If I understood it correctly, they're claiming that it's more efficient on native ternary hardware, and it has no advantage on binary hardware. The people behind IOTA are also connected in some fashion to the development of such a ternary computer.
Totally forgot about it, and never put two and two together(three and three? :P) to link it to IOTA. Now that they are quite wealthy, I wonder if it will become a reality. I'm highly skeptical, but I really don't know enough to form a real opinion. Definitely one of those things that make you go 'huh?' though.