate the AI agents will go live in Q2, marking a significant step forward in our expansion into the automotive sector and demonstrating value of our scalable AI power solutions in high-volume, customer-facing environments. Beyond our progress in automotive, we continue to execute on our broader strategic vision. Last October, we announced our agreement to acquire Catanale, a leading media technology company based in Germany. This acquisition is a key part of our strategy to expand Ben's AI capabilities into global media and advertising, integrating our secure, scalable AI with Catanail's Midas platform to enhance customer engagement and streamline ad sales and inventory management. We've made steady progress, and Waleed will provide further details on the current status. Looking ahead to 2025, we believe Ben is well-positioned for growth continued growth in our target healthcare life sciences industry as well as new markets we are entering. Our potential national chain clients appear interested to deploy Ben's AI agents for mission-critical tasks such as educating the public on the benefits and safety of vaccines as part of an outreach campaign. The key advantages are that the consumers will only be provided information from trusted, validated sources, and a campaign can scale effortlessly, reaching consumers at every corner of the country. Such campaign is designed to increase our customers' revenues while significantly reducing the cost to run and manage the campaign. We'd like to thank our shareholders and partners for their ongoing support, and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress this year. Now, let's turn it over to our CFO and COO, Walid Kiari, who will walk us through our financial results from fourth quarter.