In civilian markets, Skydio's advantage over DJI lies in its advanced AI and autonomy capabilities, allowing its drones to sense and respond to environments in real time, outperforming DJI's technology.

Skydio aims to contribute to the industrial base by enabling the deployment of highly autonomous AI-driven drones at scale, which is crucial for maintaining military effectiveness.

The first generation of Skydio drones failed in Ukraine due to a lack of focus on electronic warfare capabilities, leading to a significant redesign to operate effectively in GPS-denied environments.

After learning from failures in Ukraine, Skydio adapted its technology to operate without GPS, demonstrating resilience and capability in harsh environments.

The military struggles to attract top software engineers because they want to build rapidly and not be constrained by outdated requirements.

In contrast, using prompt-based AI can significantly reduce development time, allowing for quicker deployment of AI solutions, with applications that used to take six months to a year to build now being developed in about a week, opening up a flood of new AI applications.

In the AI era, the time to first demo is much shorter, but the time to full deployment will take longer, creating an uneven cadence in product development.

We want to see significant improvements in technology that can be rapidly deployed to enhance military capabilities.

A software development company expanded its AI feature rollout from 100,000 developers to 25 million in three months, highlighting the fascinating speed of scaling in AI.