#82 - Meet the Startup Innovating Naval Operations With Uncrewed AI-Driven Ships
9 Dec 2024 · 36 min
In this episode of The Tech Optimist, host Samantha Herrick interviews Ryan Musto (Senior Associate at Alumni Ventures) and Paul Nguyen (CEO & co‑founder of Havoc AI). The conversation traces Nguyen’s personal journey—from a refugee from Myanmar to a Naval Academy graduate, test pilot, and defense‑tech entrepreneur—and how that background inspired the creation of Havoc AI, a Rhode Island‑based startup building software‑defined uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). The guests explain the DOD’s emerging demand for cheap, scalable, “attritable” systems, highlighted by the Replicator Initiative, and how Havoc’s manufacturing model leverages the state’s boat‑building ecosystem to mass‑produce modular, autonomous boats without traditional naval‑architectural overhead. Technical details cover a software‑first autonomy stack, human‑machine interface, and the ability to operate squads of ten vessels as networked nodes, enabling use cases such as logistics supply, maritime domain awareness, and find‑fix‑track‑target missions. Geopolitical context is woven throughout, referencing China’s 2027 timeline, the Taiwan flashpoint, lessons from Ukraine, and the AUKUS partnership, positioning Havoc’s fleet as a deterrent and a complement to larger platforms. The episode also touches on the broader defense industry shift toward attritable tech, the potential “demonopolization” of prime contractors, and Havoc’s $11 million seed round backed by Scout Ventures, TrueStyle Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and IBM. The discussion ends with a call for community engagement via LinkedIn and demo days in Rhode Island.
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Welcome to The Tech Optimist, a thrilling journey through the world of innovation presented by Alumni Ventures. Please secure your curiosity and prepare for bold ideas, cutting-edge tech, and the promise of a brighter future. I am your host. My name is Samantha Herrick, and I will be your guide. Your adventure begins now.
And all the DOD officials, they went around asking, hey, this is really cool, but if I give you money, can you build thousands of these? And no one, and including, you know, the company I was with, had even thought through that, right? And had an answer.
This is Paul Luwin, our guest today, CEO and co-founder of Havoc AI.
Us defense tech investors are hearing it all the time. When we talk to the DOD, they want cheap, scalable, and attritable technologies, which is frankly a new word that the DOD and the defense community has kind of invented.
And this is Ryan Musto, Senior Associate at Alumni Ventures. This initiative underscores a critical shift in defense thinking: lean, scalable tech that levels the playing field. And as Hicks puts it, this isn't just about keeping up, it's about staying ahead. And that's me, your guide and host for this podcast, Sam Herrick. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to The Tech Optimist, the podcast where innovation meets inspiration. So today I'm thrilled to be able to spotlight Havoc AI, a startup at the forefront of autonomous maritime technology. Havoc AI is revolutionizing uncrewed surface vessels, or USVs, developing a scalable platform where a single operator can control thousands of these autonomous assets. This Rhode Island-based company has already demonstrated its tech at a Department of Defense exercise, showcasing 12 operational vessels in action. They are just getting started. They've raised around $11 million in seed funding with backing from Scout Ventures, TrueStyle Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others. Paul Awin brings a compelling story of leadership and resilience. He is our guest today. From fleeing Myanmar as a refugee to serving as a Naval Academy graduate and pilot, Paul now leads Havoc AI with a vision to transform maritime operations across defense and commercial sectors. So next, we're going to hear about their plans for leveraging Rhode Island's renowned boatbuilding expertise, partnerships with industry leaders like IBM, and their message to make scalable maritime autonomy a reality. So join me as I bring you through this conversation today between Ryan Musto, a senior associate here at Alumni Ventures, and Paul. And we're going to explore the future of Heavy AI and their bold ambition to dominate the waves. Really quick, we got an ad, a disclaimer, and then we'll hop right in.
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Hey everybody, I am Ryan Musto, Senior Associate at Alumni Ventures. Today I'm, uh, joined by Paul Nguyen, CEO of Havoc AI. Hey, Paul, how you doing?
Hey, Ryan. Uh, thanks for having me. How are you doing?
Good, good. Thanks for stopping by. Um, so a bit of context for our listeners. If you're a politics nerd or perhaps a current or former member of the military community, or you just spend a lot of time, uh, playing Call of Duty, you might be familiar with the acronym UAV, which stands for unmanned aerial vehicle, AKA a drone. Um, but you might be less familiar with another breed of autonomous vehicles. That is certainly making a splash. And as Paul knows, that's a very corny pun. USV stands for unmanned surface vehicle. We're talking maritime drones today, and Havoc AI is really at the forefront of this fast-growing space. So before I give too much away about Havoc, maybe it's best to start off by chatting a bit about your background, Paul, because you have an awesome story. Immigrated to the United States when you were a kid from Myanmar. US Naval Academy onto the Naval Test Pilot School, deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Man, your resume is insane. Yale MBA, CS advanced degree from Johns Hopkins, 3 Air Medals for combat, the Navy Commendation Medal, the Navy Achievement Medal. So after all of that, tell us, why did you want to head up to Rhode Island and build boats?
Yeah, definitely. So, you know, what you just mentioned, my experience as a refugee, I think, you know, really resonated with me in everything that I do, right? It's why I went to the Naval Academy and went into the Navy and did what I did. I think while I was in the Navy, I flew Prowlers, which are a 40-year-old airplane, right? And that was in 2010. I was flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was conducting a very modern and digital mission in a 40-year-old plane. And that's when I really got interested in what we talk about today, right? Defense tech, defense innovation. And, you know, after, as a test pilot too, you know, got to work on like next generation weapon systems, really got to see the issues we have with innovation in the DOD. And so decided to get out and ended up on a bunch of defense tech startups. And at the last one I was with, I got invited to go to a conference with the DOD that they were having around maritime systems. And this is 2 months after the Replicator Initiative was announced. And at that conference, everyone brought all these cool things that they were building, mostly USVs and all kinds of robotic systems. And all the DOD officials, they went around asking, hey, this is really cool. Hey, if I give you money, can you build thousands of these? And no one, and including the company I was with, had even thought through that, right? And had an answer. That makes sense. And no one says like, yes, like give me the money, I'll build thousands. And in my mind, you know, I was like, here's a customer with money, you know, telling you exactly what they want. And, you know, no one has an answer. Luckily for me and Havoc, you know, my co-founders and I had been building robotic boats in our garages. Wow. We knew the technology for what the DOD was asking for existed. We just needed to harness it. And, you know, figure out a way to build that at scale and make the product, right, from these prototypes. So that's when we quit our jobs in January of 2024 and went full steam into that, you know, to show that we could really build them at scale. We built 12 of them. Usually most companies just build one prototype. People are like, why would you build 12? And we're like, well, it's to— this is the system, right? The ability to build thousands is kind of what havoc is building. So we built 12, and then to show that they work and that they were mature and they weren't just toys, we took it to a DOD exercise and let the DOD use it in the real world for 10 days straight, right? And that was to show that, hey, we can build at scale and we can build things that provide capabilities to the warfighters.
And now, before we get into the tech, and it's super cool, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but I think it would probably be best To talk a little bit about the market here because there are these enormous geopolitical tailwinds that are blowing through that really affect all of us. And I'm talking South China Sea, I'm talking Black Sea. Maybe to frame it up, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates probably put it best, or at least I think, when he said, quote, Putin's invasion of Ukraine has ended America's 30-year holiday from history. For the first time since World War II, the US faces powerful, aggressive adversaries in Europe and Asia. So, kind of teeing it up for you, how does Havoc fit into this highly competitive geopolitical landscape?
You just nailed it, right? Geopolitics are changing, the nature of warfare is changing, and, you know, we are a 1-year-old company, and we're utilizing modern technology and all the innovations, you know, that everyone that came before us, have built us to solve this problem, right? If you think about it, we're the only company to have started in this environment to go and solve these problems specifically. You hit on China, right? And I think Secretary Gates hit it best. But if you look at it, you know, the Chief of Naval Operations just announced this navigation plan, which is like a guideline for the Navy, right? And in it, she has explicitly come out and said, hey, China is getting ready for a war in 2027. And she says, my goal as the leader of the Navy is to be more ready by 2027, right? So if you hear a lot of Navy leadership go about talking at these conferences, you know, they literally show a countdown, 2027, right? And I think that's very important. That shows the urgency of what we're doing, right? It's not this nebulous, like idealistic thing we're chasing. There is a real timeline that's being dictated by You know, the other side. And so same thing with what Ukraine has done, right? If you look at the Red Sea, you know, a country with really no navy has taken on, you know, what we thought was a very capable navy. And for us, right, in the Red Sea, you know, you look at it, you know, about the Houthis who are $50,000 boats. Yep. And using these, forced the entire carrier battle group to move. that's using, you know, these like cheaply made things. And so that's where like you start to look at it and like the nature of warfare is changing. We have to change with it. Like we can't keep doing the same things that we're doing and hope that it's going to work out, right? And luckily for us, you know, I think on the investor side, on the technology side, and on the government side, for the first time in a very long time, there's alignment. Right. And so there are people, a lot of companies, you know, not just Havoc AI, a lot of other companies that are trying to solve this problem and making sure that our future is secure.
So now let's talk about a pressing challenge in maritime innovation and how Havoc AI is stepping up to the plate. Right now, the US and its allies face a tough reality. Outdated R&D and production models are limiting their ability to meet global maritime demands. While technological advancements speed ahead, traditional shipbuilding just can't keep pace. Havoc AI, however, is flipping the narrative. And this is a little bit about what Ryan and Paul were talking about just before this. So their approach, it's all about efficiency, scalability, and adaptability. Picture this: autonomous, uncrewed service vessels, or USVs, that are ultra-low cost and can be built in hours. These vessels are equipped with modular designs, which means they can be reconfigured for a range of missions, whether it's surveillance, defense, or exploration. But what makes it so revolutionary is their AI-enabled tasking system. Instead of micromanaging routes, operators assign broader mission outcomes. Teams of USVs adapt on the go, even in challenging conditions like communication loss or GNSS degradation. Havoc AI isn't just designing for tomorrow, they're delivering solutions today, making maritime autonomy accessible at a fraction of traditional costs. It's a game changer for the defense and commercial sectors alike.
Yeah, I think the Ukraine case study almost is such an interesting one. Us defense tech investors are hearing it all the time when we talk to the DOD. They want cheap, scalable, and attritable technologies, which is frankly a new word that the DOD and the defense community has kind of invented just in the past couple of years looking at Ukraine. Maybe share with our listeners, What does attritable mean? And you mentioned a little bit earlier Replicator Initiative. Tell us about that momentous DOD roadmap because it's a pretty big deal.
Yeah. And, you know, so it's not a new concept, right? A lot of this came about, if you think about, you know, the Indo-Pacific, right? And the adversaries that we're facing, they can outbuild us and they can outman us, right? They just have more people. So there's always been this thought like, how do you counter that? And it's, oh, you just got to develop a lot more things than them, and you have to do it efficiently, right? So we can't go, you know, capital ships. So when I say capital ships, like destroyers and carriers, and try to match them, right? We should. And I think, you know, hopefully we are going to, but there are other things like what Havoc is building that, you know, we could deploy tens of thousands of our surface vessels out there. And hopefully it can act as deterrents, right? And so that's the thing, it's because the oceans are so huge that you need a lot of things out there to kind of match the mess that the other side is putting out. And, you know, in Ukraine, I think what Ukraine has done is show that it works, right? You know, we've been talking about this a lot, of building things more affordably using commercial off-the-shelf things. And before Ukraine, if you were to go and sell the DOD and say, hey, you know, I built this, it's using mostly commercial stuff, they would be like, no, we can't do that. That's not how DOD acquisition works. You know, we're going to go to the primes and have them build it and it'll take 10 years, right? Because that's how we work. And what Ukraine has shown is, wait, no, you don't need to do that. Like, you have the Ukrainians, very brave, very innovative, are, you know, they're building new things every 2, 3 months. And it's not because like it's cool. Their survival depends on it, right? And they're showing in an actual battlefield that that concept works, right? And so on our side, it's helping companies like ours, you know, it's helping every defense tech startup. startup in this space, right? Show that finally you can adopt innovative commercial things and get them into the defense sphere.
Yeah. And maybe just to double-click on, for our listeners, what the Replicator Initiative is. This is Kathleen Hicks, who is a very high-up official in the Department of Defense. This is her initiative to get the Department of Defense fully focused on procuring technologies that can be scaled quickly, can be cheaply built, and can be capable of being lost in warfighting settings without taking a huge hit to the budget, basically.
As Ryan said, let's double-click on this a little bit more. So this topic really intrigued me, the whole replicator initiative that Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks is putting through. So I'm going to provide a little bit more information on it because I think it's a really interesting piece of legislature that, you know, is on the table right now. So back in August of 2023, uh, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled the Replicator Initiative, a bold push to deploy thousands of autonomous systems across land, air, and sea within a tight 18 to 24 month timeline. The goal: to counter China's rapidly advancing military capabilities with scalable, cost-effective technology. So here's the deal. The Pentagon is $1 billion over 2 years to bring this vision to life. But it's not just about creating something new, it's about scaling proven tech quickly. So we're talking about aerial drones like Anduril's Ghost-X, loitering munitions like the Switchblade 600, and even classified maritime systems, which, you know, Havoc AI is the sector that falls into. So it's a fascinating mix of hardware and integrated AI-powered software that allows these systems to collaborate and adapt autonomously. Now, progress is already underway, which is also the really, really cool part. Uh, you know, you would say almost 12 months in, probably 14 months in, we're seeing some progress. So the first replicator systems were delivered to military personnel in May of this year. Over 30 companies, including names you've probably heard in defense tech, have been awarded contracts, and the competition was fierce. More than 500 commercial firms were evaluated, but Not everyone's convinced. Congress is keeping a close eye on transparency, cost, and operational security. And honestly, balancing speed and scrutiny is no small task. So still, the Replicator represents a strategic pivot, one that focuses on delivering results at scale today, not years from now. This initiative underscores a critical shift in defense thinking: lean, scalable tech that levels the playing field. And as Hicks puts it, this isn't just about keeping up, it's about staying ahead.
So it's a really innovative procurement strategy that the DOD has employed. So now that we've set the scene, Paul, let's nerd out a little bit about the tech because it's super cool. You guys have a different way of attacking this enormous market that's laser-focused on providing exactly what we just discussed, right? Cheap, scalable, attritable. The DOD is eating it up. Software-first approach, super price competitive. Tell us about the boats and what makes them so special.
Yeah, definitely. So we'd like to say affordable, not cheap, just because, you know, the price point is important, right? So I'll start there. You know, when I went to that conference, when we started this company, we really went and looked, did market research, right? We said, hey, there are a lot of competitors in this space building enclosed surface vessels. Why can't they build thousands right now? Right? Why do they only have 2 or 3? And we did a lot of research and what we found out was that like, it is very capital intensive. And we said, well, why is it capital intensive? What are they doing? And the problem is they're building boats from scratch. Right? So when you start a USV company, you say, oh, I'm a boat company, so I have to build boats. Uh, and you know, that, that takes a lot of effort, right? Like you have to hire naval architects, hydrodynamics, CFD experts, uh, and build this, uh, the facilities needed to build these boats. Uh, and, uh, so we asked ourselves, what, like, is that true? Like, we went back to first principles, right? Like, do we need to build the boats? And we kind of did this thought experiment where we said, hey, for like, people have been building boats for thousands of years, right? Like, is there like, what, is the innovation the boat? And we're like, no, the innovation is not the boat. You know, the Polynesians were crossing the Pacific on wooden rafts, right? That they built. Now, they were very sophisticated systems, right? But so you could do it. So you don't need to build this very sophisticated, elegant boat. And so we went out to the boat builders to try to understand, hey, what's the realm of the possibility? And when we talked to them about the requirements and the performance that we were trying to reach, most of them didn't think it was a big deal, right? And luckily for us, we're in Rhode Island, you know, the center of like America's Cup and all the ecosystem for supporting that exists. And they, what we found out that what they were building, these like sailboats, racing sailboats, were building different models, regularly. And when they looked at the problems that we gave them, it was just another boat to them, right? And so they didn't think it was difficult. They were quickly able to help us design and figure out how to build it at scale. And the thing that they also were very interested in is that they saw that they could sell tens of thousands of boats a year, right? So for most of these US boat, small boat manufacturers, their commercial demand has already maxed out, right? Then they can't sell a lot more because You know, there are Chinese manufacturers that just sell cheaper boats, right? And so they realized that this could open up a whole new market for them. So they're very excited to work with us. What that allowed us to do was to say, okay, we don't have to focus on the boats. We can build thousands of boats if we needed to using the system we've implemented. Now we can focus on what's really important, right? If you think about it, trying to control 1,000 things, put them in the real world, And make them work, like make them communicate with each other and make them coordinate with each other. That is an incredibly difficult challenge, right? It's software hard. It's something that no one's really able to do. So I, you know, before us, you hadn't seen, you know, people put in more than 2, 3 boats and crewed surface vessels in the water. Interesting. They hadn't been focused on that. So we focused on the software, you know, the autonomy framework, the communication software. And the human-machine interface, right? Just because they're autonomous doesn't mean that humans don't have to be in the loop, right? At some point, humans have to know what's going on and provide decisions and rebalance that. So, and if you're talking about tens of thousands of these things, humans can get very overwhelmed. We focus a lot on how does a human interact with thousands of these nodes? And so that's what we built, right? And that's the ability to make this a software problem. We call them software-defined boats, has allowed us to move quickly, right? If you invest in tech, so you understand, once you make something a software problem, you can move really fast. That's how, within 8 months, we had multiple defense customers tell us that we were the most mature platform that they had tested. And that was it, right?
Yeah. And just to continue to paint a picture of these vessels for folks, they're sold in squads of 10, which can be operated synchronously. You guys have logged something like 500+ hours of autonomous operations just this fall, which is super awesome. These things, they function really like network nodes, which offers a ton of advantages. for the warfighter. So maybe walk us through, what are the use cases? A lot of things come to mind. How do you envision warfighters using this technology on a day-to-day basis?
Yeah, you just hit it right. So what we open up is this whole new distributed way to do some of these defense use cases. The easiest thing, you know, we built these boats so that you can put whatever you want on it, right? Sensors, payloads, Weapons. And because of that, they can just carry things and move it around. So there's a big use case right now in the Pacific for, hey, how do we move around supplies, right? Well, you know, the Army and the Marine Corps have gone back to, hey, in the Pacific, we're going to have to do this island hopping strategy and spread out over, you know, hundreds of islands. If you think about it right now, the way you're going to get food and basic necessity to these islands, It's a piloted vessel, right? Either a helicopter or a ship or a boat, right? That goes and transfers what we call beans and bullets to them. That puts that crew at risk, right? In a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, those things are going to get taken out. And so what we can do is move a lot of supplies. You know, each boat right now can carry 300 pounds or, you know, bigger boats that can carry more payload. And now you start to see we remove people, and we let them go focus on, you know, more vital things than just moving supplies. So that we can do right now, right? If you told us, hey, you need the vessel to move supplies between, you know, multiple sites, these boats can autonomously do that. The other thing it can do is stay in the ocean, you know, get to an area and monitor an area, what we call maritime domain awareness. You can put whatever sensors you want on, right? That's EO/IR, RF sensors, And then try to sense what's going on, right? See, you know, what other ships are in the area and protect, you know, vital waterways that way. And then once you find it, right, we, the other thing we can do is what we call the find, fix, track, and target mission. If you think about what the Ukrainians are doing, think, you know, more than one vessel and they're not remote controlled, right? They'll all be autonomous. They'll do coordinated tactics to try to find a ship. Uh, and then do something with it in, uh, conjunction with what the humans want them to do. So those are the use cases, but now imagine, you know, doing this over, you know, 6,000 miles, right? And that's why we want to put, you know, tens of thousands of boats into the Pacific.
Yeah. Um, you know, and we've just touched upon like 2 or 3 use cases here. There are so many more, which, which is why this is so exciting. Um, it, it feels like You know, for those of us that stay up to date on what's coming outta Ukraine, the Ukrainians are finding new use cases for autonomous technologies, particularly USVs, like once a month, right? So really the opportunities here are enormous. So, you know, as I've been talking to folks about Havoc, people naturally start asking questions about some big macro questions from like China to the election, international relations, political economy. All these things are really tied up in your space in ways that, you know, for other startups, it's probably less so. So we'd love to kind of run through some questions because you really have become an expert on a lot of these topics. And one that's, I'm sure, at the top of most people's minds is Taiwan. Xi has openly discussed and planned for the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, to have preparedness by 2027. The U.S. Navy knows it, like you mentioned before. Um, you know, uh, anyone's guess, but you certainly have a better guess than most. What do you think is going to happen, uh, in 2027? Do you think that we will actually, uh, face, uh, face conflict, uh, in Taiwan?
Hopefully not, right? I think that's why we exist, right? Uh, and I'll go back. I'm not an expert in any of these things, right? I think, uh, we're all trying to figure it out, right? Especially, and you know this in, uh, the, uh, in startup world, right? It's, you know, you have to be very humble. You have to be willing to learn. And so that's what we're doing, right? I think going back to your Taiwan question, obviously that is a very tough geopolitical question. And there are, you know, a lot of smart people trying to figure it out, right? For on our end, you know, all 3 founders were both, were all veterans, right? Yep. You know, Joe, Andrew, Joe was a Navy guy and then Andrew was an AFSOC pilot. So, you know, we've all been on combat deployments. We know when we talk about this conflict in 2027, that, you know, that is not something that anybody wants, right? So Havoc exists, and I think most defense tech startups exist to try to prevent war, right? Not, and, you know, in case war happens, we want to make sure that we have the advantage, but our primary goal is to prevent it. So what we want to do is give the DOD and specifically the U.S. Navy the capability to deploy tens of thousands of this. In the next year, right? And that, it's the deterrence, right? To show the other side that, hey, we have the capability to match you, you know, and then we can do it in a very sophisticated way. Let's come down, let's come back to the table, let's figure out how to solve these problems so that we don't have a shooting war, right? Because if, you know, there is a shooting war, we're going to build hundreds of thousands of these and we'll make it even more challenging for you. Yeah. You know, but my hope is that, uh, one, we are successful, that we have prevented this 2027 conflict from happening.
Yeah, makes, makes perfect sense to me. In, in the same vein, I, I'd be remiss if I didn't touch upon AUKUS, um, which, which for our listeners is, uh, the U.S.'s biggest maritime counter to expanding Chinese influence in the Pacific. It's a trilateral, uh, security partnership between us, the Aussies, and the Brits. Joint development of a whole host of really exciting technologies from quantum, hypersonic, electronic warfare. And of course, the crowning jewel of all this is the Australian acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines. A lot of analysts see this as a paradigm shift. What do you think and how does Havoc fit into this really exciting, dynamic landscape in the Pacific with our allies?
I think we fit perfectly into it, right? If you look at AUKUS, you know, in Australia specifically, They have realized that their survival depends on the maritime environment, right? You know, you look at even Indonesia and Malaysia and how many islands that Australia has to worry about and monitor. They've always known that, right? I think we kind of forgot about it post-World War II and specifically, you know, post-9/11 focused on the conflicts that we were fighting. And now we're coming back to it, right? And it's It is going to be a challenging maritime fight that we're talking about in this conflict. So I think it's good to have the Australians back working with us. You know, they understand these island chains very deeply and the environment and the technology we need. So I think, you know, we've been talking to Australian partners. Obviously, we've been talking to our DOD partners, but we're hoping to get our boats out there, right, to Australia, to the island chains. and start experimenting out there, learn from them, right? Because, you know, if you look at the Australians, they have a lot of small boats that they use in their navy. So there's a lot of lessons we can learn and take that and provide autonomous solutions to them, right? And then move people from harm's way. So, you know, I'm very excited about it. I think this is a partnership that we absolutely need and it's vital.
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Yeah. Turning maybe from the international to the domestic, new administration that has close relationships with Peter Thiel, who of course was heavily involved in the founding of Palantir and Anderle. Do you think we're about to see an even further acceleration of the perhaps demonopolization of the primes? And for our listeners, when I say primes, that's an industry term for defense contractors. So think Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics. Paul, curious to hear your thoughts as the new administration might really shake up how these old players exist.
I think so. And I hope so, right? And it's not to say that the primes are going away, you know, those primes, they are vital to American security, right? I think if you hear people in the DOD talk about it, they will say that too. You know, the primes are going to build F-35s and destroyers and carriers and the really big systems, just because that's what they're meant to do. Now, for the first time now, the DOD has accepted, okay, we don't need to let the primes build everything, right? And so the DOD realizes that, you know, there are companies like Havoc and other defense tech startups that can focus on building innovative things, right? And that incorporate commercial technologies to solve defense use cases. And so that's what's happening, right? And I think it's already happening, but I think it'll accelerate. Obviously, if you look at Palantir, I think their valuation just beat Lockheed Martin for the first time yesterday, right? Which is mind-blowing and it's the right path to go, right? But I don't think it's like a zero-sum game. I think what we're already seeing, at least on Havoc side, is we're partnering with a lot of them, right? They've reached out. I think on their end too, they accept that, hey, You know, they don't want to build 1,000 boats that, uh, being sold at $80,000, right? That's not how their business structures, uh, are built around. Uh, but that's what we do, right? And we can do it. So what they can do is partner with us, help us, uh, move faster, uh, and then, uh, tackle some of the more challenging use cases and integrate, you know, with these systems, right? With the F-35s and the big destroyers and carriers. So I think, uh, That's what I think is happening. And at least I hope it's happening, right? That you're going to see a lot more diverse tech startups become programs of record and then integrate and partner with the existing primes who are still going to build these very big and exquisite things that have their use cases.
So as we wrap up here, I'm certain that many folks tuning in will find themselves moved by the magnitude of the mission. How can they get involved? Do you have an ask for our community?
Yeah, you know, I would say, you know, we're very big on LinkedIn. We post a lot of videos. You know, we do that because a lot of times people don't believe us and we're like, we've got 4 boats. And they're like, sometimes they're like, well, they're remote control boats, right? Because that's what everyone's showing. We're like, no, they're autonomous. So we'd like to show them. That being, you know, if you're in the government or if you're on the commercial side, please come visit us, right, in Rhode Island every Thursday. You know, we do a day where we demo for customers and investors and just anyone that's interested in this space to come see the boat and, you know, operate them and then talk through some of the use cases and some things that we could innovate on. So, you know, we'd love that. I think, you know, you can get my contact info, I'm sure, through alumni, and you can find us on LinkedIn. Just send us messages and we'd love to host you.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing some time with us today, Paul. I know you're a busy guy, so we're so stoked that we were able to learn a little bit more about, again, really what is an enormously important initiative that Havoc is building towards. So thank you so much and hope to chat again soon.
Thank you so much, Ryan, and thanks for your support, right? Specifically, you know, alumni has been a huge supporter just in the last few months. We're excited going forward. Thanks, Mike.
Thanks again for tuning into The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a rating on whichever podcast app you're using, and remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions, so please email us at info@techoptimist.vc with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at As always, keep building.
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