Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of drone manufacturer Skydio, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's latest funding round and the Russia-US drone collision.

Skydio CEO On Russia-US Drone Collision

Autonomous drone manufacturer skied EO raising 230 million in a series E round valuing the company at over $2.2 billion. While Sky Dios says it leverages AI technology to create drones that are used by consumer enterprise and government customers. The company also saying it's now the biggest drone manufacturer in the U S. So joining me now is Adam Berry, co founder and CEO of Sky Radio. Um Adam thanks so much for coming on the show, so much news, certainly in the financial community, the startup community of late. So before we dive into what you're doing at your company, I do want to ask you about Silicon Valley Bank Signature Bank. Did the collapses of these two banks impact your company at all? So Silicon Valley Bank has been our primary banking partner. They've been a great partner to us, but our cash management cash management strategy already called for quite a bit of diversification. So we have accounts with a number of institutions held in a number of different ways. So we weren't impacted, our operations weren't impacted by the collapse, but I think it is, you know, it's a kind of wake up call for the industry and I think it's something that we all need to come to terms with a wake up call in. What sense, what do you think are the lessons that people should take away from this? Um, everything is a little bit more fragile than it seems when the cash in your account gets called into question, you know, the world just feels a little bit shakier and I think we're living in, in uncertain times. But, you know, the important thing I think for businesses, certainly for us as a company is to focus on what we're doing with our products, with our customers. Um, and unfortunately our operations weren't impacted, so our focus remains the same as where it's been. Well, I'm glad to hear that. Um, Adam, certainly for your company. Um, and I appreciate the lessons learned that you're sharing here. Talk to me more about your company and what you're doing with those drones behind you. Yeah. So, you know, I think we're at a really exciting time in the drone industry where the value that drones can deliver in all these industries and construction, transportation, public safety, national defense. The value has been established. Um But there's huge friction in deploying manual drones. If you need to have an expert pilot, they're flying the thing. It just fundamentally limits where and how you can use drones. So the reason why we started is we want to make these things smart enough to fly themselves. And we're now at a point where that technology is reaching maturity, we have customers in a really wide range of industries. Over 1200 enterprise organizations now rely on skied E O for their daily operations so that the technology has really reached this point where it's possible to scale it. I still think we're early days in terms of where it will get too, but we're seeing real world impact today, which is an incredibly exciting thing to get to be a part of what are the plans to scale the business and the product, Adam. So uh the concept today for most drone operations is that you have an operator on site operating the drone with our, with our products, they're much easier to use. And the idea is that they don't need to be an expert drone pilot. They can be an expert bridge inspector and the drone is a tool uh in their, in their tool chest to use where we're going is making the drones truly fully autonomous where they live in an internet connected charging base station. They're available 24 7. They're managed and dispatched over a network. And this is really a transformative paradigm shift because it means that it's fully software to find the person who uses the drone never has to touch it or physically interact with it. Um So we launched our doc product at the end of last year. Uh we've got a number of customers using them now. Um And that's something that we're super excited about because it just dramatically ups the value to our customers and enables us to do things that, that wouldn't be possible if you always need to have a human in the loop. Well, I want to ask you about this and hopefully we have some footage of the actual event versus some of your imagery. But I know the US recently releasing footage of that moment when a Russian plane did dump fuel on a U S drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday. Um A lot of questions about that particular event. What do you make of the situation? Well, I mean, I'll kind of take a step back and reframe it. I mean, I think what we've seen in the conflict in Ukraine and in the world with Russia is drones are here to stay. Uh you know, the the ability to put sensors in important places without needing to put a person in harm's way, the ability to use these things in military conflict uh is already incredibly strategically important. I mean, I think one of the things in Ukraine that we saw is that even consumer drones owned by consumers became strategically relevant because these are intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance I S are assets that can be used for all sorts of things in a conflict. Um So this is a trend that we've been a part of for years now. So we're partnered with the U S Army. We want the short range of competence program, we've delivered thousands of drones. Um And that program I think was thanks to some forward leaning folks in the U S Department of Defense who realized that the kind of consumer civilian technology was racing ahead of a lot of the traditional defense systems. Um And they figured out a program to make it possible for us and companies like us to participate and, and deliver real value to soldiers. Um And, and I think that Ukraine has just put an exclamation point on that, how important it is. All right, Adam Bree, co founder and CEO of Sky Video. Adam, cool stuff. We appreciate you taking the time.