Autonomous Military Vehicle Startup Tops $1 Billion Valuation

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00:00I want to bring back some of that video of the technology and we'll get to the raise,

00:04but just explain the autonomous system, the payload and the swarm effect that we were just discussing.

00:11Yeah. So what we're providing or really enabling is the use of any vehicle to carry any mission

00:17capability into combat in support of our men and women who are serving our country. So you think

00:23about, you know, a lot of investment in defense tech has happened in many other domains, space,

00:28air, maritime, but really where the wars are fought and where wars are won are by the men and

00:33women on the ground doing the hard, dangerous work of our ground combat forces. So this technology is

00:38really, you know, in support of them. It's what gets us excited, gets us up in the morning is to

00:42go deliver, you know, really mission critical life saving technologies that takes them out of harm's

00:48way and allows them to accomplish those missions really from anywhere in the world and particularly

00:53from a much safer position than riding in that vehicle. The $238 million Series C is split

00:59between equity and debt. What is it that you need the funds for in scaling and deploying your

01:05technology to the battlefield? Yeah. So if you look at the priorities for the Department of War and

01:11Secretary Hegsap had a really great speech last week. I've had the pleasure to be there.

01:17Really what they're indexed on is speed, scale and capability. So how do you get more capability

01:22into the hands of warfighters faster and at scale? So what this funding is going to be able to do is

01:28really to do just that. Everything from acquisitions and M&A, we recently acquired Gotenna, which really

01:35brings more capability tightly integrated to the warfighter. We're using to invest in additional

01:40capabilities. If you look at these vehicles on the screen, those are now mobile data centers with

01:45comms, compute, sensing that are now fully distributed on the battlefield. We'll deliver more than 200 systems

01:50into operational and combat environments this year. So it's how do we take more capability and leverage that

01:56compute, comms and sensing at the edge to bring additional payloads, additional sensing, additional firepower

02:03and really help those missions close for those men and women that are out there defend in our country.

02:08Josh, let's just talk about the underlying technology, the innovation that you've brought here, because

02:12you're kind of outfitting these existing vehicles with your own sensors. How are you working with

02:19partners and what is it that you brought that no one else really had? Yeah, I think it's our ability

02:24to work with best in class capability, best in class partners. So traditional defense primes, they are

02:30excellent at building vehicles at scale. So we can take their capability, made it with our technology,

02:36which is really the compute sensors, the autonomy software, leveraging the latest and greatest in AI

02:41to enable those vehicles to do really complex missions. And it's not just, hey, I have a vehicle

02:46that can drive point A to point B safely. It's how do I have that vehicle or system really close the gap

02:53for an entire mission, whether it be a mine clearing mission, a ship interdiction mission, a resupply

02:58mission, and have multiple vehicles coordinate together where there would otherwise be a human doing

03:02that. So that requires a pretty unique insight into how military operations work on the technology that's

03:09needed to enable that. And so it's really working with best in class partners. We want to bring

03:13the best in class of defense tech, the defense primes, and then help integrate those into a cohesive

03:18system that really serves that, again, that 18 to 25 year old who's out there, you know, on the front

03:24line, standing there for a nation's defense. You've been building this business since 2002, Josh.

03:30And I just want to get your context on how much has changed just in the last few months, say a year,

03:35because we're on track for a record amount of defense tech investing. They've got, as you talk

03:39about, Department of War, really thinking about bringing on startups. Does that feel seismically

03:44different?

03:46It seems it's a lot has changed. But if you look at back when the company was founded in 2002,

03:51the threat that was really facing, you know, pre 9-11 was near peer competitive threats,

03:58tank on tank battles. And autonomy and robotics were looked at even back then on how do you deter a,

04:04you know, near peer conflict? How do you prevent the next large scale warfare from happening?

04:09And that's really through robotics and autonomy. So you fast forward to today,

04:12we're now several years into the Ukraine Russia conflict. We're looking at tensions in the Pacific

04:19theater. And again, we don't have the size of the military, both in terms of distance and space to go

04:26occupy and deter and project the firepower to deter the next conflict. And so it's just, you know,

04:31what's old is new again. It's how do you leverage capability and technology to do that? I think

04:36we have the benefit of today that we didn't have in 2002 was very low cost, very capable compute,

04:42orders of magnitude more compute that's available to do this technology, sensors, an ecosystem of

04:47technology providers that are focused on the defense industry. And if you look at how the defense

04:51industry and Secretary Hegseth said it himself last week is we have to get back to the rapid

04:56innovation, rapid deployment of capability at scale. We used to do that back in the, you know, World

05:02War II and beyond. We've lost that along the way. And that's really that that emergence is coming back,

05:08which is exciting.

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