Auterion raises $130M to build the Android-equivalent OS for military drone swarms

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Lawrence, welcome to the show. We have Lawrence. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? Give us the update. Give us Thanks for having me. Like uh announcing $130 million fundraising. Yay. There we go. Hit it. Hit it harder. One more time. Big hit. Actually, one more.

One more because we we need to talk about war tech and and move away from defense tech. We want to play offense. Offense. Offense. They're getting aggro. Defense tech is over. Offense tech. Great to have you on the show. We already got into the numbers. We got the gong hit out of the way.

maybe room for more in the segment, but uh give some background on yourself and the company, the shape of the company for the first time. So, so we're doing we're doing something that in this current day and age sounds crazy.

We're building common operating system for drones for all the different manufacturers, deploying in the tens of thousands in Ukraine, um and equipping American war fighters with it.

at a time where everybody is talking about you know defense tech I would say in the form of like hey we're making drones and is building swarms not drones and focusing on the software layer uh what was your reaction this happened about an hour ago Trump hit truth social and basically my I haven't been able to read it's a big block of text but basically saying like doubling down on the support for Ukraine he's saying uh that he thinks Ukraine can win back all the territory they've lost.

Wow. I'm assuming given the stage that you guys are at, you already have a heavy presence in Ukraine. Are are you guys uh uh you've rolled out your software there? You're already working with teams on the ground. Yeah, we we're building our product uh frontline centric. So, we have a team there.

Um I I've been seven times in Ukraine. You have to be on the ground to be there. And we're fielding 33,000 drones this year, which for Ukraine is a respectable, but not a massive number, but for an American company that's pretty much unheard of.

Talk about the shape of the drones that you can actually inter like interact with. I I feel like uh you know, a decade ago, we were talking about Predator drones. Like do those things have an API? Now I'm hearing about like a DJI drone that's been kind of like they just attached a grenade to it.

I don't think it has an API. Making their own homegrown. They're making their own homegrown. I've heard about uh what's that Ethernet cable? They attach it with a fiber line so it doesn't even have Wi-Fi on board. Like how what can you actually put on a network to create a swarm?

Is there like a slice of the market that you're going after or do you want to are you already integrating all sorts of sensors andectors? like what's what's the state-of-the-art right now and then where does it go?

So my personal background is that I wrote 17 years ago the current de facto industry standard for drone communication called Mavink.

Um, I've not touched a keyboard with code for a while, but what we're building as a company goes further than that because APIs are cool, but if you want to build autonomy on the edge and and build supremacy in that, you need to deploy the autonomy on the edge, you need to build apps.

And so that's why we've shifted away from just coms to the operating system. So all the drones need to run the same OS so that you can deploy your AI on anything and win a war. Yeah. Uh talk to me about how h how like how we will actually create some sort of common system.

It feels like everyone who's an American would want one system of record, one ground truth that interfaces with everything like very platform, very manufacturer agnostic so we can use the best tool for the job but we don't want to have six different standards. Um, Anderoll has Lattis, Palunteer's doing stuff.

Like, is this all going to culminate in like one major program of record from the Department of War? How will this play out? Like, walk me through how America gets to like a single unified standard for drone swarm operating. I think there are two pieces to that.

I think for the network itself, we need to get something to the equivalent of 5G for warfare. Mhm. So all those different radio links need to come onto common base right now. Right now drone communication is like cellular network in the 80s. Yeah. Like completely proprietary.

And then the other piece of software and I think Andreal I have a lot of respect for the trailblazing they've done. I think there is a vertically integrated ecosystem play in the market and I think Andreel is way ahead uh on that play. That is not what we're going for.

What we're going for is the open ecosystem across different manufacturers. The drones we're powering are anywhere between like 6 lb and 200 lb and from like 10 m to a,000 miles range.

So with our approach, we're actually able to cover a wide range of reconnaissance, but also munitions and and that's very similar to what Microsoft has done for computers or Android has done for smartphones. Makes a ton of sense. What's next? Where's the company based? Are you hiring?

Are you building a You don't need to build a manufacturing plant. So is it all software development at this point? Like what how does what is the shape of the company? Well, I I I I say jokingly, we're a software company that's not afraid of hardware. Um, so we're working very closely with manufacturers.

We're based in Arlington. Um, like it's it's important to be close to the customer because our biggest go-to market problem for the whole industry and I and I uh I've known Katherine for almost a decade now.

Um, and uh, I saw you had her on the show and it's like the the most important thing is force design, educating the Department of War how to use autonomous systems. And so we need to be close to the war fighter and that is why we're headquartered in Arlington. Uh, we have uh, a local development team.

We also have teams in Europe forward deployed. Um, I've been to Taiwan multiple times. We're building up presence there. I very much like to be close to the problem and that means being close to the threat. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to come and uh chat with us on this show.

We appreciate it and congratulations on the massive round. Very excited for what you're building. I'm sure you're going to be very busy in the next few months. We'll talk to you soon. Uh yeah, not just the next few months. Thanks for having me. Next few decades probably. Cheers, Lawrence. Thanks for coming on.

We'll see you. Uh let me tell you about Find Your Happy Place. Welcome wonder with inspiring views, hotel, great amenities, junior beds, top tier cleaning and 24/7 concier service. And do we have a surprise guest? Better. We do have a surprise guest. Is he already in the waiting room? Zane is in the reream waiting room.

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