Poseidon launches the Seagull: a ground-effect flying boat targeting defense and coastal cargo logistics

That's right. From Poseidon. Let's do it. I'm gonna let you take the Poseidon himself. Can you grab me a Yuma mate? Of course. Thank you. Uh, David, what's going on? big day for you and a big flag. Thank you. Yeah. No, it's a it's been a great day here. We finally launched in public.

We've been in cell for a bit over a year now. So, it's really exciting to show the world what we've been working on. Uh, it's amazing. And, uh, if I remember correctly, some of the very first posts we featured on the show at the beginning of last year, weren't they yours? I feel like you came from I think there was one.

Yeah. Way back. So, thank you for uh contributing to us uh getting this off the ground. uh talk about talk about the Poseidon Seagull, kind of the the genesis of the company. Would love to hear kind of like, you know, your backstory and then and then the first uh you know, is it been a year and a half of the business?

How long have you even been in market? Yeah, so we I can go way back to the beginning. We started uh right around like December 23, January of 24.

um raised our initial preede and the way that the company got together was um it's me and two of my co-founders uh Isaac Zeke um and Parker and so we were I think ideating about like logistics uh and aerospace and I think like logistics especially has been a market that's been largely unchanged for the past 100 years.

the types of planes that we're flying are like largely the same uh same 737 same like Cessnes um and on the the ship cargo side it's been pretty much like containerized cargo uh with very much like spoken hub model and so we were going through a bunch of ideas of like what we could build to disrupt this thought about airship for a while um and those are very interesting but have their own set of problems uh a couple other things um but then I think one night at a random party in San Francisco girl walked up to Isaac and was like, "Hey, you should look at into like a chronoplants.

" And we're like, "Oh, like what are chronopants? " So, we spent the next night just like binging YouTube videos and like documentary series. So, chronoplons were these like types of vehicles that were built in the Soviet Union in the '60s and '7s.

And at the time, they were like the highest cargo capacity uh like planes ever built like they're like flying ships essentially. And so they're constrained to fly in ground effect, which is a regime when you're flying extremely close to the surface of the ground or in this case water because water is extremely flat.

um where you have an aerodynamic boost. It does two things. Um it a largely reduces your drag and it increases your lift so you can carry a lot more and spend a lot less fuel. So it's like increase of your lift drag ratio by 30 to 50%. Which is a huge deal.

Um and so we started looking at those and the really crazy thing about ground effect vehicles um this modern age is like a lot of the problems that the Soviets had uh are solved for the most part. So, it's it's really done a controls issue and a material science problem.

Um, and composits are incredible material science. So, like carbon fiber. Um, and controls is like much like I think we we've solved those problems pretty well now. Um, and so, but the the really cool thing is like the ground vehicles are not regulated by the FA. Uh, they're regulated by the Coast Guard. Yep.

And so, um, Coast Guard certification is significantly easier than FA. So you have like really great companies that have built cool like EV tool stuff and like they've IPOed or spacked or whatever um for billions of dollars, but they've never actually had a commercial flight because the FA regulatory process is so long.

Uh so it's like a decade plus to get certified. Um but if you're going through the Coast Guard and so it's if you're flying sub 150 meters and it's the same thing internationally Europe under the IMO, you get certified as like what is technically a boat. Uh and so what we're building are flying boats.

Yeah, we talked to Billy Thalmer at Regent. He's doing personnel carriers, but uh that that regulatory arbitrage is just like amazing. Uh even off air after we had Billy on, you were just like, I'm so excited about this. I I love that. Regar just gets regar.

It's previously the domain of crypto stuff, but now in hard tech, we're taking advantage of So, we have the video. I want to pull up the video and I want you to just kind of like talk over it. Uh, Ben, can you pull it up quickly? And, uh, while we're waiting for that, I'd love to know a little bit more. Oh, here we go.

You can mute it, Ben. I don't see it. Okay. Okay. Uh, maybe try watch. I mean, oh, we'll just uh seagull. Okay. Pretty cool. So, this is put Starlink on it. Take my art. Um, so this is it. taking off. Um, yeah, like flying at about 8 to 10 feet is peak. And so the How fast is this? Uh, it cruises 65 mph.

We hit 115 miles an hour and 115. Let's go. Yeah. Some prop changes. I think we'll hit 160 on our next set of tests. You got to get it in sports car numbers. I want to see 200. Bugatti Veyron goes what, 250? Yeah, we got to race one. You got to go. Yeah. Yeah. Do the Nurburg thing.

I love I mean the the design looks fantastic. So when you say ground effect, does it have to fly over water or or I mean this looks just like a plane. Can you just fly it over land too? Yeah.

So So like if you're flying in ground effect, do you generally want to fly over water because water is like extremely flat and so like you'll have waves and even in waves you'll fly slightly higher and it'll average out.

Um but you can find ground effect in like the like I don't know like the the salt flats or something. But um ours is what's considered to be like a class B class C ground effect vehicle. And so we're not restricted to ground effect. We've just optimized uh aerodynamically to take advantage of ground effect. Got it.

But we could fly out of it um up to 150 meters. Can you talk about where were you? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about the tech tree that enables this? It sounded like there's some material science stuff like carbon fiber is cheaper.

Then there's also like the miniaturization of electronics like you have Starlink on that thing. That's not possible a couple years ago. The question is really just like why now?

But I want like more of a breakdown of like of like all the different things from the regulatory to the tech tree that's enabled this to happen now and not earlier because at the same time like this feels like something that could have happened decades ago but why are we just why why are we just breaking through with this now?

Yeah. So I think like starting on like the the material science side I think is really interesting like composits have really come into their own in the past like 10 15 years. Um, and so in terms of like being having like actually like very like good manu like there's very good manufacturing here.

So like ATV composits is where we get all of ours and that's in labor more. It's like an hour drive. It's kind of awesome. And that's both like the science of those composits but also the cost or is it just the cost that's come down? Both and like the amount to which they're being used.

And so like you're having your like large planes like your Airbuses are being built with like composite wings. And so like aerospace as a whole has like really moved into composits as opposed to just like aluminum.

Um and so then like on the electronics side um I think like there's in the same way that like GPUs for like gamers like enabled machine learning. Um there's just like the the hobbyist grade uh RC stuff has gotten extremely good.

And so um just like really move forward like the quality of motors available, the quality um of like electronic systems, sensors, um the types of sensors that are available right now have gone small enough that we can fit them on here. Yep.

Um and really the the seagull has started as like a quarter scale prototype of our full scale vehicle uh which is going to be a 50 foot two-tonon capacity vehicle. Um yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

I was going to talk about, you know, sort of long-term capacity scale and then like the applications of this cuz at that size to me it looks like something you would use for like potentially defense applications is a big one.

But I thought you were going to say pleasure craft and like going out and going out with your boys with your boys on the ground effect vehicle with your boys having a glass of champagne. That' be a really good time.

But yeah, so is is your guys's first focus like logistics and and sort of like long sort of longer term longer distance transport that kind of thing? Yeah. So um I think like as I was saying this like started as just like scale like prototype demonstrator, figure out the aerobody design, validate a bunch of stuff.

Uh but as we were building it, um it became aware that like it was like pretty capable vehicle in and of itself and like we designed it for manufacturing.

Uh so we reached out to uh the DoD specifically like the naval surface warfare center people and SOCOM uh and they all had their own specific like mission profiles that they were interested in with uh the seagull. And so it's like pretty large payload capacity relative to size.

Uh and being able to operate in like marine uh domains. And so doing stuff like anti-ubmarine warfare like UV detection um very like urgent and like high priority logistics and goods is on the on the defense side for the seagull.

And then we're starting operations commercially with it uh for doing like very like mo mostly like medical deliveries to remote islands. Um and then at the the full scale carrying two tons, the idea is to be able to compete um with air freight for coastal and island uh logistics and cargo.

Um and through a bunch of things, we are going to be able to get to roughly a quarter or a third the price per kilogram per mile. It seems like Zipline's done pretty well with the medical deliveries stuff. I was I was surprised to see how how long that company has been around and how much they've grown.

Um, so clearly there's like these niche markets that are really important in logistics and trans in transportation. Um, yeah, Jordy, you got another question or No, I mean that was it.

I just wanted to bring you on to say uh thank you for the early I was saying you you missed it earlier, but uh I just remember I don't I don't remember much of what you posted, but I do remember covering covering your fantastic.

In terms of military applications, it sounds like uh logistics first, then maybe ISR, but is there gonna you're going to put a bomb on this thing at some point?

I'm responsible for what they stick in it, but there are discussions about a wide range of different payload options, but I I mean just just like stepping away from like the business applications like is that something even like we even need?

Like we hear about the hypersonic missiles being able to kind of bob and weave and they don't fly on a traditional like parabolic ICBM trajectory, so they're harder to shoot down. This thing seems obviously maneuverable.

Uh, is there military value on a weapons platform for this thing or is it just like too slow and too small to to really like matter? Yeah, the it's definitely faster than like torpedo per se, but the unique advantage of it is when you're flying at such a low elevation, you're flying below radar.

Uh, so it's a like very stealthy platform like a ship. Um, so you can get pretty close to the enemy lines without being spotted. That's cool. Uh, back on the tech tree.

Um, are you are you doing any AI on board even like open CV to do collision detection like you'd get on like a DJI drone or is everything kind of remote controlled right now operated? How are you thinking about the evolution of that uh tech? Yes.

So the the way that we built it out is it starts with being till operated because you need to like train the systems and so running it's like the on a hardware level it's like pixock with art pilot that we've like modified it and art pilot's like an open source platform cool I know guys at Android use it as well and so uh there's a few sensors that we have on board uh we have a sonar we have a radar just like a visual camera sensor so yeah um taking stuff in terms of like collision detection like elevation detection maintaining stable flight and so yeah we're building our own models so when you're flying flying it, are you doing FPV or is it just at a computer screen?

Like what what does that actually look like for the pilot? Yeah, for for the pilot when you're like flying it just like remotely, um we have the the computer screen with all the um different like signals on it. Um you get all your stats flight simulator. Yeah, basically.

And then then you have the camera on board so you could actually see where you're going. That makes sense. Cool. Super cool. That's amazing. Well, good luck. Congrats on impressive what you've built. uh in so little time with in a very efficient way. So, congrats again.

Congrats to the whole team and looking forward to the next update. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you guys. Cheers. Bye. And we're going deeper on AI image generation. We got the CEO of Runway ML coming in the Temple of Technology, Chrisal Valenuela from Runway. I'm a huge fan of Runway. I used it years ago.

They had a fantastic feature that would allow you to basically create a green screen even if you didn't have even if you didn't record the footage on a green screen. And so you could do all these funny things. Remember Zuck uh using the flag when he was uh like surfing like on Lake Tahoe?

I was able to use runway to uh select just the flag and then I could put a different flag there. And it would have been so hard to do in After Effects, which is a software I I I kind of know pretty well, but uh takes a ton of time to do rotoscoping.

And uh that was the moment when I was like, "Oh, this company is doing really cool stuff. " Now they've gotten into image generation, video generation, and a whole lot more. And today, they launched a new Gen 4 uh video model, and I want to hear all about it. So, welcome to the stream, Chris.

Hey, yeah, thank you for having me here. Thanks so much for