Skydio Inc.

Boris and the team, they're raising a lot of money.

And for the record, I just want to let the audience know, Boris is coming on the Road to Autonomy podcast to talk about this capital raise.

Over 400 million raise, Rob.

What are the signals inside of this gigantic, gigantic capital raise by the team down at Bedrock?

for what is a very San Francisco-centric take, but data centers and things of that nature are coming.

They need to be constructed, and they need to be constructed quickly, and automation, I think, is a very big key in all of that.

Not to toot our own horns, but if you go in the back catalog of the Road to Atomic podcast, we're going over 500 episodes.

I'll think the first 50 or 60 podcasts, there was three on construction and mining.

And even at the most recent...

Skydio Ascend conference, Adam Brie was asked, would you ever bring back enterprise or consumer drones that are a lower end enterprise even? And he like balked at the question.

And it's, I think, a really important question because you have to ask yourself, can you actually produce the supply chain necessary for military drones without some sort of consumer based drone? I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I think it's actually a very important question.

Look, if you look at everyone that has been, all the companies that have been successful at drones, you know, like let's say here in the US, Skydio, you know, in China, DJI, the two top players of each country.

Where did it start? Skydio, I had a Skydio.

It starts on the end of consumers.

not only because it generates revenue, that's the obvious, but you're also getting all that feedback from users and making that product better and better and better, way faster than only serving law enforcement and defense, which the feedback loop when you sell to that customer is just not as fast, it's not as good as when you sell to consumer.

It's true, it's true, it's

So you shouldn't have to worry too much.

But when we talk about the advice and the wisdom that you can share with young founders, you actually also act as a business angel that supports, for example, visual AI pioneers like Skydio.

And today, I mean, now we've talked a lot about defense tech and physical AI.

As someone who then actively screens opportunities, what are some innovations that currently really, really fascinate you besides the ones we talked about today? Whew.

We've done some drone stuff.

We did Skydio, for example, which is now scaling, but...

I would think that like the NSIF or NSIF, N-S-S-I-F is what it is.

That might be more relevant or also Diana or the NIF.

Right.

So you just got back from Ascend, from Skydio's event, and you and I had met a couple weeks ago.

Well, we were supposed to meet a couple weeks ago at CUAV.

Ended up kinda crossing paths many times, but Ascend, you- what did you think? What are, what are you thinking after that entire event?

So overall, interesting technology both from the software, hardware side.

Um, still leaves some gaps that industry-wide need to be filled, whether it's by Skydio or any other manufacturer.

There's things that are partially finished, but not all the way there.

You know, they've come out with a lot of great new software that will help utilities and DFR.

And that's kind of where my gut says is, you know, is there another company that's trying to eliminate the competition?

Well, there is a company in the United States called Skydio, and their competition would be DJI.

So if I was in their shoes, would you want to get rid of your competition, possibly? You know, it is on the books that Skydio, that they have disclosed that they've paid federal lobbying activity.

Now, We don't know where they pay that to, but we do know that they have admitted to

federal lobbying.

I completely trust them.

That's who we have all our tech with anyway, to include Skydio with their drones.

All their privacy concerns, they have a deep dive.

They actually have an ethics board, and it's not just law enforcement.