Feeding the Beam: Powering Directed Energy & Counter-UAS | The Pair Program Ep85

Speaker A: Welcome to the PEAR program from Hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad.

Speaker B: And I'm your other host, Mike Gruen.

Speaker A: Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth. Welcome back to the PEAR program. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, joined again by my co host, Sean Leahy. Sean, good to have you back, man.

Speaker C: Great to be here, Tim.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we, we did. We surveyed the, uh, you know, the last episode and, and it seems like the results are positive. So we're keeping you, keeping you in the mix.

Speaker C: I get to keep my unpaid job. This is, this is fantastic. Uh, I'm stoked. I, you know, we keep having on these killer guests and everything and, uh, excited to be a part of it. Um, but, uh, you know, how's. How's college football season treating you, Tim? How are you? How are you feeling as we get into real fall here?

Speaker A: Yeah, go Voles, right? I mean, for me, it's a bandwagon. Uh, fan, I went to George Mason, so, um, nothing really to root for beyond, uh, a crazy, you know, Final Four run back in the day. But, uh, uh, do you have a. Do you have a team in the mix, Sean?

Speaker C: I'm just here for the chaos, right? Like, we're seeing head coaches getting fired already. We got Indiana as a top 10, top 5, top 3 team. Uh, it's just, it's, it's so much fun. And, uh, yeah, I'm just here for the party, I guess.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's a horrific and vile season. M is so bad. They're so bad. Absolutely satanic. It's unforgivable that they aren't contending every single year.

Speaker C: Like, for those of you listening to the podcast, that's our. One of our guests, Michael. And, uh, I'm feeling really good now about some of the, uh, the opinions and hot takes we're going to get today. Outstanding.

Speaker D: I'm so mad. How are you? How are you? Michigan. And you're unranked. Like there. There are like five to there. There are like 15 to 20 teams that should be contending every single year. And if you're not, it's just, it's just horrible.

Speaker A: Yeah, coaches getting axed, it's just horrible. Yeah, they don't, they don't have the patience for it. Um, well, shit, man. I didn't know we could riff on, on football all Day. But I think we do got to get around to the uh, the episode. I wanted to ask you a, a quick power theme question, Sean. So when's the last time that you, you actually had to buy batteries and what was it for?

Speaker C: Oh no, that's, so I still got a little bit of the uh, my, my dad's Oregon lumberjack in me and uh, every year I'll go out to Home Depot and, and, and drop a little bit of cash on some D cells and you know, some, some double and triple A. Make sure all the flashlights are tuned out, the lanterns ju, just in case so. No, no, uh, I'm loaded up.

Speaker A: Okay. The D cell is going, going big dogs. Yeah, I was thinking about this. It seems like it's uh, you know, kind of an old fashioned industry. I, I, I use them quite toys. I feel like everything that she has like either talks or makes some a weird movement and so they, they have like six double A batteries but they last about a week and then you got to replace them. But beyond that it seems like everything's kind of rechargeable. Um, so I had to really think about what other products, you know, people are using.

Speaker C: Is that enough, Tim? That's the question, right? Do we have enough power?

Speaker D: That's the question.

Speaker A: Good, good Q, good Q on uh, on the intro. All right, let's, on that note, let's give our listeners a quick preview of what's coming up. So on today's episode, uh, we are going to be diving into a challenge that you know, maybe doesn't always kind of center the headlines, but it powers everything else that does, which is energy on the modern battlefield. And so we're talking about how the next generation of defense tech, you know, autonomous systems, counter UAS directed energy weapons, are kind of pushing our power infrastructure to its limits. And uh, you know, how do you, how do you kind of fix, you know, some of these issues when it comes into a uh, power shortage? You build smarter, you know, quieter, more flexible power from the ground up. And that's what our guests are doing uh, today. So we've got Adam Warmoth, uh, founder and CEO of Chariot Defense, a uh, company designing high voltage hybrid electric power systems built for the tactical edge. And joining him is Michael. I'm going to go for it. Le Frambois.

Speaker D: You're close, you're close. La from Boise. So there's, there's an E after the S. So you pronounce the S. Uh, La from Boise. It's like an index minus one thing for the French for what you pronounce and what you don't.

Speaker A: Yeah, I. I feel like I get like a B plus on that, though.

Speaker C: Yeah, pretty close.

Speaker B: It's good.

Speaker A: Co, uh, founder and CEO of Aurelius Systems. Uh, a team behind a new generation of mobile autonomous laser platforms designed to take down drones at a fraction of the traditional cost. Uh, together they're tackling the same problem from two different sides. You know, one's building the power, the other using, uh, it to fuel the future of defense. So, Adam and Michael, thank you both for joining us on the pair program.

Speaker D: Thank you, thank you, thank you. You know, my. My toys are kind of like your daughter's toys, except I need. I need a little bit bigger batteries, you know?

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker D: Little.

Speaker A: A little bit more dangerous. Uh, uh, toy I say as well. Um, now, before we dive into the deep end, let's go ahead and kick things off. A little icebreaker that we call pair me up. Uh, we'll kind of go around the room, spitball. Two things that go together. It could be serious, funny, random, kind uh, of dealer's choice. Sean, why don't you kick, uh, us off?

Speaker C: So, yeah, I've been thinking about this one a little bit. I think it's gonna be a little more controversial than I. Than I originally planned, but mostly because Michael's here. Um, my pair is coffee for long drives or coffee and long drives. And the reason I. This is my pair this morning is, um, I recently had to drive through West Virginia for a couple hours over a weekend, and I really just, you know, was in the zone with my, uh, my cup of coffee and driving. But I texted my brother afterwards, and he goes, I could never drive with a cup of coffee. I'd be pulling over every 10 minutes. I'd be too wired. He's like my drink of choice when I'm driving long road trips. Just. Just some water, maybe a coke at the most. So I. I hope I'm not ruffling too many feathers with that, but if I'm really putting in some miles, I'm getting like, a good wawa cup of coffee and, uh, just hitting cruise control. Enjoying it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I. I'm 100% on board with that. If it's in the morning time.

Speaker C: My.

Speaker A: My afternoon go to, though is usually a tall boy of, uh, like a coke on tap. Cherry coke on tap. Just a little treat yourself on a road trip hallway.

Speaker D: So, like. Oh, yeah, like What?

Speaker A: Like a 64 ouncer. Yeah. Which similarly, you're going to be doing a couple of uh, you know, pit stops along the way, but y. Feel like it's an opportunity to treat yourself when you're on a road trip.

Speaker B: Um, our first, first big exercise out of JRTC, we had to drive 30 hours straight from, uh, San Francisco to Louisiana. Um, operations of me switching off, driving and sleeping. We had to get pretty creative on our, on our beverage strategy there, so.

Speaker A: But a lot of caffeine.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, I dig it. All right, good stuff. I'm going to jump in. Uh, I'm going to go with Wisconsin and cheese curds. Uh, so recently took a trip to Green Bay with a few buddies, uh, for a friend's 40th, and we went to the Commanders packers game Thursday Night Football. Great experience. Uh, Lambo was, was epic. Energy was electric. Um, uh, the fans were ridiculously welcoming, by the way, too. Like the nicest fans I think I've ever experienced. Uh, just really, you know, encouraging, you know, uh, uh, interaction with the opposing team. You don't really see that too often. Uh, shout out to Philly on, on horrible, uh, fans. Uh, but I would say that every Wisconsinite that we ran into was, uh, have you had the cheese curds? You know, that was like the question. And uh, so the court, the, the trip wasn't, you know, complete without housing cheese curds. And I would say that they were fantastic. Uh, super healthy for you as well. Uh, and that's my pairing. Wisconsin and cheese curds. Um, Redskins got their asses handed to them in that game, by the way. But, uh, that's, uh, that's what I'm gonna go with. I'm gonna pass it along to the guest. Adam, quick, uh, intro in your pairing.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so I'm gonna do sunshine, uh, and baseball. Um, grew up, uh, in the Bay Area, um, in the Barry Bonds era. I now live a five minute walk from the Giant Stadium. Um, you can actually see the Jumbotron from my apartment. So, um, Adam, you love this kid.

Speaker D: You live like near Mission Bay. You live in there?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker D: Dude, you're like two blocks from our. You should just come hang out at our office.

Speaker C: I know.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: So love that area. Um, just. Yep. Up in south beach there and then, uh, yeah, just love walking along the water there. It's a great stadium on a sunny day. So. Yeah, sunshine and baseball.

Speaker A: That's sick. Growing up in the Bonds era too, man, that's epic.

Speaker B: Yeah, I had the rubber chickens for the pitch to Berry and all that fun stuff.

Speaker A: So that's cool. That's cool. Do you go to a lot of games or you just kind of just watch them from your apartment because you can kind of see everything right there.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, you know, founding a company doesn't leave a ton of free time for, for baseball games, but, you know, try to still make it to a couple.

Speaker A: Good stuff. I like it. Michael, how about yourself? Quick intro and your pairing?

Speaker D: Yeah, for sure. Michael, uh, La from Boise, co, uh, founder and CEO Aurelia Systems, Laser weapon systems company for counter Dr. Applications. Um, I would say my pairing is. You guys are all such good people. Everything's so like, homely and great. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say color and like bright out there colors and defense tech logos and marketing, uh, which is not the thing. Have you ever seen like a, like Lockheed Northrop and all these company logos, like, stacked up? It's just black on white. Yeah, just black on. Yeah.

Speaker C: There's definitely an aesthetic revolution going on, which I, I like with the new defense tech entrance that we got some cool, like, 1980s theme stuff. You got some, some guys rocking mullets and the bandanas. Dig. Um, you know, day glow colors. It's a vibe, as the kids say. It's a vibe.

Speaker A: It's a vibe.

Speaker D: We did, we did do a rebrand, um, maybe six months ago or so, but before our logo was like, uh, like Miami, uh, Vice basically colors or like Hotline Miami. So it was like pink, like hot pink, electric blue, and uh, the yellow as well. And then I think that that was actually a little bit too much, so we just switched to mega red.

Speaker C: Something way, way more baseline, way more subtle.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I actually we're having, um, the CEO from Defense Unicorns on. And it's one of those like, things of swag where I was like, I had to get a shirt for my daughter, but it was like, you know, you don't really see. Yeah, you don't really see like, uh, that kind of branding in defense. I was like, man, they had a line like at their booth just, hey, can I get a, can I get a shirt for my kid? I was like, this is pretty. This is pretty cool. But yeah, I dig it. You're right, man. I think we need a, some, some rebranding happening across some of these defense tech startups and brighten it up a little bit. Um, cool. Well, thanks again for joining us, guys. We're pumped to jump into the, the hard of today's discussion. So, um, let's, uh, let's, let's dive in. I want to kind of begin with the battlefield, energy scenario, the landscape. Um, Adam, I'll start with you on this. Um, so with it within, like the bigger picture around Counter uas, uh, it feels like this threat has evolved quickly. You know, drones are cheaper, smarter, you know, showing up everywhere. You know, when you look at this from a power and infrastructure standpoint, you know, how do you kind of see that problem set changing?

Speaker B: Yeah, and so, I mean the, the idea for Chariot really came from my time, uh, as the program manager for County US at Anduril, um, was seeing kind of this evolving threat, started running that program kind of pre Ukraine war. Um, and so, you know, people were talking about the drone threat, right, But I don't think a lot of people had really internalized how much this was going to change, uh, warfare and change the battlefield. So we kind of had a front row seat to that. Working with SOCOM as their systems integration partner for county UAs, uh, you know, deploying technology into theater, um, you know, and seeing where we were hitting our limiting factors. Um, and what I constantly realized was, you know, in this environment, traditionally air defense has been this, uh, kind of brigade level capability. So something happening, you know, managed by kind of a higher level, uh, and so individual units, kind of smaller units, didn't have to Worry about counter UAs, they didn't have to worry about electronic warfare, didn't really have to worry about isr. We were operating kind of an uncontested, uh, environment. And so, you know, those capabilities were just kind of treated as happening on fixed sites, happening kind of in the rear, um, kind of creating these large kind of, uh, denial bubbles, um, of kind of safe operations. And uh, with the, especially the proliferation of small UAs, uh, that assumption has gone away. Um, we need to be deploying counter US systems at the edge with small units. And as we started to do that, as we started to field advanced compute systems, advanced countermeasures, uh, you know, advanced, uh, sensor systems. Um, what we constantly ran into was problems with power, um, and problems with the mobility of the, of the, of the power assets available, problems, uh, with supply chain and logistics and resupplying those systems, and problems with signature management where we're not operating from fixed sites, where everyone knows where we are. If they find you now, they can target you. And so those big challenges we had with power, uh, led me to, to creating Chariot.

Speaker A: Yeah, why don't you just expand a little bit more on Chariot, uh, a little bit about where the company's at at this point and maybe just a little bit of an Overview on the product technology.

Speaker B: Yeah, certainly. Um, so Chariot is, yeah, building the solutions to that problem. Uh, anyone who's got a Tesla and a power wall in their garage has way more advanced, uh, power technology than what's being fielded with dod. You talked about, you know, kicked off with talking about the story about the AA batteries, right. Uh, you know that those like non, non rechargeable primary batteries are actually still like, widely used in dod. Um, everything's kind of stuck at low voltage, like, you know, in often cases, lead acid batteries. And then if you need to start to go up some of these higher power levels, you're going up to a generator. Um, and uh, you know, the other, you know, uh, pairing that I was going to make was, you know, um, diesel and batteries. Um, hybrid is the way, but, you know, taking advantage of some of these advanced batteries that have been developed in, uh, the past 20 years. There's been some recent articles by folks like Paki McCormick on just the crazy advancement in core power technologies and silicon carbide power electronics, high voltage battery packs, microcontrollers and power electronics and uh, you know, taking advantage of that technology breakthrough that's been happening in companies like Tesla and Apple, uh, and Archer and Joby that just hasn't translated over to dod. So that's really the core of what Chariot's doing is taking these advanced high voltage power systems, advanced power electronics, advanced microcontrollers, and building compact, robust, high performance, safe power systems that can deploy to the edge, can deploy in mobile form factors, and can, uh, enable uh, counter U.S. systems. Uh, like what's Michael M. Like what Michael's building to actually be deployed to the edge and be used to effect.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've got some questions teed up about your past too, because working at companies like Archer and um, Andrew obviously played a big part into that journey into what you're building today. But Michael, let's loop you in at this point so you're kind of on the receiving end of that equation, kind of turning this power into capabilities. Um, how big of a deal is this kind of mismatch between modern tech and legacy power for you all?

Speaker D: Yeah, for sure. I mean, basically what uh, our system does is we have an EDGE deployed autonomous turret to counter Group one and Group Two, UAS set at distances that you basically have to spend like $2 million on a missile to get to in any kind of mass attackable way. And so what we do is we provide this, you know, extremely low marginal cost to defense when you go out. Well, you Know, the army acquisitions officers really, really, when we're talking about how, ah, we address like a drone swarm, for example, you can't spend, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on even like an Enduro drone or for, for single shoot down.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: And that's even if you can get enough, enough out there. So what we do is we turn the uh, electricity that you're generating from your alternator or battery, uh, system, if you have it on board, into ammunition and you're able to essentially destroy drones for like 10 cents, 25 cents, something like that. It's just turning. You're essentially um, you know, using a welding or cutting laser that's used in industrial applications, uh, and turning it into, into a, uh, weapon system specifically for machines. So that's what we do. There are two main things in supply, uh, chain that we're really concerned with. So uh, uh, one we won't, we probably won't get to too much in here is uh, the laser system where we make industrial laser systems. But there aren't that many companies that make them in the US So we'll probably go and make them ourselves. That's one, uh, and the other one that we are definitely not equipped to make ourselves. And so we would rely on partners like Adam's company, um, is uh, the actual power, like our magazine.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: And so what we do right now is we essentially work with like a series of companies, try and get the demonstration, show that we can use these battery power systems on the edge. And Adam and I have been to several demos together. Our team has partnered for the DOD several times. Uh, I think at um, one, one or two of the GIFixes, I think it was, I think it was just one. And then at um, Northern Strike, we were working together at a recent demonstration. So.

Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah, uh, that's, That's a, uh, A part of this conversation I want to dive into is, um, you know, some of those, those demos collaborating together. But you know, while we're on, on the topic, you know, how much kind of cross learning happens between, you know, your team and Michael and Adam's team, like, is that it seems like obviously, you know, you're addressing different halves of the same challenge. Right. And so how much of that kind of like cross learning is, is a part of, you know, the build process for you all?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think it's a lot. I mean, Adam's team was in, in our office I think, a couple weeks ago because we're working on kind of the. Kind of the uh, the power Handoff. So there are some salient things that go down with like the voltage requirement, the C drawdown rate, you know, that are probably different from a lot of other applications because we, we don't draw too much power in the aggregate, like the, like the, like the magnitude of power that we're drawing from. Um, but we draw down very large amounts at short bursts. And so that's something that we, our teams have worked together on managing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Adam, anything that changed, like how you approach your own product based on the collaboration.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, exactly. So, you know, we really, you know, try to push the story of batteries as power, not batteries as energy. And that's where I was saying the diesel and batteries, you know, perfect pairing is fuel is incredibly energy dense. Um, but converting that fuel into electric power and having to do that at the time and point of use becomes, um, incredibly limiting. And so with these really high power density power electronics, battery systems, um, it's actually a perfect pairing for an application like directed energy, where we can pull power from your source of generation, where your generation is sized to the average load. And as you said, it's not that much energy over the course of a, of a day, of a week, of a month. M. But it's that really high peak power demand. Um, and so sizing and understanding what that peak power demand is going to be is what sizes our system. It's what size is that, that peak power capability? It's what size is the battery to be able to handle that kind of surge of power. What size is our thermal management system? Um, and so getting that real value field data on, you know, what is that power draw? What are the characteristics of that power draw? There's things like power factor that matter, there's things like power quality that matter. And so actually testing that with a system that is the kind of perfect application for our tech, right, that hybridization where you can handle those big surges of power, um, and then just kind of keep backfilling energy, um, from your fuel just, uh, just creates kind of the perfect pairing. Uh, so batteries and diesel, uh, you know, Chariot systems and Aurelius lasers, um, another great pairing there. So, yeah, we've learned a ton from actually just characterizing understanding and using that information to size, uh, the right components for, uh, our system.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm curious on like, um, you know, from your background, Adam, you know, uh, Tesla, Archer, you know, some of these commercial EV ecosystems, how much of that has really kind of changed advancements in battery and power distribution?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll go a Little kind of nerd deep dive here on specifically one of the great breakthrough technologies. There's a lot of focus on, uh, you know, lithium ion batteries, right. You know, critical minerals. Right. You know, that gets plenty of play in the media as kind of a key enabling factor for these, you know, advanced electric vehicles. What gets less focus is those power electronics. Um, and so there was an invention of these silicon carbide power electronics which allow you to do kind of software control of power at much higher voltages and higher power levels than traditional silicon power, uh, electronics. And so what that allows you to do. In the example from the EV world, Tesla was able to cut the size of their drive inverter that takes their battery power and actually use that to drive the drive, the wheels. They're able to cut the size of that component by a factor of 10, uh, from the 2012 model, um, S to the 2017 model three, uh, with better performance. Um, and so there's been some crazy material science breakthroughs driven by some really impressive research happening here in the U.S. uh, that has been a kind of key enabling factor for us. And so that's where these big commercial breakthroughs in these technologies, in these high voltage batteries driven by and then scaled by, uh, and that's the great thing about uh, those industries as well is not only have they invented amazing new technology, the cost pressures of automotive mean massive scale and massive decrease in cost. So you're seeing a massive increased performance and a massive decrease in cost. So the ratio of those two things is then like, you know, double, like, uh, uh, impressive in terms of what that enables. Um, and that's been all happening in the commercial world. And so companies like Tesla, right, companies like Apple with their SPG project, Archer Joby have been developing this technology, but it's been happening in Silicon Valley. Kind of disconnected from the traditional primes, you know, disconnected from the traditional OEMs. Um, and it's just been happening in kind of the past ten years. Uh, and I kind of think about, you know, the role of Chariot as bringing a lot of those technologies into the defense space where, you know, companies like Tesla and companies like Apple, which are our, you know, our industrial giants, right? You know, in preparing for World War II, our industrial giants were GM and Chrysler and you know, uh, Freedom's Forge and the Arsenal Democracy, converting kind of American consumer demand into uh, wartime production. Uh, we don't have that luxury with our industrial giants today because of the conflicts, uh, with those companies and their presence in China, both from a sales and production perspective. So we're trying to do is take all those technological breakthroughs, but, uh, bring them into the defense industrial base.

Speaker C: So Adam, to follow up on that, one of the big themes, um, on the podcast is the idea of dual use, right. Of technologies that have both defense national security applications, but also growing commercial markets. And what we've seen a lot is that a lot of that can come down to timing, where you can have these commercial breakthroughs like you just mentioned for battery technology, um, that are multiple years old or even decades old in some cases, um, and yet they're not making their way over to the defense market. So specifically the question I have for you is what do you look for in terms of timing and readiness when you're looking at the defense market and their ability to adapt some of these commercial technologies? What are the, what are the key things you look for that says, oh, okay, we could go to them now with, with Chariot and, and there's going to be that, that, that um, receptiveness for, for what we're bringing to market.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, one of the big, uh, you know, light bulb moments for me for, for Chariot was, you know, the readiness of that technology for the electric aircraft world. And so, you know, coming at this, you know, from Archer and from Kitty Hawk and from Uber Elevate versus just kind of from Tesla, you know, now you actually have components that have been built for FA certification, uh, which is going to match a lot closer to, uh, to that kind of mil spec. You know, what they're going to expect in terms of environmental performance, in terms of safety, in terms of certifiability, in terms of supply chain. Um, so really the ev, but then the EV tall industry, which also, you know, borrowed and kind of took a lot of technology from the EV sector, but did that ruggedization and militarization. Um, uh, they did the ruggedization and the kind of certification and we're kind of taking that final step to militarization. So a much smaller leap than um, taking some kind of consumer grade technology.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I want to kind of keep on theme here with a little bit around going from a demo into more of a deployment. Um, and Mike, I'll jump to you on this. So, uh, and kind of like doing more research on, you know, you and your background, you've gone from prototype to live demos in under 18 months, which seems pretty lightning fast for, for defense. You know, what, what has kind of allowed you to, to move at that pace?

Speaker D: Well, so speaking from automotive, you know, I, I'll just do background really, really quick you know, I started my career as an engineer in, in the automotive industry. I worked at Chrysler for a while, did mechanical engineering from Detroit and from the area. Um, I went to Chrysler for a while, worked in these, you know, like high scaling M manufacturing systems for these uh, four vehicles where you're running 400,000 units out of a factory per year. Worked on an engine plant, stuff like that. Um, so got kind of a taste on like what you can extract in terms of pricing when you're making 400,000 massive robotic units per year. And it's probably a good idea to pull from industries like that if you want to do some quick, some quick R and D deployment. Um, but uh, then I went to grad school and I went to Coherent, which is the biggest US Optics prime, massive giga multinational optics company. I um, worked in research and development on high power, high power laser systems for both, um, material processing in the auto industry and then a bit in directed energy as well. And then I moved into sales and I would sell directed energy components into Lockheed and Northrop and some of these other companies in addition. So I worked in, basically I just worked in engineering and sales in this really niche, really niche industry where there's probably like four people in the country under 40 that have ever done that. And um, you know I, I thought about at that time when I'd left Coherent doing the company, doing this company, um, you know, 23, maybe 22. Um, but that, those, those, those systems that were being deployed at the time were like massive 300 kilowatt systems that cost like, cost like $200 million. And I used to make a lot of money selling the components for it. But I knew that we had massive margins on some of these, on some of these products. And when you're, when you're massive margin subcomponent suppliers into big systems for end prime integrators, um, everyone's taking a bunch of margin, uh, and these systems end up just exploding. And a lot of things in the defense industry are like this. I just said this to the Secretary of the army yesterday and he thought it was funny. Like directed energy is like the wedding industry. And I'm sure a lot of other things in defense are like this where as soon as you say an industrial system is for directed energy, the price 10x's and uh, there, there, there isn't necessarily a reason, a reason to do that. So what we do at Aurelius is we don't, we actually don't pull components really from the directed energy energy industry. We pull it all from material processing in the auto industry. So as technologies have been scaled up, um, and you know, like automotive companies, there's a massive price price. It's like the opposite of defense and auto or in scale manufacturing with massive price pressure from the tier ones on all of the suppliers like Chrysler, uh, would have a massive buying ring in the basement. They put them in the basement, they would be 40 buyers. And they're all harassing suppliers all day, every day, just getting, getting costs down. Um, so that all came together. I left, I went to Amazon for a time and then I went into my PhD specializing in electro optics at Columbia. Um, but I dropped out after maybe a year just seeing the drone issue. I was probably on the drone issue, like really convinced and compelled by it way later than a lot of these other people, including Adam, where Adam's thinking about it like 2017, I'm in 2023 and I'm like, Ukraine war has been going on for a bit. This is really scary. Uh, I love my family and my country. I feel like I can really do something about it. And especially when I was sending up factories, I'm really used to looking at pricing pressure and marginal cost as long as your capital expenditures and systems are not too high. It's really a marginal cost equation for a buyer if you're going to produce anything at scale. And so I look at that and say, you know, I can go and get a directed energy system out to market for way lower than these other companies. I know where the skeletons are hidden from my time in the industry. Um, and, and like my marginal cost to destroying a drone is like, like a 10 million x marginal cost differential compared to legacy systems. And I like that's compelling enough. We're going to go and do it, we're going to full send it. And it's not like we haven't had setbacks or anything, but I think, um, not overthinking things. I tell my engineering team all the time, we don't want to do the 130 IQ solution. Do the 70 IQ and lower solution. And if it doesn't work, then we increase sophistication and just run limited testing and see what it goes. And so because of that attitude, it's actually going to make us take a little bit longer to get to market because we do that. But, but as we go to market, like in the coming quarters with these systems, we'll have something that like, capital expenditure is super low, reproducibility is high, ruggedization is high, um, and it'll Be more like an AK47 of a laser weapon rather than like a 300 kilowatt massive kicker system that breaks all the time and can't even fire very often. So awesome.

Speaker A: That's a cool journey. No, it's a cool journey and I, and I love like uh, how both of you kind of pulled on yeah the, the commercial space to you know, influence, you know, the, the direction and strategy for your build. Are there areas where you still kind of. This might be a layup, you still feel friction. What's like kind of slows you down when it comes to getting these systems actually fielded?

Speaker D: Oh, I was gonna say battery, uh, systems. Ah, uh, batteries. Batteries. Batteries. Uh, you know the one thing with pulling from um, from the industrial, from the industrial laser system is that those lasers are made to uh, in an auto factory for like 200 hours straight or something. Right. And so they're generally pretty bulky, which is something we can deal with. And we modify these systems to drop the weight, the weight and size for sure when we receive them. But um, what they are designed to do is pull like industrial three phase power. You know, that's what they've been made to do. And as we go on and we're going to drop that as we get more deep into laser modification. Um, uh, but for now we basically pull. The reason why they're cheap and producible or cheaper than directed energy systems is because they're made for these auto, these, these industrial applications. Right. And so uh, not many people make high voltage three phase drawdown batteries, you know, that are, that are deployed on the edge like satellite manufacturers. And I think chariots, I think that's kind of, kind of it.

Speaker A: But uh, that's why I'm glad that Adam's here paired up with you now. You guys are feeling each other's pain points out right now. Um, Adam. Yeah. You were about to jump in. Sorry, I didn't.

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: So I mean the, and I think the reason this, this, you know, part of the reason this, this problem has go been, has gone unsolved. Um, you know, has been that uh, you know, operating from fixed sites, uh, you know, and with the, you know, these traditional 30, you know, 300 kilowatt laser systems. Right. The, the thought, the thought was always this is going to be part of this big air defense bubble, right? This like large fixed site system, uh, that has effectively infinite logistics and size and weight and cost don't really matter. Um, and um, we're obviously seeing a shift in that because of the small US Threat and so it's kind of very circular in terms of like, we need these now small lasers deployed to the edge because of that. So we need to go mobile, we need to go lower cost. Um, and so that's really what's kind of enabled the opportunity for Chariot. One, uh, of the friction points for us is power has traditionally been seen because of that legacy model is kind of a sustainment commodity. Um, like really just about, you know, fuel and moving kind of bulk fuel forward and converting that fuel into just like locomotion, like in propulsion. Right? And, uh, and you know, converting that fuel and kind of these massive generators at fixed sites, creating kind of grid scale, uh, systems. And so the actual conversion of that, you know, fuel to electrical energy is just not tracked today by logisticians. Uh, like, they don't know, like, they don't literally track like anything like a kilowatt hour. So like a fundamental unit of like the future of warfare. Right. If we're talking about deploying a system like Michael's, the cost of that shot is measured in kilowatt hours. Right. Uh, the ability to power that is measured in kilowatts. Um, and so kind of shifting the, the mindset around power from a kind of sustainment and kind of a kind of, um, you know, just thinking about moving fuel around the battlefield to thinking about, you know, we kind of think about like the weaponization of the electron. Right? That's basically what, what, what Michael's doing. Uh, that's what these advanced, you know, edge compute systems are doing. Right. That's what these advanced sensors are doing is power is literally, you know, part of the weapon system. And you know, without that power available at the edge, you know, it becomes a paperweight. So kind of shifting that mindset around this, um, you know, has been a challenge for us. But through the Army's transformation and contact initiative has been kind of a double win for us. One is it's giving us access to get into there to be able to tell our story, to be able to get, you know, direct engagement with end users. It's also though, expose this problem traditionally, like, you know, we talked about, you know, Michael and us getting actually go deploy on an army range, you know, um, you know, months into the company, uh, that was unheard of kind of in kind of traditional, uh, you know, legacy, uh, the way that the department used to operate. Um, and so now that we're fielding systems like Michael's, we're fielding like UAS systems, we're fielding, you know, advanced EW systems, not just in like innovation theater demos where it's like two hours and everyone goes home and these kind of power problems don't become apparent. Now we're actually fielding those in operational exercises, force on force trainings, uh, in those, those kind of. What is this actually going to mean? Not on day one, but on day seven, on day 14, how are we going to sustain these systems? You know, Michael was talking about that magazine depth, right? If you go into a fight with your, all your missiles and you fire them all, you know, on day one, you make it through day one, right? But you, you know, there's a lot of talk about the production rate of those missiles, right? If we're consuming a missile every time we have to shoot down a drone, not only is that going to be expensive, we're also very quickly just going to run out of missiles. Um, and so really kind of the, the transformation contacts forcing us to actually employ this new technology in real operational scenarios and not just in these kind of innovation theater demos, um, has been a huge, uh, accelerator, uh, for us as these problems start to become more apparent, um, and the need for technologies like ours and like Michael's become, become much more clear, uh, in that, in that operational environment where we're talking about day seven, day 14, not just day one.

Speaker A: I'm always curious, like when you show like operators, you know, your technology, what, what's the reaction you get? Does it immediately click on how much that can change how they operate or. I'm always just generally curious when you're interacting with an actual operator

Speaker B: from my side, I'll quickly jump in. We have what we call the power brainworm, uh, which is when we first, uh, talk to someone, they're like, okay, so it's a battery. I already have batteries. Um, and uh, but if we manage to like, you know, hold their attention for more than like two minutes and we start to explain how the integrated energy storage, the power electronics, how that all works together, you know, deploys in kind of a single drop in form factor, integrates with their existing equipment, allows them to operate with lower signature because they don't have to keep their generators running 247 allows them to operate two times longer because they don't need as much fuel with less resupply, right. Allows them to field systems that otherwise they'd have to leave at home, uh, because they didn't have enough power to support those systems. As we start to get into, and this is really kind of a lesson for, I think, you know, for defense tech in general is we try to spend like as little time as possible talking about the specs of our system and as much time as possible talking about how does this fit into your mission, how does this make you more lethal, more survivable, uh, better equipped to form your mission, and, and, uh, and, and, you know, within, if we, if we get 15 minutes with them, we get in the power brain worm, and then, uh, and then they're hooked.

Speaker A: So I love that example, man, that carries over to so many different verticals, not just defense.

Speaker C: Adam is like a great advice machine right now, where he just went through mission impact, um, with what he was talking about just then, as opposed to checking off requirements from an rfp. So for all the defense tech founders listening, that's exactly how you need to be thinking about bringing whatever your capability is to war fighters and not just trying to respond to a dusty old rfp. But, um, yeah, Michael, any, any similar kind of lessons learned or approaches from, from when you're out there demoing?

Speaker A: Michael just puts on Star wars just like this out.

Speaker D: No, I think, um, I think when we go, you know, when we go and um, talk to a base commander to try and do a demonstration, right? They're basically like. I'd say, I'd say most people have been, we've been trying to deploy laser weapons for like 30, 40 years at this point. And basically every year it gets like a billion dollars in R and D. And it's clear that the military is just going to keep dumping billions of dollars into it until it works. Like they're not going to stop. But a lot of people have been burned by some of these products that have come out, namely the big systems like 30, 50, 100, 300 kilowatt systems that have come out. Um, those are going to work. And I think that's a product that we would want to get into as well. But right now what we can do is at this point, we've done so many demonstrations and we have so many memorandums from one stars that have witnessed our demonstrations. We can go and submit. But, but in the beginning, you know, we had to go to the, uh, Jifix, like open demonstrator at Camp Roberts. And I think Adam might have had a similar thing, um, where in the beginning when you first have R and D units, you're like TRL345. Um, there are these open demonstrators. I think there's one in the east and one on the west coast that are extremely useful, and we're very thankful for those where you can get your first field demonstrations and at the Beginning people are like, uh, I tried a laser weapon. It's all like, arl, AFRL research lab stuff, integrated DARPA projects. Like, the smartest people in the world are working on. On this. You're just like a dude in a garage. Like, I had two employees at that point when we first did our jiffics demonstration. Um, and so I think we. For a lot of the recent company history for Aurelius Systems, we've been in, like, a customer. Customer, um, education kind of mode. Um, but now we're getting to. We're getting invited to, like, demonstrations that are at the same time on either side of the country. And, like, we literally have to figure out, like, I don't have enough systems to go and demonstrate against. And so I think we're kind of getting. We're at that point where we're finally getting. Getting over that hump. Luckily, uh, when I say, hey, I have a laser turret, can you just give me some range time? Generally, people are like, oh, yeah, that's freaking sick. Let's just try it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I just wanted to kind of close on. What I've kind of seen is, like. Which feels like a bigger theme in this bigger shift, uh, in defense tech, which is, like, smaller teams kind of building more modular, almost like software native systems that are solving real operational problems. And I think that's exciting as well. I was really excited to have both of you guys on, but, um, I always like to just kind of think forward, like, let's say five years from now. What do you guys kind of see, like, the modern almost like, defense stack at the edge, kind of looking like, um, freebie out there. Adam, if you want to kind of lead.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you know, we kind of think about, uh, kind of all these defense systems being really about, you know, fundamental technologies of like, comms, compute and power as, like, the lifeblood of, uh, of like, these robotic and autonomous systems. Um, and so, you know, like, for a soldier, it would be like, you know, water MREs and like, tobacco in Zins. It's like, for robots, it's comms, computing power. Um, and so we're attacking, obviously, one of those critical infrastructure layers. The Zen of warfare for robots. Um, uh, that's a shirt right there.

Speaker A: I mean, that's gonna be the opener line of this episode.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So we're really investing in that horizontal layer. Right. Kind of some of the less sexy stuff compared to Michael. Um, and then there's. There's some really cool stuff being developed in terms of sensors and then. And then effectors um, that are, that are then be able to build on top of that layer. So I think you're going to see continued innovation, um, kind of in both of those areas. Um, you know, we're really excited to continue to innovate. And it's a very different business model around that. Just like that horizontal layer, um, that we can build these future systems and deploy these future systems on top of. Um, and then there's also going to be really cool innovation on advanced sensors, advanced countermeasures, advanced effectors. Um, and uh, those are going to kind of build off of each other and, uh, with a lot of the kind of advanced compute now you're doing fusion between those systems. You're doing collaborative autonomy. Um, so I think you're going to kind of see this kind of exponential effect here, um, where kind of each advancement kind of builds off the other. Um, and so even though the robotics stuff kind of happened in Ukraine is still, uh, you know, it's obviously dominating, but it's still kind of, uh, you know, like, you know, people steering, you know, you know, drones over fiber.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Like the advances in autonomy and then the advances in the compute that can actually power that autonomy and then the power that can power that compute, like, it's all going to start to stack and you're just going to see, I think, kind of a, kind of fast takeoff of this, um, you know, even more so than what we've seen in Ukraine of just like that push towards advanced, uh, deployed autonomous systems, robots making first contact. Um, so it's going to be pretty interesting to see what happens over the next couple years.

Speaker A: That's crazy. Uh, insight. Michael, how about yourself?

Speaker D: I think Adam, that's basically someone nailed it. Yeah, yeah, he's got, he's, he's locked in. Uh, I will, uh, I will ask Adam when, when does the Chariot, like, compute stack integrated Apple style into the battery come out? Like, when can I just plug into the, to the, uh, to the Chariot Jetson that's integrated into the, uh, into the Chariot battery. When does that happen?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, the, the great thing is that we're going to, you know, be able to kind of work with those mission partners. And, and you know, I kind of mentioned those three, you know, kind of lifeblood systems.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: Like, having those integrated, um, definitely makes a lot of sense. Uh, I very much, you know, had a lot of scars from going through the ATO process and going through like, FCE spectrum coordination stuff. And so I said, like, I am not doing that with the first product we build. Um, this is going to require no area worthiness, uh, no FCC coordination, no ato. We'll provide an ethernet port that you can handle the transport, you can handle the compute. Um, but yeah, there's certainly an eventual kind of natural evolution to say continue to integrate that core horizontal stack, um, uh, into one.

Speaker A: Good stuff. All right, uh, we're going to wrap on that and transition to our final segment, uh, which is the five second script scramble, which is really just kind of rapid fire Q A. Um, Sean, why don't you lead us off with Michael and then I will close, uh, with Adam.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'd love to. Um, so I'm very excited. Michael, do this, this five second scramble with you. Um, the, the general outline is I'll ask you a question and you have about five seconds just for a quick answer. So don't, don't make them too long. And these are mostly fun. Uh, nothing too, too in depth here mostly. So the first one I gotta ask is, uh, what's the biggest misconception people have about directed energy and lasers when you, when you're, when you're talking with them? What, what's their Hollywood perspective on, on what your system can do? That's completely wrong.

Speaker D: Yeah, you can put like a silvered mirror on the drone.

Speaker C: It'll just bounce off, no problem.

Speaker A: I have like, uh, yeah, I have

Speaker D: like a nine page technical write up that I wrote and shipped out to literally like 200 VCs that uh, that are in my, in my email list. And I'm like, you need to stop asking me this question.

Speaker B: Probably, probably also that they expected to be like Star wars where you actually see like the blaster shots.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: You see.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker D: Uh, and then everyone, everyone is over 50, so they're all talking about like sharks with laser beams. I want to die.

Speaker A: Stop.

Speaker D: Just stop.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker C: uh, Outstanding. All right, I'm glad we've learned some, some more about lasers then. Um, what's the best decision you've made under serious time pressure?

Speaker D: This is going to be longer than five seconds to think about it.

Speaker C: So you're kind of failing this time pressure right now, but it's all right.

Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. The best decision I made under serious time pressure. Some key hires where I had to make decisions. We wanted to bring in being leaders in our company and it's just like, like experienced person versus like 22 year old guy. And then the 22 year old just, I end up doing, I just end up vibing it out and then that guy's just cracked out of his mind, like, is gonna, he's gonna be like a VP of engineering at some, at like Google someday for sure. So.

Speaker C: Awesome. Awesome. Uh, what's one skill that you, you developed that you thought was useless, but then later on it turned out to be very valuable for you?

Speaker D: I'm an engineer, man. Marketing. And marketing's so important. It's so good. It's so good we have a marketing lead on our team. It was like, uh, like in our top. In our first ten hires.

Speaker A: Uh. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker D: Just so, so, so good. So important for recruiting, for sales, for customer education, everything. I mean, our LinkedIn's got like 6,000 followers and we're like, not that old or big of a company. So we punch above our weight for sure in terms of our marketing.

Speaker A: That's awesome.

Speaker C: That's a, that's a high leverage answer from a former engineer to admit marketing is important. Good for you, man. Um, what's a failure that taught you something that you still use today?

Speaker D: Not letting, letting people that are probably you kind of know in your gut are not going to make it. Spending too long keeping them around, not letting go of people earlier.

Speaker C: Gotcha.

Speaker D: But we're good on that now. But early on, growing pain.

Speaker C: This one kind of calls back to the first question about lasers, I think, although I could be wrong. I don't want to lead you too much, but, uh, what's the weirdest thing that you've had to explain to a room full of, uh, generals or SES's executives?

Speaker D: The Mirror question.

Speaker A: The mirror question. It's coming back to the mirror question.

Speaker D: They're like, dude, the light gets reflected. All lights the same, right? Yeah, yeah. 2025 has been about customer education, man, in a lot of ways.

Speaker C: All right, you're, you're out of the, uh, the harder questions. We're going to get some pretty easy ones now. Michael, um, what's your go to stress food when you're deep into a project, when you're pulling some all nighters Zins. Not technically a food, but we'll accept that answer.

Speaker A: Just swallow them down. Cool.

Speaker D: Yeah, there's a non zero amount of calories in that. Yeah.

Speaker C: All right. Definitely. Yeah. I got a crack team over at, uh, uh, over with. Michael, um, what's the best podcast or newsletter Podcast or newsletter recommendation, besides the peer program, uh, that, that you'd recommend that has nothing to do with defense or technology?

Speaker D: That has nothing to do with defense or technology?

Speaker C: Yeah, just a random other, you know, other podcast or newsletter.

Speaker D: This car pod With Doug Demuro, I'm really into cars and Doug's. Doug's got a podcast. It's goaded. It's goaded with the sauce. It's real good. Talks about, like, how do you get, like, like, what's the strategy for trending to get like a 2008 Cayman manual, uh, that's not totally. Or scored and destroyed for like, less than 20 grand. And how do you kind of like, finagle that? So that's my. That's my personal thing right now.

Speaker C: Awesome, awesome. Um, if you weren't in defense tech or in automotive, uh, world, what do you think would be the. The industry you'd be most interested in?

Speaker D: It would be in photonics still. So, um, I think that basically all compute is going to go away from the electron and it's going to go into the photon where, uh, the bandwidth and the band, like the band rates that you can get through through optical interconnects. Like, all the data centers are going into photons. My old company is like, I think their stocks doubled in the last year on selling, uh, optical transceivers. And like, they're a core part of the fiber and optics part of the AI data center.

Speaker A: Grow out.

Speaker D: So, um, we're gonna have, like, computers that just run in like, photonic silicon chips.

Speaker C: Okay, but if I put a mirror inside the computer, then it's. Or it's done.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: That's low power density. It probably would work. It probably would. Would stop.

Speaker A: Yeah, but they put the mirror on the shark's head.

Speaker D: Yeah, on the shark's head. Okay. You're killing, um, me.

Speaker C: I like to end always with our standard question, which is, um, is there a, a charity or a philanthropy effort that's close, uh, to your heart that you want people to know about?

Speaker D: I would say you should go start a factory and employ like a thousand people.

Speaker C: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for doing the five seconds Ramble, Michael. You crushed it.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker A: All right, Adam, you ready?

Speaker B: Ready.

Speaker A: Uh, before we jump in, I'm gonna do a quick plug for our sponsors in, uh, I feel like we've said about it.

Speaker D: No way. Are you sponsored by Zen?

Speaker A: No, no, dude, I wish. I mean, maybe. We'll see after this episode.

Speaker D: Yeah, please.

Speaker A: I saw Michael's eyes light up. That was great.

Speaker D: No way.

Speaker A: Um, where each of you gets a lifetime supply. Uh, all right, Adam, you ready? Uh, explain Chariot defense to me as if I were a five year old.

Speaker B: Um, all right, uh, something back to the kids toys. Like, so, you know, all the toys you have, you Know, you know, you have to put batteries in those toys. You have to plug them into the wall. What if you were out camping and you didn't bring any batteries and there was no wall to plug into? And then you can play with any of your toys. That would really suck.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So I guess I can't.

Speaker D: There it is.

Speaker B: Yeah, there it is.

Speaker A: How would you just. How would you describe the culture at Chariot?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I think the culture is, uh, you know, we try to really focus on and then kind of tying back into the. The defense thing. Just like really clear communication of like, limitations. Um, just like no one really feeling the need to like, oversell kind of their capability or sell their, like, uh, you know, their knowledge. Right. Even just like, um, you know, very much a kind of culture of transparency culture of kind of, uh, you know, blameless curiosity, you know, when something does go wrong. Um, and, uh, and that's really what we try to try to do. We have a lot of really smart engineers coming in from all different industries. Right. We're combining people from the EV industry, the defense industry. Right. Um, you know, traditionally that have not a ton of overlap. Um, and so trying to kind of bring the best of both, uh, together. Um, really, uh, great technology, but like, really, really good focus on. On the mission.

Speaker A: That's cool. I like that. Blameless curiosity. That's good. Uh, what kind of roles are you guys hiring for over the next three, six months?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, we will be persistently hiring, uh, electrical engineers, um, software, uh, engineers. If you start to build out the software platform of this that I didn't talk as much about, but creating that kind of operational energy visibility layer and data layer and like M. Micro grid management. Um, so, so building out really focused on some software, some kind of key software and electrical hires as we make those big investments.

Speaker D: Nice.

Speaker A: What's one of the, uh, biggest lessons that you took from your time at Anduril or Uber, uh, that kind of stuck with you when building Chariot.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, you know, I think kind of tying back to the, uh, uh, with. With Anduril. You know, I think what Androel did really well. Um, and kind of one of the secret sauce kind of components there was really, you know, having engineering and BD have kind of equal seats at the table. I think with the primes, you can get very BD driven, where they're going to go sell something on PowerPoint to a customer and then just like, like throw like a spec sheet, you know, over the fence, the engineering team and say, build exactly this. Because this is what I already sold. And then you can also get companies where you just, like, fall in love with the technology and just, like, you know, like Michael was saying, do all the 130 IQ stuff first, uh, and just like, become obsessed with that and like, don't actually think about, you know, how this actually gets sold. And so, you know, keeping that, you know, that, that kind of healthy tension between sales and engineering where, like, you know, we're pushing the boundaries on what's possible on the engineering side, but we're also making sure it's tying into a something, uh, that's not only meeting a mission, but meeting a budget line and meeting a procurement office. Right. And, like, you know, having to think about how do we actually, you know, not only employ this, you know, from an end user perspective, but in defense, there's a lot more than just winning over the end users to be successful. So that's really something I've tried to. Tried to keep, uh, keep as part of a key focus of the team.

Speaker A: That's awesome. All right, finish this sentence. The future of the battlefield runs on blank.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, robots in robots, which is electrons.

Speaker A: Um, uh, what's your favorite way to unplug?

Speaker B: Favorite, um, way to unplug. Uh, just going out, uh, walking with the dog, uh, you know, being right there in San Francisco, right along the water, just, you know, getting out, walking around, um, you know, just having time to think. Um, so, yeah, nice.

Speaker A: Favorite, uh, sci fi movie of all time.

Speaker B: Um, let's see. I think that's gonna be. It might be Spaceballs.

Speaker A: Oh, hell yeah. Nice one. Good poll. Uh, what's the best concert you've ever been to?

Speaker B: Best, um, concert. Um, let's see. Uh, I went and saw at, uh, Oracle park, formerly at&T Park. Um, saw the Eagles and Zach Brown Band. Um, that was a pretty, pretty magical, uh, pretty magical one. It was the OC Eagles, Zach Round man and the Doobie Brothers.

Speaker A: They all of them are there. That's crazy. Yeah, that's great. Zach Brown. So good. Um, if you could have any superpower for a day, what would it be?

Speaker B: A superpower? Um, probably teleportation, as I dread, uh, getting into a middle seat on my flight back from DC to SFO today in tsa.

Speaker A: Second stringers are out there.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker D: Oh, Adam, when do you leave?

Speaker B: Uh, I'm on the 6pm from DCA.

Speaker D: I think we're on the same flight. All right, nice.

Speaker A: That's the last one. Charity or corporate philanthropy? That's, uh, that's near and dear to you?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. So, uh, my wife's a dentist. Endodontist. Um, she did a lot of work with Operation, um, Smile. So I'll throw that one out there.

Speaker A: Sweet. All right, and then, uh, Michael, I gotta ask you because I saw your eyes kind of light up. What kind of, uh, roles are you guys hiring for over the next three to six months?

Speaker D: Dude, let me. Let me top my game.

Speaker A: How much time do we have?

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker D: Uh, yeah, so we are hiring for a. I know exactly what they are. We're hiring for another hardware engineer, another general Sui software engineer. We're hiring for a perception, uh, and sensing engineer for Edge Sensing, A, uh, laser design engineer, more in high power fiber laser systems development and a power electronics engineer right now. So basically everything across. Across the stack. So we get. We get no breaks. But, um, the one thing Adam can give us a break on is not having to make a battery. So I appreciate that about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a big lift. Awesome. Well, that's a. That's a wrap, guys. I appreciate you all, you know, spending time with us. Expand a little bit more on what you're building, and, uh, yeah, giving us a peek at what's next on the modern battlefield. So thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker C: For sure.

Speaker D: Thank you, guys.

Speaker B: You. It's fun. Sam.