Passion, Patents, and Powering Down AI with Fred Jordan

Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Dr. Fred Jordan, CEO and Co-Founder at AlpVision and FinalSpark - Expert anticounterfeit technologies - Expert biocomputing talks about his journey to make a difference in AI and what propelled him to do that.

1. Early Career — Curiosity, Coincidence, and Counterfeits

• Fred describes himself modestly as a French physicist who stumbled into entrepreneurship by "provoking luck."
• He and his co-founder Martin Kutter began with research in digital watermarking, creating invisible marks on media.
• Their startup AlfVision emerged from this — aimed at detecting counterfeit goods using image analysis.
• Lessons from early failures (9 out of 10 products failed) were key to refining their success.

2. Making the Mark — Patents, Passion, and Intellectual Property

• Fred emphasizes building a business around passion, but insists on profitability too.
• He stresses the importance of understanding finance, even for technical founders.
• As a multi-founder and active programmer, he still codes when needed — including writing software that led to a patent and successful tech deployment in China.

3. Creating a Legacy — Bio-Neurons and a Sustainable Future

• Final Spark emerged from Fred and Martin’s desire to return to fundamental research, after years of commercial success.
• Their mission: dramatically reduce the energy and resources required to run AI by leveraging real neurons instead of digital simulations — achieving up to 1 million times greater energy efficiency.
• In their lab in Switzerland, they’ve created a testbed where biological neural tissues are grown, connected via electrodes, and streamed in real-time — with microfluidics feeding them 24/7.
• Fred draws a direct parallel between learning in artificial neural networks (via adjusting weights) and the biological challenge of inducing learning by reconfiguring synaptic connections. This forms the crux of building a true biological computing server.
• “When you have artificial neurons, learning is done by setting the right connections between them. We need to do the same in biology. That’s how humans learn — and that’s what we have to replicate in vitro.”
• The long-term vision is bold:
• Create biological servers at scale (10cm x 100m tissues) that could power AI with drastically less energy.
• Biological intelligence becoming mainstream — just as LED lights replaced incandescent bulbs.
• A future with hybrid bio-artificial objects — think of a glass that detects your mood and adjusts your drink accordingly