Last week, after months of secrecy, we made some pretty significant changes to our website and Spark 64 became ElementX! This is a big change and has been such a long time coming. We’re very excited to finally be able to share it with you!
Spark 64 started over nine years ago - Dan and Ming (Our CEO and CTO) met at university and collaborated to build an app that tracks real-time UV radiation to help keep users sun safe (you can still download UVLens in the Apple app and Google Play stores!). Throughout the company’s history, they maintained their focus on providing solutions that would improve the lives of end-users, though since these humble beginnings the company has evolved beyond sun safety. We now have a team of AI experts across fields like machine learning, computer vision, conversational AI and more, working on cutting-edge projects that help businesses prove and productionise unique AI use cases in a way that drives results through a customer-first lens.
“Spark 64” was a nod to two very important things - the initial, brilliant spark of an idea that brought these two together, and the Nintendo 64- everyone’s favourite gaming console at the time. The name served us well over the years, (and we still play a mean round of Mario Kart!) but it was time for a change.
Why ElementX?
When we begin working with a new client, we start by discussing all of the different components of a successful AI project. Things like data quality and collection, ML Ops frameworks and best practices, choosing the right cloud service provider and processing tools, and designing solutions that fold seamlessly into existing business objectives without adding unnecessary layers of complexity. You can think of these components as some of the elements of a successful AI implementation.
Assembling the right expertise - a team with the right engineering skills as well as the business focus required to consider how a project will work out in the real world - is the key element that binds all of these disparate components together. That’s why we chose the name “ElementX”. We are the human element that brings it all together - from an AI assistant that provides student assistance to New Zealand’s largest university, to a product recommendation engine that The Warehouse Group uses to increase online sales, to digital humans that can help answer health insurance questions (Southern Cross) and guide you through a mortgage application (Arcus lending).
Our team has a strong background in R&D and a proven track record of delivering impactful results to some of the most difficult problems. Our nerdy nature also hasn’t gone anywhere - although we have upgraded to a Nintendo Switch these days, but if you (like us) are a consumer of cartoons and comics, you might recognise “Chemical X” as the special ingredient that gives the Powerpuff Girls their superpowers, and the “Tenth Element” (sometimes displayed with the roman numeral X) as the material that everything in the DC comics universe was created from.
Although we don’t claim to be superhuman, we do believe in the immense power of the human element - especially when it comes to our amazing team of experts!
Functionally, you can think of the new name as more of an update. We’re still the same team we were as Spark 64, and our focus on providing impactful solutions with a customer-first focus hasn’t changed. That said, we do have a couple of very exciting projects on the horizon that we’re excited to share with you, so if you want to stay up to date with all things ElementX, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn!
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