00:00For you also this must be good news. The Carlisle story. Right. Obviously your funding round is very has been
00:06very successful.
00:08What are you going to deploy that capital to do. How will you rebuild the industrial base.
00:13Hi Matt. And thanks for having me on the show. This is very exciting news for Saronic. And as you
00:19mentioned very exciting news for the
00:22industrial base. Before I jump into what's next for Saronic and what we're going to be doing. It's important to
00:28acknowledge that
00:29this fundraising really came off the back of or is a byproduct of the execution of our team over the
00:35last 12 months like
00:36just 12 months ago we raised a 600 million dollar financing round on a four billion dollar valuation that let
00:43us open our first shipyard launch
00:46Marauder which is 180 foot autonomous ship. Start a 300 million dollar infrastructure project into scaling production capacity at
00:56this at that shipyard. And also scale the production of our small USV products. Corsair which you see right behind
01:04me well into the thousands. Now as we look forward what are we going to do with this new capital.
01:11We're going to continue to accelerate the production and the delivery of our vessels to the US and allies around
01:17the world. We're going to launch new products. New ships and we're going to continue that investment into the shipbuilding
01:23industrial base. Invest billions of dollars.
01:26create thousands of dollars. Create thousands of jobs in the process and unlock production rates in shipbuilding that we haven't
01:33seen in this country since world war two and do it in a very software first technological first approach.
01:39And it's also I mean I wasn't aware until we started reporting on the potential to lift the Jones Act
01:48at what a bad state US shipbuilding is in. I mean we only have like six or seven Navy shipyards
01:55and most of them are here on the East Coast. I think one in California.
02:00How are you playing a role in bringing back U.S. Shipbuilding Dino.
02:07You're exactly right. The shipbuilding industry is in crisis right now. And you're seeing this as a priority of the
02:14administration. I mean the White House just put out a maritime action plan to rebuild the maritime industrial base. And
02:21that's exactly what Saronic is investing in. When you look at the shipbuilding capacity in this country right now from
02:28a
02:28commercial perspective the United States has zero point one percent of global shipbuilding capacity. The Chinese can outbuild the United
02:36States two hundred and thirty to one. And then on the military and defense side you know traditional naval destroyers
02:43for example cost billions of dollars but also say take six to eight years to produce one of them.
02:51So how we're looking at deploying our unmanned systems is really around scale. How do we adopt very very fast
02:59in really large quantities at a fraction of the price point that traditional manned platforms are able to be delivered
03:06to the military today.
03:07What are the biggest benefits of these drone boats. I mean I look at this administration seemingly begging our allies
03:16to come help out in the Strait of Hormuz with with with with with mine sweepers because we have only
03:23some wooden hauled boats out there. Right. And obviously with a crew that you don't want to risk with such
03:28a dangerous task. Is this where you can play a critical role.
03:33That's exactly right. I mean when you look at what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz and candidly other maritime
03:39environments around the world what you're seeing are increasingly contested and increasingly complex environments.
03:46What unmanned systems really bring to the table is scale persistence and risk reduction.
03:53And what I mean by that is you can really deploy high numbers of these platforms again at a fraction
03:59of the price point of traditional manned platforms.
04:02You can operate them continuously in these dangerous environments while keeping sailors out of harm's way that really give naval
04:11commanders optionality to combat some of these threats that they're seeing that aren't that aren't countered very easily with manned
04:18platforms alone.
04:19What is you know you know we hear so much about the defense industrial base and how we're not building
04:26enough here we're not building fast enough here or efficiently enough.
04:30What is the main bottleneck to producing at scale for you.
04:35For us we really rethink the problem from the ground up. It's really how do you redesign the ship so
04:41that it's designed for manufacturer ability.
04:43We've taken a vertically integrated approach so that we can ensure that we get to the scale that this country
04:51needs and again that all starts with the design.
04:54Once you have the design in place then the workforce the training everything else needed to build out the capacity.
05:02And then the software and the autonomy that's required to power these vessels at the scale that we're building them
05:09out.
05:09This is true maritime autonomy that is vertically integrated and delivered as a cohesive capability to the end user.
05:17That's what's required. That's what's needed. That's what we're building at Cerronic.
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