3181: Connecting 175 Million Devices: The Innovation Behind PeerPoint by Vodafone

[00:00:04] Web3, IoT, AI, the Metaverse, four of the most transformative technologies of our time. But what happens when they all start converging? Well today I'm joined by David Palmer, Chief Product Officer at PeerPoint by Vodafone, and together we're going to explore how these emerging technologies are reshaping the way businesses operate, interact and innovate.

[00:00:29] And David has been at the forefront of Web3 and IoT integration, leading PeerPoint's development of the world's first Web3 IoT platform. And this platform gives digital identities to devices, enabling secure autonomous transactions. Something that could revolutionise industries from automotive payments to enterprise AI training. And if all that's not enough, this will be his hat-trick of appearances.

[00:00:57] He's also the author of The Business of Metaverse, which examines how companies can harness Web3 and AI to create new opportunities in a digital-first economy. So are we on the verge of a new digital economy where devices transact and communicate without human intervention? It's time to get my friend David Palmer back onto the podcast now. So a massive warm welcome back to the show.

[00:01:23] For anybody that's missed our previous two conversations over a period of three, four years, could you just remind everyone listening with a little about who you are and what you do? So I'm David Palmer. I'm the Chief Product Officer of PeerPoint by Vodafone. This is a new Web3 IoT AI-enabled platform, which essentially provides connected devices,

[00:01:48] so cars, drones, AI robots in the future, connected devices with the ability to identify and trust each other and transact. Web3 providing the trust, AI providing the intelligence, blockchain providing a lot of the smart contract technology. And we believe that this could, with billions of devices, I think there's 70 billion devices expected in the next five to seven years,

[00:02:18] could be the future fuel for these AI large language models that are now springing on. And I was saying before we started recording the podcast today, it's been two years since we last spoke, but there's a good reason for that really, because I'd noticed that you've recently written a book, The Business of Metaverse, How Organizations Can Optimize the Opportunities of Web3 and AI. But so before we talk about the book, can you tell me a little bit more about the inspiration behind it,

[00:02:48] how long it took that whole process of sitting down to write a book? It was the hardest thing that I've ever done. I've studied at postgraduate levels, I've written long dissertations. But I think sometimes in industry you forget how hard it is to go away and concentrate, and I think the book is over 55,000 words. But the process was really about the message that I wanted to get out there,

[00:03:15] which is number one, I think we're privileged to live in a time when technology is moving at a pace it's never moved at before. AI, IoT, Web3, Web2, cloud. You know, you look at payments, open banking, the amount of things that are, the amount of ingredients to innovation, you know, we've never had it on this level before.

[00:03:42] But then the challenge becomes how do we interact with these technologies? And part of what we, I get at in the book is that essentially in order for these technologies, you know, to reach, you know, the users, these are consumers and businesses. You know, you need to be able to mash up these technologies, you know, in a quicker, more seamless way.

[00:04:07] And that's why we describe the metaverse not as VR goggles, but rather as a new digital operating system, which can pull together blockchain, 5G connectivity, IoT, AI, you know, all of these technologies to build new digital applications, which can be consumed either in the digital metaverse, and this is where you consume through immersive devices. I believe the mobile phone will become more immersive.

[00:04:35] But you see with the Apple headsets and now the new Orion glasses that, you know, there's going to be a lot of innovation in how we access digital materials and also through the physical metaverse. And the physical metaverse are IoT devices and the big buzzword end of last year was about these AI robots, which will be working in homes, working in factories, working in hotels. You know, they will be an increasing part of the workforce.

[00:05:04] And I think a lot of us missed that. You know, we talked about, you know, when there were discussions about AI in the workforce, and we had some of these headlines that 300 million, you know, people or jobs could be replaced by AI. I believe a lot more will be created. But these jobs that will be replaced, we all thought it would be digital, right? We didn't think that it would be factories and people on building sites, you know, etc., being replaced by AI robots.

[00:05:33] But I think what we can see is that that's going to be one of the key growth areas going forwards. And when you look at what we're doing at Paypoint by Vodafone, you know, all those years ago when we started, Neil, it was more about connected devices and data and 75% of the data not being used. And these devices not being able to interoperate and these devices not being able to transact with each other. There was a huge market that was being missed.

[00:06:00] And now, you know, as we've matured a few years on, yes, you know, in-car payments, for example, where you have connected cars and connected EV chargers, etc., you know, is a $580 billion opportunity, according to STO partners by 2030. But the bit we missed was the 75% of the data not being used. There's a huge market for it with AI.

[00:06:25] You know, this week, you know, or recently, we've had, you know, President Trump and the U.S. administration announce, you know, Stargate, the new project for a $500 billion investment across Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank to start building huge, you know, AI data centers and the energy to go with it in the U.S. But that's useless without the data. Where is the data going to come from?

[00:06:54] A lot of the public data going into AI has been used. So the next frontier of data is going to be businesses and connected devices. And I believe that is the next frontier for what we've been doing at Peerport by Vodafone and the whole economy of things. And I think it's fair to say that the hype around the metaverse has been replaced over the last three years with AI. All everyone's talking about is AI. We're now entering the third world of AI. And for me, it's not about individual technologies.

[00:07:20] The exciting things happen when all these technologies begin to converge. That's where the magic happens. And one of the things I love about your book is how you're bringing together AI, IoT and the metaverse. It feels like so much exciting things could happen here. How do you think this will all pan out? It will evolve over time. I think there's three stages to the metaverse, right? So I think you've got the standalone metaverse. So you've got what I call the embedded metaverse.

[00:07:51] And this is where you have virtual reality experiences embedded in platforms. As you see now, a lot of the social media platforms, of course, led by meta, but Apple as well, are starting to embed virtual reality. And I think as we get more affordable handsets and as mobile phones themselves start to have more immersive content and capabilities, you'll start to see more and more virtual reality or immersiveness in there.

[00:08:16] And this could be anything from games to collaboration to web bases as applications on these big platforms. Then you have the interoperable medifacts, right? And that's the next stage. And so this is where you can go from a meta platform with your identity, with your digital, with the things you own digitally, with your headset. And you can interoperate and go over to an Apple headset and bring that identity.

[00:08:46] And you can bring, you know, the stuff you've got from a game or tokens you've required, NFTs over to that environment. And that interoperability will be the next stage. We're not there yet, but then that starts to make a bigger market. And then over time, you get to where, you know, Matthew Ball was talking about this sort of big, what we call the converged metaverse. And this is where, you know, you start like the internet now, you start to have one big metaverse. I believe that's a whale.

[00:09:14] And I think that, you know, practically where we are now is at stage one, where you have the embedded metaverse. This is massive experiences embedded in existing platforms. I think one thing that's happened recently, you know, it's the big thing that's happened to all of us, which is generative AI and the big push for AI, which essentially isn't just about adding intelligence anymore.

[00:09:41] Right? It's not just about AI helping and improving the experience. Actually, what you're seeing with the birth of AI agents and this agentic AI that, you know, companies like NVIDIA are now pushing is AI as this sort of intelligent middleware, able to move things from one environment to another, able to act on behalf of users, businesses, IoT devices, people, to essentially act as a middleware to plug something you're doing on one platform into another.

[00:10:10] And essentially AI becoming the new marketplace, the intelligence of the marketplace, which is a combination of these agents acting on behalf of their owners. That, you know, could speed up the move to phase two, which is the interoperable metaverse because essentially it's speeding up and lowering the cost and the time to integrate between these platforms.

[00:10:31] And whether it be AI, metaverse or IoT, I think the business leaders listening, many industries are still grappling with how do we translate these concepts and technologies into tangible business strategies? So what would you say are some of the most promising use cases that you've seen emerge in recent months? And what industries do you think will be the early adopters in driving real value from these technologies that we're talking about?

[00:10:59] Yeah, I think if we look back at the changes, sometimes it's important to reflect on the changes that have just happened. So some of the biggest companies in the world didn't exist 10, 15 years ago. Some of the biggest companies now didn't exist 10, 15 years ago. And that was part of the mobile revolution. And before that, you had the dot-com revolution.

[00:11:22] Now we have the AI and the metaverse Web3 revolution, which essentially is an operating system that pulls it all together. For business, there's a couple of things that we need to look at. One is the ability of metaverse immersive technologies to remove Java. And Web3 provides the trust and the means to move across boundaries digitally.

[00:11:52] And if you look at IoT, it provides the data so that you can manage things globally as well. So one thing that the technologies are doing is making the world smaller. And what that ultimately means is that we're now at a time where geography is being removed. And to an extent, what that entails is that businesses need to take a more global view, right?

[00:12:21] Because a lot of the barriers we had will not be there in the digital realm. I mean, the metaverse and indeed now on the online platforms, you know, you can sell to people. You can engage with people. You can service people. You can support customers globally. So I think that's one of the barriers that have been removed. I think one of the other barriers that are being removed, you know, is obviously to an extent time, right?

[00:12:46] You know, if you look at some of the barriers we had before, you know, as well as geography, you had time, you know, where essentially, you know, if you look at history or being able to go back and look at what happened to solve a dispute, it was pretty difficult. Now in the metaverse, you'll be able to sort of go through real time to look at what happened.

[00:13:12] And then the other one is, you know, things where you previously needed physical things to do. I mean, one of the examples and use cases I use for metaverse is education. And, you know, part of the economics of the metaverse, when I looked at it in the book, is that it can increase supply of digital services.

[00:13:33] So if something's delivered digitally and you remove geography and there's a reasonable price point to access, then the supply increases. But where you have, you know, a high level of demand, what that essentially does following normal economic thinking is to lower the price and increase the quantity supply. So you apply that to something like a Harvard or Yale or Stanford or Oxford and Cambridge education, putting in the UK universities in there as well.

[00:14:02] Something where the supply was limited, right? Because historically, for course, you had to, you know, be able to travel there. You needed to be able to afford to be housed there. You know, there was a physical limitation to the number of people who could attend the class. And for engineering and courses where you had physical interaction, yeah, it was difficult because you had to physically be there.

[00:14:24] And potentially, when you look at the metaverse and you look at immersive technologies and collaborative technologies and 5G providing low latency connectivity and you're looking at AI also coming into that, you're saying, okay, well, actually, you know, that education could now be, the supply could be almost infinite. And people could access it from anywhere in the world, a medical course or a course that was previously, you know, required you to travel.

[00:14:54] And the economics of that is that, you know, the price goes down, but the supply goes up. Now, that changes a lot of the business model for some of these industries that we've had. So, going back to your question about which industries, you know, could look out for it, I think it's any industry for the better than us where geography being removed presents an opportunity

[00:15:17] and where services, you know, that previously needed to be the physical presence can be delivered using immersive technologies. Education being one, but there's other industries as well with this would come in. Obviously, when we look at AI and Web3, that will affect everything, right? So, you're looking at, when you're looking at Web3, one of the biggest things that we're expecting this year is real-world asset tokenization. That can work in the telecoms industry.

[00:15:46] Real estate is another big one where we're also seeing companies like HSBC tokenizing gold. And you're starting to see the possibility of tokenizing businesses as well going forward. So, I think that's going to have a huge impact on a number of industries. And AI is just widespread, right? And IoT obviously covers anything that's connected, any person or business device. So, I think it's really wide.

[00:16:12] And what that does is, you know, when you look at now the tooling that's coming with AI to develop applications and to, you know, to staff online businesses with AI robots, you're actually seeing an opportunity where, you know, the barriers to entry, you know, for starting a business are going down, right? No more is, you know, geography the same barrier that it was.

[00:16:37] And no longer is, you know, resources, you know, resourcing businesses the same, online the same barrier that it was. And the massiveness, you know, interaction isn't the same barrier it was. So, it presents a massive opportunity. If you look at some of the trends where you can see this taking off, obviously the creator economy has shown that, you know, a lot of people are now becoming businesses and they're getting rewarded for content. You know, I think that can increase in the middle of us.

[00:17:06] But then, you know, when you look at the ability to also create content automatically using generative AI, you know, and entertainment and movies and adverts and these types of things, you're seeing that what I call the, you have the physical metaverse and you have the sort of online metaverse and then you've got this converged sort of metaverse in the middle, which is a combination of fixed and physical and digital.

[00:17:36] Things like the creative economy. And I tackled this in the book, but I believe that that's the area where we're going to see the fast growth. And before you came on the podcast today, I was reading that this year, they're going to be something like 26 billion connected devices. But many of these are limited by technical domains or ecosystems that they exist within. And then from there, that took me to PowerPoint by Vodafone.

[00:18:01] And they developed and launched the world's first Web3 IoT platform, I think with already 175 million IoT devices. But for anybody that's not heard of this, can you just tell me a little bit more about it and why, again, an exciting move? Yeah. So, you know, PowerPoint started out of Vodafone. In fact, when I first came on the program, you know, we were still sort of embedded in the IoT department there. Yeah.

[00:18:27] And, you know, Vodafone boasts the largest, you know, ecosystem of connected devices. I think it's now 175 million, maybe 180 million. I don't know what the exact figure is. But it's the biggest. They've been rated for the last 10 years number one by Gartner for managed connected IoT. But, you know, there's a limit to that. Connecting devices is only stage one, right?

[00:18:51] Now what we're seeing with AI and the move for revenues, intelligence from those devices and monetization and transactions from those devices is the next phase. And essentially, that's where PowerPoint by Vodafone came from.

[00:19:07] So, you know, as I said, it's the ability to give a device a digital identity, which can be recognized and enable that device to interact securely with another device with a digital identity. And then providing the ability to have a digital signature, which the device can use to sign and agree to terms and conditions.

[00:19:33] And then having the intelligence for that device to then be able to transact with other devices, infrastructure and services, which essentially opens up the market. So it's what you call an economy of things platform. And, you know, we were fortunate enough to be born out of the biggest ecosystem in Vodafone and IoT devices. But essentially, it's business, right? Yeah.

[00:20:00] What the platform is doing is, you know, offering, for example, the auto manufacturer, the ability to, you know, enter this in-car payments market,

[00:20:12] the ability to have a car, turn a car into a wallet, just using the SIM that's in the car, no additional hardware, the ability to give that car a digital identity so that it can interact with the owner, driver, user of the car, you know, automatically using digital identity, authenticating their digital identities. And also giving the car the ability to purchase services with proximity to the car automatically.

[00:20:41] No additional hardware, just using the SIM card. So it's like what we call connectivity plus. You know, you have a SIM which connects the car. And what Paypoint does is then bridges that intelligence, which can allow the device to interact with other devices and to agree to prices, et cetera, and tariffs. And then the ability then to orchestrate smartly the payments from one device to another.

[00:21:08] And we believe that, you know, 20 billion devices, you know, transacting is a huge marketplace. It's bigger than the amount of humans. It's an on-tap market. It's a business-to-business market. But I believe, as I was saying with AI, that becomes even more important because these devices will be the fuel to AI. At the moment, when you look at generative AI, it's been about public data, which is exhausted, by the way.

[00:21:35] It's about how much public data can be used to generate this intelligence. The next step is business data. And you're seeing a rush from all businesses to start interacting with AI. I was listening to one of your rival podcasts from McKinsey. We have developed Lilly, which is an internal generative AI, which essentially uses all their consulting information to make their consultants more effective.

[00:22:02] It replaces a lot of the analytics, et cetera, that they would do. And it pulls together their knowledge base, which makes a lot of sense. But that's an example of businesses starting to pull data together so they can have their own AI implementation. And how will that be done for other industries? You think about supply chain logistics. You think about manufacturing. You think about retail.

[00:22:27] At the moment, number one, data is not being used. It can't be sold. It's not getting into large knowledge models. It can't be pulled. So when you think of the Paypoint capability, the ability for devices to interact with other devices, infrastructure, and marketplaces, all of a sudden you're bringing some interoperability to this industry data. So that means that for retail, you can have different logistics.

[00:22:53] You can have different actors in the retail supply chain coming together to pull data. But then the other thing we can do is facilitate the sale of that data into large language models. This could be industry models. It could be wider models so that you can have industry-specific data that can be used to make these industries more effective and benefit from AI.

[00:23:17] What we're seeing, as I said recently with the massive investments that's going into AI infrastructure and processing, is that the infrastructure part has started. But the key to anything will be the data with AI. And I believe that what we've done at Paypoint has set the foundations for industry data from connected devices to feed real-time,

[00:23:44] if necessary, into these AI models. And if we were to look into the future, especially for business leaders, we just want them to think bigger and see how all this is going to evolve. What excites you about this future and that dynamic between Web3, IoT, AI, and maybe even AI robots in the enterprise secured by Web3? There's so much going on. This speed of technological change is ramping up.

[00:24:14] But what excites you about this future and how do you see it? I think what excites me the most about the future is the potential to reset the boundaries of opportunities. What we've seen is that opportunity has been focused on certain geographic areas and certain socioeconomic areas. And that's because knowledge has been limited.

[00:24:42] The ability to implement productive automated solutions has been limited. But you could argue that some of this technology being available more widespread, as I was giving the example of metaverse and the education, that this will increase the boundaries of opportunities. And I think that's important, not just from a noble side of fairness and equality,

[00:25:08] but I think it's more important because it widens the pool of knowledge and ideas that are coming into business. For very long, that's come from certain socioeconomic classes and geographic areas. But if we can have businesses from around the world, from people who previously wouldn't have been able to participate, then I believe we have a richer business ecosystem which will lead to better solutions.

[00:25:37] So that really excites me. And that's because things are becoming more available. When you think about it, Nigel, I don't know, Neil, I don't know how old you are, but when I was studying, I had to go to a library. And if you didn't have the book, you couldn't do it. Now at the fingertips of our children, they have the ability to access information that would have only been available to intelligence services or big businesses.

[00:26:05] With AI, that promises to accelerate even more because not only will they have access to the information, they're going to have access to intelligence and productive solutions and tooling that they wouldn't have before. So it really excites me to see where that will go to and who will be the winners and losers. Will it be the big enterprise customers? Will it be the startups?

[00:26:28] Will it be a new breed of creators, a tool by AI that starts to make all the games? Or will it be a combination of all of them? I think what is for sure is that the businesses and the people that will succeed going forwards will be the ones who adapt the technology best and quickest. And that's going to be exciting to see how that plays out. I think the consumers will be the winners.

[00:26:54] Yeah, I think we must be of a certain age because I too remember those days before mobile phones, before the internet and getting information meant that trip to the library. And one of the things that's always inspired me about you, we've been talking for quite a few years now, is your futuristic mindset and your ability to see the impacts of technology on the future. And I think more than ever, that pace of technological change is just going so fast now.

[00:27:20] And there's this pressure on us all to be in a state of continuous learning. And as someone with such a knack of seeing where all this leads, I've got to ask, how or where do you self-educate? I would imagine there'll be a lot of people listening thinking, how does he keep up to speed with all this? So any tips you can share on how you self-educate, how you keep up to speed? So the first thing I would say is everyone listen to the Tech Talks Daily podcast.

[00:27:47] Because on a serious note, Neil, you have a number of people on there. And some of it can come from strange things. I'm learning from someone who's doing biochemistry because something will relate to something else. So I think the first thing is keep broad, keep your information new. What I say to young people who have familiar is that days are gone where you studied at university and that education was enough to see you through. What you need to do now is keep your knowledge current.

[00:28:17] So I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm always reading. And you've got to take time out to implement and digest these things and find out ideas yourself and speak to people and also network with people in different industries. And you'll find that then you're able to draw things together. I'd say I can envisage one version of the future. It may not be the version that everyone has.

[00:28:45] But I think if my version is then discussed with you and your version and someone else, then we start to have an idea of where things could go. And everything just starts with an idea. And more and more now, you're seeing the tools that are available that can help us implement those ideas and finance is available that can help us finance those ideas. So I do believe it's an exciting time for everyone.

[00:29:11] And I think keeping your knowledge up to date, keeping your network up to date, and keeping abreast of opportunities that may arise is critical now. And we've covered so much today from the 26 billion connected devices, PowerPoint by Vodafone, your book, The Business of the Metaverse. So for anyone listening wanting to dig a little bit deeper on anything we've talked about today or maybe even connect with you and ask you a question, where would you like to point everyone listening?

[00:29:41] Just, yeah, my LinkedIn profile. So I'm on LinkedIn. I think if you could maybe add that to the podcast, we're happy to connect with people who want to know more, happy to share information. So, yeah, please hit me on LinkedIn. Sure thing. I will get a link added to that. I might include a link to your book and a few of the things we talked about today because we did cover a lot. But more than anything, a big thank you for coming back on the podcast, completing your hat trick of appearances.

[00:30:11] Let's not leave it two years before we speak again, unless you're writing a book, of course, and you've got other things to focus on. But we'll get you back on later in the year and see how things are going. But thanks again, David. Thanks, Neil. Wow. Such an interesting deep dive into the intersection of Web3, IoT, AI, and the metaverse. And as we discussed, these technologies aren't just developing in parallel. They're converging to create entirely new ways for businesses to operate.

[00:30:39] And PeerPoint's Web3, IoT platform is a glimpse into the future. A world where connected devices don't just collect data, but they interact, transact, and power next-generation AI systems. And as that metaverse evolves beyond embedded experiences into full interoperability, I think it's clear that AI will play a critical role in bridging the gaps between digital ecosystems.

[00:31:04] And the big question now is how soon will these technologies become mainstream? Are businesses ready to embrace this shift? Or will traditional models struggle to keep up? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is the convergence of Web3, AI, and IoT an opportunity or a challenge for businesses? Let's keep this conversation going. TechBlogWriterOutlook.com, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, just at Neil C. Hughes. But that's it.

[00:31:33] I'll be back again tomorrow with another episode. But thank you to David for joining me back on the podcast for his hat trick of appearances. And thank you to each and every one of you for joining me. Hopefully, we can do it all again tomorrow. Same time, same place. Speak with you all then. Bye for now.