“A Deep Dive into an AI Startup Company in the Pandemic” is based on events that a real startup company went through during the pandemic without revealing its confidential information. The case illustrates how accounting information is used to help a CEO make important managerial decisions during great uncertainty. AI Luxe Inc. was incorporated in 2017 as a C corporation and funded by private investors and National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Reward (SBIR) grants. Its mission was to provide machine learning solutions to edge devices using a deep neural network. It had ten employees, including its founder and CEO, Nathan Chang.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, AI Luxe was about to sign its first major sales contract with a big construction company. It provided visual analytics solutions to security cameras to detect unusual movements at worksites and provide warnings to reduce worksite injury. After the lockdown, all...
