Paul Taylor, former head of the text-to-speech group at Google and a serial entrepreneur specialising in speech, language and artificial intelligence has announced the launch of a startup which builds blockchain-based operating systems for banks and financial institutions. The startup, called ThooughtMachine led by CEO Paul Taylor, is launching its first blockchain-based operating system called Vault OS, which allows banks to run their core functions in the cloud. The core concept of Vault OS is to utilize smart contracts on a centralized and permissioned cryptographic ledger to settle all bank transactions, products, and settlements including payments, deposit accounts, savings, mortgages, loans, and credit card accounts. By relying on a scalable cloud platform, financial institutions will be able to rely on faster and more secure end to end banking systems to manage most of their operations online. Taylor believes that the Vault OS will replace outdated financial and banking systems that are still in use by the world's major banking groups.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A former Google engineer, whose speech recognition software is used in more than a billion Android smartphones, has launched a company that uses blockchain technology to build a new operating system for banks. Paul Taylor, a Cambridge University academic with an expertise in artificial intelligence, speech synthesis and machine learning, started working on the system, called Vault OS, two years ago in a basement in London's Shoreditch district, known for being a tech start-up hub. The technology, which underpins the digital currency bitcoin, creates a shared database in which participants can trace every transaction ever made. The ledger is tamper-proof and transparent, meaning that transactions can be processed without the need for third-party verification. The system also negates the need for costly in-house data centers, as it uses cloud-based systems, which banks can use on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, which means that there is no single point of failure.