Shield AI

So

what we have been able to confirm is that there was a drone belonging to Shield AI, which was developed with Pentagon funding.

which has secured over $800 million in contracts from the DOD.

The CEO of Shield AI has boasted that its boats, I mean, its drones are being used to interdict and destroy drug trafficking.

And in addition to this, the New York Times had found that a plane registered to this, like, shady P.O. box in a UPS store in Virginia, of all places, had flown from the Ilopango Airport, which has served historically as, you know, this site for covert CIA operations.

It was actually where the flight that began the Iran-Contra scandal took off from.

And it flew in the direction of all three boats in the days leading up to the bombing.

And so we have this, you know, both The aircraft, you know, what suspected aircraft tracking and turning in the directions seeming to follow the boats.

Well, I guess either AI is going to save us through productivity growth

or it's going to kill us.

One of the two.

A lot of challenging macro issues, inflation up, rates up, oil is up.

Hopefully that doesn't slow down our IPO window.

But then the bigger news, I guess, for Silicon Valley anyway, is everybody's worrying about whether AI is going to kill us all.

We're all talking about her now.

According to somebody, it's only 10% chance, so I guess that's pretty good.

But my observation is that, yes, just from the people that I know and the folks that I know of that are SEAL entrepreneurs, I think there's a tremendous amount of guys that end up doing stuff that, um, you know, some known, many unknown, that are, you know, quite successful in different, in different paths.

I mean, if you look at, um, Shield AI, Shield AI is probably one of the most prominent ones.

You know, we've got, um, some, some great VC, you know, founders and managers as well.

Um, you know-

Lavender.

Shield AI.

Palantir.

And Aureal.

I've done this.

Number one, I put together an SPV for which is a special purpose vehicle, if you don't know what it is, for a company called Shield AI.

And if you look up Shield AI, they're a privately held company.

For your independent, smaller RIAs out there, when SpaceX came out, you got your clock cleaned to a degree because these big wire houses were able to go to their high net worth clients and go, we can get you SpaceX because we're like, you know, well, you can build these SPVs yourself.

on a private custodian platform and buy $5 million on a Series B round of something and then allocate it to your clients.

Agriculture was the focus, but this year's event put another industry, defense, in the spotlight.

The theme was field to front lines, and it's why those in the crowd saw drones that break the typical mold, like Shield AI's V-BAT take flight.

The show in Seneca was followed by an announcement of a new partnership.

Kelly Hills Unmanned is teaming up with the Kansas Department of Agriculture and Thales.