BRINC Drones raises $125M, led by Motorola Solutions, to put 911 response drones on police and fire station rooftops

Speaker 1: Investing for those that take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service. You can find a company that's burning down all their cash flow if that's what you're interested in. Just be safe out there. Up next, we have Blake Resnick from Brink back on the show. Welcome to the show, Blake. How are doing?

Speaker 5: I'm really good. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 1: I'm gonna hand it over to you because it looks like you got a tour for us. Take us through it. What's new in your world? What can you show us?

Speaker 5: Yeah. A 100%. So, Brink just raised a new $125,000,000 of capital, and that is all being directed towards putting these, the heavy police and fire station roof in America. Amazing.

Speaker 1: What are we looking at here? Break it down for us.

Speaker 3: Wow.

Speaker 5: Yep. Very cool. So so these are our drone recharging pods, and, you're currently watching one of our dedicated nine one one response drones launch. So, yeah, that's really the the focus of the company. See if we can get that camera swung around here. And, yeah, right now, we are on top of our factory and headquarters. So we have three stories. Right now, we're on our our third, which is mostly dedicated towards engineering office space. And our engineering team is pretty cool. It's very multidisciplinary. We employ mechanical electrical engineers, embedded software folks, autonomy, you know, aerospace, and and more. So many of those individuals are working in, this volume of our facility. Now we are transiting down to our second story, which is mostly an r and d space. You'll see a lot of that in just a second here.

Speaker 3: Very cool.

Speaker 5: This is one of our r and d areas. And to my right is our current product portfolio. So our smallest drone over here is where we started. This is LEMR two, and it is designed to get eyes and ears in dangerous places. Today, about 20% of the SWAT teams in the country are actively utilizing this aircraft to reduce the probability of officer involved shootings and keep everyone safe in the most dangerous police response missions. Across from that, put this guy back, we have responder, and this is the aircraft that you just watched launch. It was really the world's first purpose made nine one one response drone. So already hundreds of police and fire departments around the country are using these things to respond to the majority of the 911 calls that occur in their jurisdictions. And our largest drone on this platform is Guardian, and this is really designed to replace police helicopters. Guardian can fly for over an hour. It has greater than a 60 mile an hour top speed. Integrated Starlink, that is this panel on the top of the airframe, giving it unlimited range anywhere in the world. I'm calling in from Seattle. If I wanted to take Guardian off and fly it into the Pacific Ocean, that is something that I would be able to do without losing connectivity, which is pretty incredible. We also have an amazing camera payload on this drone. These two things are HD thermal imagers. The best thermal imagers on drones in production right now are six forty resolution, so that is a huge step up. And we have two thermal imagers that are built into Guardian with different field of view optics, meaning you can zoom in and out of your thermal picture, with Guardian without losing any quality. We also have a pretty amazing HD vision system to four k imagers, with 640 times total zoom. So even from thousands of feet away, end users can zoom in, read license plate details, all sorts of stuff like that. Behind that, we have a mini LRAD, which is an incredibly loud speaker system. You kinda see it buried in the back of the drone there. That can emit a 130 dB SPL, which is actually louder than a police car siren. So if we had guard Guardian playing a siren tone and a police car right next to it doing the same, Guardian would actually be the louder vehicle. And then the recharging station for this, you can see on a monitor back here, has a robotic system that is capable of physically swapping batteries. So with Guardian, nine one one dispatch doesn't actually have to wait for the drone to recharge between flights. The second it touches down, our robotics will actually physically swap batteries, replace, you know, the batteries in the airframe with a fully charged set, and then it can launch immediately. And we use that same robotic system to load different payloads into the bottom of the drone as necessary. So if nine one one got a call about someone having a heart attack, god forbid, they could load in a defibrillator, go accomplish that delivery, come back. And then if the next call is about someone drowning in a lake, they could load in a personal flotation device. Wow. So very proud of that. I'll show you just two more things and then, would love to chat. Yeah. Downstairs to my left is where we are actually integrating airframes. So believe it or not, this is one of the larger drone factories in America. And then, to my left currently is where we are building our recharging pods. Wow.

Speaker 1: So, yeah, that is, that's Brink HQ and a lot of the stuff that we currently have in production. Yeah. That yeah. Wow. That is amazing. What what progress since, last time you came to the studio and brought, I believe, the smallest of the drones and flew it around for us. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. What Yeah. Yeah. What what what is the scale of each program right now? I mean, you mentioned that SWAT teams are using the smallest of the drones in something like 20% penetration, but it feels like that final largest drone is still sort of coming out of the R and D phase at this point. Is this is that correct?

Speaker 5: Yeah, that's totally a fair characterization. Got it. There are about twenty, zero police departments in America. Yep. Thirty, zero fire departments, eighty, zero police and fire stations. Yeah. And we think in the future, the vast majority of those buildings are going to have a nine one one response drone in a recharging pod on their roof. Yeah. Today though, that number, that number is probably four, five hundred. Mhmm. And that's spread across all the manufacturers that are interested, in this segment. You know, Us, Skydio, DJI, etcetera. So, yeah, I I would say, like, 1% of the buildings that eventually are going to have this capability currently do. And a big focus for Brink over the course of the next couple of years, is gonna be increasing that number from, you know, 1% to ten, thirty, forty, fifty, and and onwards. I remember talking to someone who was operating,

Speaker 1: drones and and, single rotor drones actually in The Middle East in in in a military context. And he was saying that at a certain scale, they would actually use gasoline powered drones because the energy density was higher, and it just made sense in that context. And I'm wondering about like, there is a there are a bunch of good reasons to give someone a rechargeable battery if they're, you know, gonna be filming themselves rock climbing or something. But this is an this is an industrial company. This is a this is a you know, an enterprise level solution. Is there a, like a gasoline powered use case that would make sense? Or are we now at a point with a technology where an electric powertrain makes sense across every possible every possible, you know, opportunity or threat?

Speaker 5: I mean, you you are spot on about the power density of gasoline. Mhmm. It is far in excess of lithium ion batteries. Yeah. However, our drones respond to emergencies in known locations. Sure. Around, you know, the The United States and the rest of the world. Mhmm. And that means automated recharging and battery swapping infrastructure is actually a pretty good solution to this problem. Right? With Guardian, you get an hour of flight time, and then every hour, you're only, you know, down at a recharging station for maybe ninety seconds as that recharging station accomplishes an automated battery swap. Mhmm. That gives you over 97%, kind of applicability of of the airframe. You can fly Guardian for greater than twenty three and a half hours a day. So our customers generally are are are pretty satisfied with that, And I think the way that we'll continue to push flight times up progressively moving forward isn't necessarily with a gasoline powered drone, but instead with larger form factor drones that have an, you know, intrinsically superior propeller efficiency and maybe also VTOL fixed wing aircraft I was can stay in the sky, you know, for six to eight hours Yeah. Without, you know, requiring a a battery swapping operation or or recharge. Yeah. Not to leak the road map, but it just feels like you're just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger until it's, you know, the size of a manned airplane, but probably with, still autonomous. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You know, there's there's a segment there's a segment of our customer base that has enormous jurisdiction. Sure. Like sheriff's offices in Florida, for example. I mean, they can have thousands of square miles of jurisdiction. Mhmm. So for them, a VTOL fixed wing that can stay in the sky for eight hours is actually a pretty phenomenal fit. Yeah. What does the go to market look like for this company? Are are you selling to every,

Speaker 1: every sheriff's department or police department individually? Are there conferences where you can meet them all? Are there any that are, like, collectively buying products together as a group because they might get a better price, but they might also have better service level agreements or some sort of, you know, integration where it's like, oh, well, like, the town over is using the same system, so let's go grab a battery from them. There's some value to that, but what does the actual sales process look like?

Speaker 5: We're we're seeing all of that. Okay. It you know, it's it's early days, though. Yeah. The vast majority of our go to market is focused on building direct relationships with police chiefs, fire chiefs, mayors, and city council members. Yeah. And as discussed, there are a lot of these organizations in The US Mhmm. Which, you know, necessitates us to have a pretty large sales team Mhmm. To build all the relationships that are necessary. So we've we've broken The United States into dozens of different sales territories, and each one of those territories is staffed with an account executive that holds a quota. Yep. Then they can pull from various other sales support organizations that we built, like dedicated demo teams and,

Speaker 1: you know, sales engineering teams and and other things. Can you get me up to speed on Motorola Solutions? They raised, you you raised a $125,000,000 round led by Motorola Solutions. Most people in the consumer world might think of the Motorola RZR V3, the the cell phones. Do they have a lineage in public safety or development of emergency response equipment? Is there more synergy there, or is this purely, just, like, it's a good deal and they did the deal?

Speaker 5: No. So the the vast majority of Motorola's business is selling body worn radios and public safety software to police and fire departments. Like, overwhelming majority of their business. Yeah. They are actually the largest company in our industry. Yeah. Motorola is number two or excuse me. Number one. Axon is number two. Sure. Flock is probably number three in term in terms of scale. Oh, okay. So they they have three existing commercial relationships. Yep. With literally every single one of our potential customers in the free world. Like, that is their market position. Yeah. If you ever have to go and meet, like, a net new PD or RFD, we can just ask them for the introduction. Sure. And then, you know, when that organization decides they do wanna adopt our technology, we can usually also fold it in through a preexisting contract that Motorola has. So they're an incredible partner. And I would say the relationship is very strategic on the go to market side, but it's also very strategic on the product side. We've developed a feature, for example, where if a police officer or a firefighter pushes the emergency button on one of their radios, that can automatically trigger one of our drones to launch and fly to their exact location. Sure. Motorola has a huge percentage of the nine one call taking software market, so we can grab the coordinates of 911 calls from there and then use those to trigger drone flights. They have an ALDR business. They have a very large computer aided dispatch business. Mhmm. In fact, most of the, you know, very large police departments around the country utilize Motorola CAD. So, yeah, there are synergies left and right with them. They've been great partners. Y Combinator has their request for startups.

Speaker 1: I want your request for startups. If someone in the audience is thinking about building a company deep in the drone supply chain, deep in the battery supply chain, deep in any industrial supply chain, what is what is an what is a category or product or subcomponent where you would love to meet an entrepreneur who's thinking about building a new company based in America to solve that particular problem?

Speaker 5: I mean, camera payloads come to mind immediately. There are are very few American made gimbalized camera payloads that have high resolution thermal, you know, good zoom optics Yeah. Three axis stabilization Sure. And that don't cost an, you know, an obscene amount on a per unit basis. Yeah. So, yeah, that that would absolutely be one. They're nice, like, self contained components that, you know, a lot of drone manufacturers don't wanna make for various reasons. Even Andoril is actually a consumer of a lot of these parts. Like, they're not doing Totally. Their their own their own payloads in that category. Yeah. So, yeah, that that would be of interest. Yeah. I would say, you know, very high energy density batteries, of course, always are are of interest to drone manufacturers.

Speaker 1: Mhmm. Brushless Outrunner motors Mhmm. Mesh networking radio PCB You know, the whole supply chain. Just do anything in there. No. It makes sense. It feels like it feels like a decade ago, you would have been you you probably were called crazy when you started the company, but you would have been called crazy for trying to just build a hardware company because hardware was hard. You had to be a billionaire to start a defense tech company, etcetera, etcetera. And now, you know, there's enough motion and there's enough energy that you can, you know, build this company, hire, raise, get to market, sell it effectively. And now the next challenge is deeper in the supply chain, which is which is exciting. There's a lot of opportunity there. Tyler, do have any questions? Yeah. I was wondering, like, what's kind of the shape of autonomy in in response terms? Like, how important is this?

Speaker 2: Is this, like, getting autonomy much better? Is that, a big bottleneck to to to selling more of these? Or how do you think about that?

Speaker 5: Yeah. No. That's that's a great question. I mean, the way our technology works in general is someone will call 911 in a jurisdiction. We will grab the GPS coordinate of that call from computer aided dispatch or 91 call taking software from some other source. Our software will then find the nearest 911 response drone in a recharging pod that has sufficient battery state of charge to actually respond to the emergency. Then it will plot out a path from that location to the emergency taking into account manned air traffic, no fly zones, altitude limitations, and so forth. The doors on one of our recharging pods will open up. Drone will launch. It'll follow that preprogrammed flight path out. But if it encounters anything that it doesn't expect, it also has an onboard obstacle avoidance system, so it'll be able to deal with those unforeseen events. Then when the drone arrives, it can engage in a number of preprogrammed on arrival behaviors. Like, it can orbit a structure fire and just keep on circling around, you know, with its camera gimbal pointed in the right place. Or it can be programmed to stop at a specific GPS point, but then move its gimbal to point at an area that might be of interest. Mhmm. And a number of other things. Or at that point, the drone could then be manually controlled in order to interact with the scene. Our drones have onboard red and blue lights and sirens, so an end user might decide to turn those on depending on, you know, the the circumstances of the call. They can deliver as discussed life saving emergency medical payloads. So an operator, you know, might decide to engage in an action like that, or they could just follow a person or a vehicle. That can be done manually, but we also have automated tracking features that can be utilized in in those instances. So an end user could, like, click on a person or click on a vehicle, and the drone would just sort of, you know, follow for that end user. Do you have benchmarks? Yeah. In in terms of the impact that we make on communities? No. Technical benchmarks.

Speaker 1: Every AI company is, like, trying to get their LLM to solve math problems, and there's a very clear battery of progress. And I'm wondering if you have, like you know, there's is there a standard benchmark for, like, drone agility or, like, something that's measurable but, but a little the the thing with the benchmarks is that they're not they're not purely quantitative in the sense of, like, you know, how like, response time is in milliseconds, like, for a computer system. That's very quantifiable. It's often, like, you need to solve this puzzle. And so what I'm wondering is when we will enter or maybe we already have the the era of there's like a standardized drone agility course and and you can unleash a drone on it and say, oh, yeah. I did it in this time or it was 90% effective at this or no one else can do this. I'm wondering if there's any of that going on in just the the drone community broadly.

Speaker 5: That does exist, actually. Okay. NIST has put together something very

Speaker 1: similar to what you just described. Okay. Cool. So, yes, that absolutely happens. I would say, though, mostly customers are focused on specs Yeah. Right now. Yeah. I'm sure. So they're they're curious about, you know Exactly. Flight time, top speed Yep. HD camera resolution Yep. Thermal resolution, recharge time, what integrations exist, all of that sort stuff. Sure. Sure. Sure. I like we gotta get we gotta get the police department's bench bench pilled so that they're just like, oh, how did you do on on humanity's last drone competition?

Speaker 5: Anyway, that'd be fun. We we do bake offs. You know? Yeah. There are a lot of instances where Brink drones will go up against Skydio drones. Sure. Sure. Sure. Charlotte Mecklenburg, in particular, ran a pretty extensive evaluation of of of different companies'