To celebrate this lovely Friday, April 1st, I’m extremely excited to release my article detailing my exclusive day spent with AITX’s CEO, Steve Reinharz. Steve reached out to me about shadowing him for a day several weeks ago, and naturally I had to accept. He asked me to wait until after ISC West was over, so I am now ready to release it!
Now, onto my exclusive 24 hours with the man, the myth, the legend, Steve Reinharz!
The day was February 17th, 2022 and it was a clear and chilly day in Detroit. I pulled up to Steve’s house at about 5am and wanted to catch him right as he woke up. His wife graciously let me in and told me Steve was just getting up. I was a bit nervous to be honest, it’s not every day you get into interview someone like this, let alone follow them for an entire day. As I paced nervously in his foyer, his wife told me I could go up and see him.
When I peered into his room, I noticed his king-sized bed was in the shape of a ROAMEO, sort of like those racecar beds kids have. I thought, “now there’s dedicated CEO”. When I saw Steve, it took him about 30 seconds to realize I was there until the ROSA on his ceiling alerted him to my presence. He was bleary eyed, and I saw empty Red Bulls strewn about his PC and desk.
I wasn’t sure he’d actually slept that night. There were 47 tabs of Stocktwits arguments going on under his username “xXMaRinOJoE42069Xx” plastered over six monitors. It was like high frequency trading meets FUD busting. I knew the guy didn’t sleep much, but the man will do anything to fight FUD, respect. I also noted he had 300 DM’s from Keith Saville asking him to be unblocked again.
As I tried to process the scene, he shooed me out of the room, quickly cleaned himself up, and he headed downstairs for breakfast.
I waited downstairs with his family, clothed head to toe in RAD gear, until Steve came down. As Steve made his way down the stairs, he greeted his children with a “Hello hello! Steve Reinharz here, founder, chairman, and CEO of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions.” After a collective eyeroll from the Reinharz clan and a long sigh from his wife, the children went off to school and it was off to the REX.
As we walked through Steve’s garage, Craig Peterson gave me a wave from his home in Steve’s pool house. It gave me a “Will Smith in The Fresh Price of Bel-Air” vibe, but who am I to judge. He stumbled out wearing a robe and drinking a beer out of his AITX mug. He shouted over and told me not to miss the next AMA, and then stumbled back into the pool house. I heard a faint grumbling about using the correct Discord channel before he retreated back into the pool house.
Once in Steve’s garage, I noticed a couple of peculiar things. First, had a punching bag that just had the words “$KSCP” on it, but it was pretty worn out so I couldn’t be sure. Second, he had a small man-cave setup in there with a couch, TV, and dartboard. One thing additional oddity I noticed was that the dartboard had Twitter cutouts taped to it of some people named “Jeepman” and “Lower-Middle Class Craig”. Once again, I had to leave some things a mystery!
Now that I saw a glimpse into his home life, it was off to the REX to get a sense of his work life.
As we pulled into the REX, I watched Mark Folmer holding a leash and being dragged along the parking lot pavement by a Ghost Robotics dog. The dog then proceeded to relieve itself on the “No Reverse Split” sign before strutting back into the REX. Steve just smiled and I thought I heard the words “Inevitable” cross his lips, but I couldn’t be sure.
The REX itself was quite the sight and Steve gave me the grand tour. We started in the offices, and we first met with the sales team. However, I think to cut back on costs, it was just a pack of ROSA’s cold calling random phone numbers. They each uttered the same pitch: “Hello, I’m trying to reach you about your car’s exte…AUTONOMOUS SECURITY NEEDS… please press 1 to speak with a representative. Para espanol, oprima dos.” I am told this is how the Six Flags deal closed, so must be working?
Next, we got to see the engineering team making the magic happen. When I came in, it was actually just the on-site daycare facility for the hard-working REX employees’ kids. Turns out, the entirety of RAD’s designs are actually just the machinations of toddlers playing with Legos, and Artur is actually just a full-time babysitter. Once Artur receives a working prototype from the engineers, the older kids then draw up the specs on a shared Minecraft server before they’re put into production.
Unconventional? Maybe. But the results have spoken for themselves so far.
Our next stop was marketing. This was just an empty room with an old landline from probably the 1960’s. it was likely the same model as the hardline we used to talk to the Kremlin. I asked him what the deal was? He said, “this is my one-way connection to Eric Medina so he knows to like and retweet within three seconds of posting anything. That’s all we can afford.” Shrewd budgeting! Buffett, take notes…
Our last stop in the offices was the finance department. In actuality, it was just a closet they had stuffed L4TH into, who made up their entire finance department. I also heard he was doing it for free, talk about great for the bottom line! When I asked about the CFO, they said he hadn’t actually shown up to work his first day and hasn’t since. When I asked why he hasn’t been fired, Steve said “we have unlimited vacation, what can I do?”
After the offices, at long last, I got to see into the belly of the beast… the REX production floor!
Now, when you walk in, you’re initially greeted by a pack of wild dogs which has evidently taken over the REX floor. The leader of the pack is called “Kaiser” (sorry if I’ve misspelled) and he requires a dozen twelve-ounce ribeye’s for him and his pals to allow production staff on the floor each morning. Steve mentioned off to the side that the “Skunk Works” in Canada is actually just their meat vendor. So, needless to say, these pups run up quite a bill! Pesky inflation…
The production process itself is quite uneventful in itself, so I won’t bore you with the details. But some highlights:
- A little-known fact about the ROAMEO… it actually requires a human stuffed inside of it to help work the controls, sort of like R2D2 on the set of the first three Star Wars movies. I’d hate to draw that short straw out at Six Flags in 90 degree weather!
- The team exclusively works without power tools, and I noticed a fair few number of production staff hammering in nails using those squeaky toy gavels. Budget cuts? Safety concerns? We’ll never know. When I asked Steve why, he just said “Proprietary”.
- The STAN is literally just Stan Johnson, the REX janitor, who they pay overtime to stand outside the client warehouses and lift the AVA up when big rigs roll in. He just stops by the REX occasionally to stock up on Bengay because he’s getting up there in age. The difference between the 2.0 and 3.0? Stan’s third hip replacement.
- I saw RAD Light My Way being tested over in one corner as they played around with it on a ROSA. Currently, the primary voice line when activated is just Steve yelling, “Eh get outa here ya hoser or we’re gonna have a kerfuffle” on a loop.
- It turns out, “Project S” is paying a local artist thousands of dollars to paint a massive mural of Steve’s face across the entire wall. This work took up about half of the production floor. But I’m sure the added motivation to the workers of seeing their boss’ face staring at them all day will more than recoup the investment. I only say the sketches, but I teared up with pride when I saw it.
Our final stop was a debrief in Steve’s personal office at the REX. It was literally just a desk, a chair, and a religious shrine in the corner containing a 7/11 slurpee cup, a Six Flags season pass, some Red Hawk Casino chips, and an “I <3 Dallas Love Field” t-shirt. A dozen candles lit the area. As we wrapped up our short Q&A and left the office, he faced the shrine and made the RAD sign across his chest before exiting.
By now, the sun was setting, and my day in the life was wrapping up. I literally could not take any more excitement after what I’d seen today. I thanked Steve for the time, and he reminded me of how absolutely honored he was to have a stock guru/genius/master like me writing analysis pieces on his company. I replied, “shut up” and walked away. He should be lucky I spend my absolutely precious time writing these…
All in all, this trip was an unfettered success. I am currently updating my three-week price target to reach a market cap of three trillion dollars based on this trip alone. You’d have to be a complete moron not to steal your grandma’s social security check to invest in this company. That’s all I have to say.
I thank all of my viewers for reading this far, and of course, happy April Fool’s day 😊.
Very interesting article!
This reminded me about fake appraisals. Lines like, “Production increased when he called in sick.”
Excellent executives understood the jester was the opposite of what was really thought about them.
Excellent executives at AITX.