David Ulevitch on American Dynamism: AI will compress nuclear regulatory timelines and public safety is the most underrated opportunity

general partner at Andre on the American Dynamism team. We need an American. We need this is pretty American. Feels pretty American, but we need I'm proud to be an American or freeird or something on the soundboard. Anyway, wake welcome to the stream. David, welcome. Good to have you here. How are you? We're great.

Um, I'd love to talk just jump right into it about uh Army modernization. We talked to General George. We had uh Driscoll on as well. Uh how optimistic are you for early stage startups? We know it's working at the growth stage, but is this re is this time really different?

We've been beating the drum of American dynamism for a couple years. There's a lot of startups now. Is there something changing in the army right now?

Yeah, I I think there is something changing and it has to change and you hear the enthusiasm from General George, General Fenton, um Secretary Driscoll, and you hear from everyone else you talk to who's just, you know, not just the people that you haven't spoken with, but the people that are walking up and down the halls and the people that are working um in the DoD that they know, um for a variety of reasons, both from a we don't have the tools we need, we're not procuring things fast enough, we're not manufacturing things fast enough to support the defense industrial base, um we are attitting our systems that we thought were not attitudable uh as quickly as we would.

Um so there's a whole bunch of reasons. So I think people recognize there's a need for change. I think the question is will this be the moment for change?

And if you look at the change that's happening elsewhere in Washington and throughout the government, I think you have no reason uh other than to be optimistic that this is going to be one of those moments.

And you know there's going to be a lot of push back from the primes and from people that um have you know sort of had a had a delicious steak lunch every day for the last 25 30 years but like this is the moment for the early stage startups.

I I think I think you know we we can talk about the early stage startups but I do think it's a moment of change. Yeah. I mean on American dynamism national interest investing broadly um is there a structural reason why venture capital has led here?

Because you could have seen this boom play out like biotech where companies go public much earlier.

You could have seen a private equity boom where old uh subprimes or primes get turned around taken private lbed and and and revitalized and re-industrialization really could have happened that way but it doesn't feel like it is.

Do I just have a narrow aperture on venture because I'm in this world or is there something structural going on? Ye yes to both. Um, I think it has to be venture capital first because we're at a technology transformation moment, right?

Whether it's being able to use AI from uh computer vision standpoints and just rapid changes that only startups can really um embrace and and react to and take advantage of quickly. Um, or just the fact that they can attract the best talent. You know, look, private equity firms really manage to the to the bottom line.

So, they're not going to pay top dollar for the 10x engineer the way a venture capital uh or venture capital backed startup would. Um so there's a bunch of reasons why it has to be a ventureback company. Now that said, I think you're going to see the private equity world quickly follow.

All these small um subprimes and people that contribute to the manufacturing base are going to not be able to keep up with the demand and I think are going to end up getting rolled up.

Um you're going to see people doing even ventureback startups that sort of have a private equity sort of lens like what Jay Malik is doing. you're going to see these things um start to come about where the private equity model is going to going to make sense.

Y um but even those things might be ventured back just like you see Jay doing with AMA. Yeah. Um a lot of people think defense when they think American dynamism, but obviously the aperture is much broader.

Can you talk about the interesting fringe of the of the the circle of competence that for what you can put in the American Dynamism bucket as it's grown? I've seen some energy deals. There's hardware. There's all sorts of stuff. But uh what excites you in this kind of like next era of American dynamism?

Yeah, look, we we're going to invest in anything that we as we say supports the national interest. Um so that defense is a big part of that. Um public safety is another huge area people don't think about.

I think that uh I think on the venture side, I'm probably the largest public safety investor in the country if if not the world. Um energy, you know, we have this insatiable thirst for energy.

So whether it's on energy generation um or energy transmission or energy storage those are all huge opportunities uh you know the battery ecosystem that we live in today is entirely dependent on China um that might be at risk down the road.

So we need to have an energy uh storage infrastructure in this country that's not dependent on China. That creates a whole bunch of supply chain opportunities. So everything from mining to reprocessing and um production of minerals and turning those things into batteries uh is really important.

So there's so the aperture is wide and then I would include everything from transportation, logistics, education. Um you know the the tent is big uh welcomes anybody that wants to build for American dynamism but the investments tend to focus on uh defense, energy, space, public safety, those things.

On on energy, I know you're in Radiant. I'm a huge fan of Doug. what he's building is fantastic and uh but it is small modular reactors. I think one megawatt reactors designed to replace an a traditional diesel generator.

Um I'm I'm kind of cautiously optimistic that we're going to see someone figure out how to just copy paste Diablo Canyon all over the country. Uh but it feels like that might need some sort of uh change on the regulatory side.

Are you optimistic about that being the catalyst and will that happen or do we just need an entrepreneur who says, "You know what? I don't care about the red tape. I'm gonna go figure it out. I'm going to go copy paste Diablo Canyon 45 times. " Or is that not even the right strategy?

So look, we we we we are all all all all three of us on this uh on this pod right now have survived the greatest nuclear disaster uh in modern history, which is that after the Vogle 3 and after Vogle 4 reactors came online, we didn't just go build Voggo 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, take all the workers who knew how to do it, all the supply chain pieces of of the cement makers and the steel manufacturers who knew how to make all the components and pieces that we didn't just take them and and stamp them out across the country.

like that was the biggest miss in our in our lifetimes frankly and it's very depressing. Um now that said from a from a startup standpoint whether it's radiant and you are correct it's one megawatt.

Um I think there's only two ways to win in nuclear you have to do it at one megawatt or the like thousand you know the gigawatt scale and there's a bunch of reasons why I think radiant will work and why the why the gigawatt scale can work but and one one change on the regulatory front that I think people don't appreciate.

Yes, we need reform in the in the NRC and we need we need the regulators to be much more um productive and positive to approving new reactors and making the fuel supply chain more readily available.

But the one of the things that's held up new reactor designs for so long is that when you make a change to your application or you make a change to your design, you then have to go through this hugely laborious process of figuring out all the different statutes and regulations that your change impacts.

And there's an entire army of consultants that get paid tens of millions of dollars a year to just help navigate all of the the requirements for nuclear regulatory process or fuel, how to transport fuel, all these things.

With AI, you now have the ability to parse through all these regulations so that when you make a change, you can say, hey, you know, this, you know, hey, language model, tell me what are the of the 100,000 pages of regulatory paperwork, what are the things that I need to go update in my application that are affected.

So things that might have taken three months and $10 million of consultants work now maybe just takes a few minutes of of asking the the GPT, hey, how do I update my application that based on these changes or and and that applies to the regulator as well.

The regulator can now go through the applications and if they're using a language model or GPT that's tuned for the regulatory code around whether it's fuel or reactor um or transport, they can actually say, hey, look, how do I evaluate this application? What are the things I need to watch out for?

And the entire process for nuclear regulatory approval should really be contend condensed dramatically. And that was never possible before the AI boom.

So people don't always realize while we need nuclear power to capture the AI opportunity, we're also looking to use AI to I think enable the nuclear opportunity in future. That's very cool. Ty, do you have anything or question?

My main question is uh you know I'm I'm sure sure this is something that you guys talk about internally, but you know you have these categories, right?

and let's call it defense uh public public safety uh what's your kind of internal internal dialogue around making net new investments in something like public safety when in many ways I imagine flock safety is like flock safety is the flock safety of xyz right you know like people I'm sure come to you with with pitches and and uh oftentimes for things that are just inevitably on the flock safety roadmap you know and it's and it's why not just put another, you know, billion dollars into into them is kind of a calculus that I'm sure you guys run.

This is like the androll of whatever is going to be Anderoll. Um, look, sometimes that's true and we just try to put more money into andol. We've tried to just put more money into flock safety. We've done that many times.

Um, I think that as we get smarter and learn more about these markets, we recognize that the surface area is just much much more expansive than we realize. So, take for instance 911 services. Well, flock safety doesn't do anything with 911 services. Being a 911 operator is a thankless job. It's an exhausting job.

The turnover rate's very high, and that entire world needs to be totally reimagined with AI where you have AI operators answering the calls, triaging the calls so that the operators can deal with calls more efficiently, first responders can have more information at their fingertips. Flock safety is not going to do that.

Another example, you read constantly about what's happening at Newark airport with the FA, you know, the FAA air traffic control system breakdown.

Obviously, a ventureback startup can do a much better job than whatever we've had for the last 30 years trying to make um, you know, the air traffic controllers better equipped with, you know, really dated radar systems, not getting the information they need about what's happening down on the ground at the airports.

And so that's just an obvious opportunity. Well, neither Andrew nor Fox safety is going to do that. So we just think these surface areas get bigger and bigger the more we look especially the ones that have not been disrupted by modern software. Totally. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh I last question on on space investing.

Um there's a lot of startups that are predicated on declining launch costs. Are you seeing the trend in launch cost pricing and dollar per kilogram to orbit on trend or ahead of trend or or are we lagging there? You you would have to ask my partner Katherine. I'm not the space expert. I have to confess.

But I think that the cost is going down and you know we're seeing companies that are now in sort of that that next echelon of what happens now that launch is achievable. What about when when we really expand and and be able to return things to Earth, you know, reliably and quickly? VAR has made a lot of progress there.

So, when when that really unlocks like then what what what companies come next, I think is a question to to ask and that we're asking. Yeah, she's been on the show. We didn't get to answer we didn't get to ask her that, but we'll have to ask her the next time that she's on.

But, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. This was really great. Yeah, great to finally have you on and enjoy the rest of LP day. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Yes. Thank you. We need little round of applause. Applause. Fantastic. Uh, next up, Anish, who I think you're buddies with.

You've chat, you chatted with a few times. I'm excited for this conversation. You can Well, more than a few times, dear friend. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Your boys. We're my boy. Your boy. Uh, I'm excited to chat with him. Long overdue to come on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We We've been trying to make it happen for a while. Um, glad we could make it happen today, even if it's just for 15 minutes. Um, but we'll bring him in. Um, what are you interested in? uh talking through what are the interesting uh angles to take with him today. He's focused on the application layer.

So a lot of the if you see Andrew consumer enterprise is there delineation there both uh both but leaning consumer. Sure. So um yeah I just want to get into the app layer what he's seeing how he's you know he's a extremely um busy guy and I and I've seen his process. Oh, he's in Arc Boats. Have you seen that?

The electric boat. Yeah, that was like a super that was a super um super random deal that doesn't I