00:00Airplanes have been flying themselves since the 50s, so we're lucky in Merlin that we got to start the company essentially on second base
00:06and start to bring AI and other elements to the system that just advance those capabilities
00:14versus having to go bring it from the ground up like some of the autonomous car folks have done.
00:19What that means, though, is we've been able to produce a lot of capability for proportionally few dollars
00:24and in a pretty record amount of time to actually get it fielded to our customers.
00:30Can you just help us understand, like, what is the difference to have these using AI versus what we were doing before?
00:37What actually changes?
00:39Yeah, autopilots are pretty simple.
00:41They're still generally following waypoints and kind of similar to level two or a very simple cruise control type system in a car.
00:49By layering on additional AI skills, you start to go from just following a line in the sky
00:54to being a little bit closer to making some decisions, being able to go handle emergencies,
01:01talk in air traffic control, being able to route around weather.
01:04So some of those higher level functions that are performed by pilots today,
01:08what we're doing is we're augmenting those pilots with higher levels of AI
01:12in addition to more traditional autopilot systems to go deliver some pretty fundamentally new capabilities
01:17to our users, particularly in the military.
01:20And you've got at least $100 million in defense prime contracts.
01:26You're going public via SPAC and getting more funding through that.
01:31What's your ambition?
01:33What's your five-year plan look like, Matt?
01:37Fundamentally, we believe that the next 100 years of aviation are going to be built around autonomy.
01:41So just like the previous 100 years of aviation were built around the concept of an airplane plus a pilot,
01:45we think that there's going to be truly generational companies built around being the prime
01:51or the main producer of autonomy for aviation.
01:55And we're super blessed to lead that field as the leading developer of autonomy for fixed-wing aviation
02:01and building that ecosystem around us.
02:05Matt, what's the biggest bottleneck?
02:07Supply chains, talent, regulatory delays?
02:11What could hold things up?
02:12Yeah, a little bit of everything.
02:15So for us, our biggest bottleneck, and it's an understandable bottleneck,
02:20is making sure that we build trust and confidence in the system,
02:24both with our customers and with the regulator.
02:27So we're super proud of the fact that today we announced a pretty major regulatory milestone
02:32in the passing of our SOI 2.
02:33So we are leading the industry in getting certified autonomy actually out into the hands of users.
02:41And we're proud of the fact that we're beating some of the big defense primes like Boeing and Lockheed and others
02:46in getting that done from a little company here in Boston.
02:50I see the Charles there behind you.
02:51I wonder about the importance of Boston.
02:54We've been talking to a lot of defense contractors, growing defense contractors in that area.
03:01Why do you think it's such a potent breeding ground?
03:07Yeah, not a green screen, by the way, which I always thought.
03:10But Boston is a really, really, really important mecca for aviation.
03:15At MIT behind us, we have one of the top aviation programs and aerospace programs in the world.
03:21And that's brought a lot of talent.
03:23So we think it's really important to belong in Boston.
03:25We think it's really important to build here.
03:27And we think we can get asymmetrically more done here in Boston than we can in any other place in the world.
03:32In case you were confused, in our studios in Boston, no green screen.
03:35It is a screen behind me.
03:37That's not actually what New York City looks like, in case anybody was confused.
03:41Hey, Matt, you mentioned Boeing.
03:43There are a lot of legacy primes, a lot of competition for you, not just Boeing, but Lockheed Martin, Northrup, GE.
03:49The list goes on.
03:51They have deep scale.
03:53How do you differentiate?
03:55One of the things we've been proud of as we've come to lead the market has been that those companies have started to work with us.
04:01We announced a huge partnership with Larry Culp and GE and the entire team at GE Avionics to partner with them to go bring autonomy to the thousands of aircraft they already serve.
04:10We also announced a partnership in New York with the Northrup Grumman folks where we're teaming with them on their new collaborative combat aircraft.
04:21So we fundamentally believe that it's important for all of us to go team up together.
04:25And now that we're leading the pack, we're proud of the fact that we're able to get some of those big folks to not compete with us, but to work with us to go deliver those capabilities to our joint customers.
04:37I want to ask about, I know you're a pilot as well, Matt, right?
04:41And it's pretty daunting to go after your private pilot's license now.
04:47When I was a kid and I got my driver's license, I had to do it in a car with three pedals.
04:52People who do it now only have two.
04:54Is your technology, you think, going to make it easier for regular citizens to fly a plane?
05:02One of the things we're also really proud of is the fact that we can go take the Merlin pilot and adapt it to even a small aircraft to make those aircraft a little bit easier and, more importantly, safer to fly.
05:13Flying small aircraft is still really dangerous.
05:16The accident rate is through the roof.
05:17So anything we can do to simplify those vehicle operations, particularly on small aircraft, is important not just for the industry but for safety.
05:26And using that same common technology is the same stuff we're using all the way up to those big airplanes.
05:31So by investing once in that common autonomy brain, we're able to apply that from everything from small Cessnas all the way up to some of the largest aircraft in the world.
Be the first to comment