Former Google Engineer Develops Blockchain Core OS for Banks
By Samburaj Das for CCN.la
for Paul Taylor, a former Google engineer and founder and CEO of UK-based Fintech startupThought Machine, is developing a blockchain-centric operating system, Vault OS, a modern banking engine and core software that runs on the cloud.
Before delving into the blockchain space, Paul Taylor held a prominent position at Google as the head of the text-to-speech group at the search giant, responsible for the speech recognition software used in over a billion Android phones and devices used around the world.
A Cambridge University academic, Taylor began working on Vault OS over two years ago at a tech start-up hub in London. The inventor and executive has a notable expertise in speech synthesis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, as evident from his tenure in Google.
Vault OS
There is a need to uproot and change the legacy systems used by banks in an age when security and efficiency are fundamental to core banking principles and that’s where Vault OS can help with an upgrade to the system, according to Taylor.
He stated:
People have suffered for too long from the archaic software banks are built on and their CIOs stay awake at night worrying if these systems will cope with one more day. It’s time for new ideas, built with today’s technology. Vault OS fixes broken banking and will be the engine for the banks of tomorrow
Fundamentally, the Vault OS kernel helps run the core funds of the bank on a centralized and permissioned cryptographic ledger. Banking products and services such as savings and deposit accounts, loans, credit card accounts, mortgages and more will use smart contracts on the ledger. Blockchain is that much-needed upgrade.
“The technology underlying our banking systems is decaying. It is expensive to run, unreliable, insecure and so out dated that bank customers never get anything like the quality and richness of service they deserve,” the Fintech startup’s mission statement reads, before adding:
Thought Machine is changing all this. With a world class team expert in cloud computing, machine learning, finance, design and app building, we are creating the banks of the future.
Also, everything offered by Vault OS runs as a Software as a Service, which could potentially save banks billions when it can scale to provide services between a single customer or millions together. Currently, major banks are spending over a billion dollars every year on computer technology that is only being used to tweak and prop up the existing legacy infrastructure and systems in use.
Notably, the Vault OS platform is already being used by banks and financial institutions, with over 17,000 Vault OS builds and nearly 120 Vault OS code commits, as of yesterday. Based on AI and machine learning algorithms, Vault OS also knows to categorize varying transactions into 60 different types of banking products and services.
Based in east London, Thought Machine has a team of 50 employees and aims to provide a complete “core-banking toolkit” that leans heavily on private permissioned distributed ledger technology.
Featured image from Thought Machine.
