All right everybody, welcome back to the

allin interview series. I am thrilled

really thrilled because Seronic is a

defense company that has been doing

amazing work and we are so lucky to have

the co-founders here on the program.

Welcome to the program Dino Mavukus. How

are you sir?

>> Doing well. Thanks for having us.

>> And uh your co-founder here uh Vib

Alakar. Let's talk a little bit about

Seronic. Uh and we're going to get into

everything but you were in the news. You

were in the news because you're making

autonomous ships and one of these was

used recently in the straight of hormuz.

I understand.

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>> I got to start there, Dino. Tell us

about the mission. Tell us what

happened. This is the first time an

autonomous

uh ship has ever rescued uh folks in the

field. and then we'll get back into your

history and everything. But I think like

we got to start off with this story

because it's incredible.

>> It it it's just a huge story and I look

I can't get into too many specifics of

the operation and the mission for for

obvious reasons. But um before we get

into what it means for the country, what

it means for our company, I mean without

saying the most important thing is that

those two pilots came home safely

regardless of how they got there. Right

now, what we were able to demonstrate

through this partnership with the Navy,

like for us is the Navy actually trusted

us in this moment. Lives are on the

line. We're going to send this

autonomous platform to go and rescue

these folks. This is not a patrol. This

is not maritime domain awareness. This

is the highest stakes of the highest

stakes. There's downed American pilots

in the Straits of Hormuz. like Corsair,

which you actually see right over my

right shoulder, which is our 24 foot

fully autonomous speedboat for th for

those that that don't know. Um, he said,

"We're going to use that to rescue the

pilots." And that's that's actually like

a milestone moment for the country. And

I can tell you I'll tell you a personal

story firstand kind of what this means,

but you know this like leaving people

behind in the US military just it's not

a thing. Like the US military does not

do it, right? Like I was in the Navy

Seal teams for 11 years. From 2004 to

2015,

uh my last five years were on SEAL team

six. I personally experienced 2005 there

were four SEALs trapped on a mountain

side in Afghanistan and the helicopter

got sh got shot down while going to

rescue them. So what we were able to

prove in this moment was that you can go

and rescue people without putting

additional soldiers in harm's way.

That's that's the impact of what this

had. That's what it means for the

country and for our company. It was just

an extremely proud moment where the Navy

trusted us in this high stakes

environment.

>> Absolutely incredible. And obviously

thank you for your service. I and I know

you can't get into too many details, but

I've been reading all about it and I got

to wonder when when these two pilots,

did they know that this was an

autonomous ship and the ship comes

rolling up and they're like, somebody

sent them a message, hey, you're going

to get picked up by the autonomous ship.

Grab the side of it, climb on board.

Like, what's the protocol for the

autonomous ship picking up two folks?

Are they swimming out to it? Well, I I

just got to get a little color on this

before it becomes a movie.

>> I mean, it's the first time that it that

it happened, right? And when a ship when

a boat pulls up to you and there's

nobody on it, you know, you can very

quickly deduce that it's fully that it's

an autonomous boat. And you know, these

pilots were in the water for I don't

even know how long. They're in a

completely contested environment. We're

in a conflict with Iran. They're in the

Straits of Hormuz. And we can go through

the dynamic there. But they looked at

this platform and said that that's my

way home,

>> right? That that's how I get out of

here.

>> I love it. All right, let's step back a

bit here. You're a Navy Seal uh VIB.

You've uh worked in this space for a

while. Uh you previously worked at

Andrew, I understand. Uh the mission as

I understand it for the company uh is to

greatly increase our ability in America

to produce ships. And for people who

don't know, the amount of uh tonnage,

the number of ships that we are able to

make in America and most western

countries is very low. But there's an

adversary uh in the Pacific who is able

to produce a lot of ships. It's known as

the Chinese Communist Party. So maybe

from first principles you could just

explain what you're building and why

it's important and just how insane

uh the incompetence of the West in terms

of building ships has become. I mean we

are really bad at making ships right

now. Am I correct?

>> We're beyond bad. Uh, let me I'll take a

step back and just kind of highlight

where we're at and then I'll let Vib go

through what we're doing about it, how

how we're changing that dynamic. But

Jason, what you were saying, right, just

to put it in context, the United States

can build a 100,000 gross tons of ships

every year. Gross ton is this volumetric

measure of ship. So if you build, you

know, a 200 foot ship, that's different

than an 800 foot ship. But let's compare

apples to apples. 100,000 gross tons.

The Chinese, which you were referencing,

can build 23 million gross tons. So,

they can out build the US 230 to1. And

it wasn't always the case. Right? 30

years ago, the Chinese didn't have this

capability. They had 5% of the world's

ship building capacity. Today, they have

57%

of the world ship building capacity. And

actually that problem's getting worse

because the cons the communist party is

just con constantly it's like

subsidizing the entire industry. So

they're undercutting the commercial

market on price. They're not just

subsidizing the direct cost to build.

They're subsidizing raw material and

labor costs. So the ship built in the

United States is actually five to six

times the cost of that same ship built

in China. And so they keep getting more

and more orders. So that number is of

57% is just going up. How did they get

that capability? Is that because as a

manufacturer to the world, they needed

to ship out products. So they did this

in a commercial way f first or was this

always very intentionally we need to own

the South Pacific? much revolves around

the commercial market and then I'll talk

about I want to talk about the status of

our navy like where the naval fleet is

today what that means and then where the

Chinese navy is and where that's going

because again 30 years ago the Chinese

navy was a lural backwater navy today

they have nuclear submarines aircraft

carriers and hypersonic missiles so

there's a massive massive change over

the last 30 years and what's happened in

the US ship building industry it's

completely declined So the US naval

fleet has 296 ships today. There's a

congressional mandate statutory minimum

of 355 ships that was set by Congress in

2018. That was 8 years ago. Last year we

built nine ships, but we retired 19

naval vessels. So we're going in the

wrong like the completely wrong

direction. The Chinese delivered

somewhere in the ballpark of 30 ships.

Their fleet size is around 370. They'll

be at 450 before you know it. But the

commercial market is where that

discrepancy lies. Even larger, right?

They delivered over a thousand

commercial ships last year. The United

States built five.

>> Five. 1 2 3 4 5.

>> 1 2 3 4 5. One hand.

>> Wow.

>> So if a conflict actually kicks off, and

we saw this in the US in World War II

where we had the production capacity

where we're building thousands of

vessels every year. If a conflict kicks

off, that commercial capacity isn't

going to go to building cargo containers

anymore. It's all going to flip to

defense capacity and it's going to be

building for what the Chinese Communist

Party needs to to win a conflict. And

that's what we have to be building

towards. That's what we're doing at

Seronic. That's why we're thinking,

okay, how do we build mass? How do we

build scale in whatever it is that we

do?

>> And so, how do you do it, Vib? I would

think and listen I'm a neopight here but

if these are autonomous ships well you

can remove things like you don't need

beds you you don't need a commissary and

you don't need uh latrines and I don't

know what percentage of a corsair or

battleship are there to uh support

humans on the ship but I got to think

it's half the mass of it is to is to

keep humans on it am I directionally

correct

>> I think half is a little half is a

little excessive but there is a

significant percentage of the

components, the cost, the labor that

actually goes into catering to human

beings on board. Um, I would say at a

high level, you know, you're really

reducing the complexity of the entire

product, right? Um, you don't need to

worry about a separate electrical system

for humans. You don't need to worry

about, as we mentioned, doors, bathroom,

stairs, etc. Um, and then at the end of

the day, you can actually start to end

optimize a lot of different things. So

even if you look at Corsair for example,

you know, if you were to buy a

commercial 24T boat, it's unlikely to go

a thousand nautical miles. Um it's also

unlikely to drive and have the control

authority um of the boat that we've

built here. Um because you don't have

again, you don't have to worry about you

know a person feeling uh you know you

know taking in the middle of the oceans.

Yeah. Um and so you can actually

optimize across a bunch of different

areas. Naval architecture, the speed,

range and payload of the craft itself.

Um, and then again reduce a lot of the

complexity where you're removing

subsystems that are meant for humans.

>> Yeah. And the Corsair, which is my

favorite ship just based on the name. I

I believe for my research this me was

originally meant like a pirate ship or a

privateeering ship, but it's is it now

standard lingo that that's a 24 ft boat

and and has a certain profile? Do you

know? Is that is that how these

designations come about the names of

these ships? I mean, I wouldn't say that

Corsair is now universal 24 foot

autonomous surface vessel. It's the name

of our product lines and we chose it uh

very purposefully and we chose all our

names purposefully. Even the name of the

company, I mean, we were talking about,

you know, our Greek heritage before the

show and where that came from. You know,

the Seranic Gulf is a Gulf off the coast

of Athens where the Battle of Salamis

happened. It's one of the most famous

naval battles in history. came after the

battle of Thermopoly or the famous stand

of the spar 300 Spartans and it was the

naval battle between um the Greeks and

the Persians where the Greeks were

wildly on mesh. The the Persians had

much much larger ships. They had a much

larger fleet and the Greeks were able to

lure them into this narrow straight and

use smaller more maneuverable products

to ultimately uh defeat the Persians.

Now cost is part of this uh in terms of

these ships in the field and the number

of ships. My understanding of our

contemporary China is that they don't

build a lot of big ships. They build a

lot of ships. So they've got a lot of

smaller and very varied number of ships

if I'm correct there. Then the cost

becomes the issue because building a

bunch of aircraft carriers I keep

hearing that supersonics are going to

take out all these uh aircraft carriers

in the first 15 minutes. Vib is is that

true what we hear that hey we need

smaller ships faster ships and what is

the cost of something like you know the

Corsair that you used on this incredible

mission. Yeah, I would say, you know, at

a high level, the goal is mass, right?

Um like large scale attritable mass. And

yeah, if an aircraft carrier takes 10

years to build and $13 billion, like

you're not really achieving that. Um I

think there's always going to be like

kind of a role and responsibility for

for a craft like that. Um but

ultimately, you're right, like if you're

big and and you know, very obvious to

find and you can find you from space,

etc. um you know that's that's a real

risk when you reduce you know the the

overall cost of like just doing things

in the ocean right like that's

ultimately where the autonomous piece

comes in um you can deploy at scale you

can monitor a large larger body of water

with less people um and ultimately what

you're what you're really getting to is

removing people from harm's way right um

so what when we think about designing

and kind of thinking through the price

points of these things the comparison to

Mancraft isn't really um necessarily

even comparable as you get into larger

ships, right? Um for for us, it's really

a question of like what is the cost that

you would typically have to use humans

for and how much is that actually being

reduced by having a large autonomous

fleet.

>> Corsair's a million bucks or something.

Do you know the the Corsair costs about

a million?

>> Yeah, I want to go back to we'll get

that. I want to go back to one thing you

said earlier and it's like China's

building both

>> very large ships and a lot of ships.

They're right. They're doing it all.

Right. And when we think about, okay,

how do you actually change the paradigm

for the US Navy, it's

>> let's actually boil it down to unit

economics. Let's think about this like a

commercial company. How do you Viv

mentioned like payloads? What are you

actually moving on the ocean? One of the

most important metrics is VLS tubes. So

vertical launch systems. Basically, how

many big tomahawk missiles can you carry

on a ship? It's how much firepower are

you fielding. So, let's use an example

of that, right? A destroyer, naval

destroyer costs about $3 billion. Takes

three billion three billion. And I'm not

even getting into the sustainment and

maintenance costs over the life cycle of

the destroyer. I'm just talking about

what it costs to buy. If we do that,

it's 10 10 billion over 30, 40 years.

$3 billion, 6 to 8 years to make. You

carry you you can field about 96 VLS

tubes. So, I'm going to round up. I'm

going to make that 100 for easy math. So

on average, you're fielding somewhere

between 10 to 15 VLS tubes per year at a

cost of 30 million per tube.

Marauder,

I won't give you the exact price or

cost, but can reduce that cost by a

significant amount, but we're building

20 Marauders for we're going to be

building 20 marauders per year at our

shipyard in Louisiana.

Right? So now you can field, we can

carry the equivalent of 16 VLS tubes on

the back of that 180 foot fully

autonomous ship. So now you can field

320

VLS tubes per year as opposed to 15. And

you could do it at a fraction of the

cost. This is how you actually save the

taxpayers hundreds of billions of

dollars and you get more capability into

the field faster.

>> I mean, that's just extraordinary

thinking about it. What do you lose by

not having humans on it? You know, are

we going to be faced with a moment in

time where these are kind of like uh

drones, you know, where there's no

pilots. They're just pilots in a

shipping container dropped somewhere

either, you know, in the middle of

America and doing it remote like we've

done. Is that the future of warfare with

these ships or and and what do you lose

when you don't have a team there on the

boat? What is the criticism, valid or

invalid, that people have of unmanned

ships?

>> Well, I'm going to let V talk about the

way that we're using software because I

think the the criticism to your question

is, well, what happens if we're in the

middle of the ocean and the ship breaks

down? Who's going to fix it? It's not

it's not that we don't need this

technology. It's folks that aren't used

to technology saying, "Oh, how's the

technology actually going to work?" And

that's what we're proving out every

single day. To your point of like what

do you lose by not having people on

them? Look, it all it all boils down to

the mission, right? And this is why we

partner so closely with the Navy. This

is why we work with actual operators.

It's like what are you using? What are

you delivering? If the mission is long

range fires, we're packing a bunch of

VLS tubes on the back of Marauder. You

actually don't lose anything, right?

you're just delivering those

capabilities into the field while

keeping people out of harm's way. And

that's a very very important part of the

equation. But if our ships, let's be

clear, like if our boats and ships

aren't accomplishing the mission, then

they're not relevant. They're not going

to be used in the first place. And there

is going to be some mix. I don't know

what that mix is. I don't think anybody

really knows what that mix is of manned

and unmanned ships. So what you're going

to see in the Navy is like a hybrid

Navy. So the things that you're missing

from having people on the ships, forward

deployed decision makers in the

environment, you can actually have out

there onman ships, but you're using

unmanned ships to put into combat areas

and conflict areas to keep those people

very safe.

>> Fib, take us through the production of

these. How do you achieve speed at it?

you know, uh, friend of the pod, Elon

Musk, with the Teslas. Over time, he

eventually built the full stack. In the

beginning, if you had a Tesla, you would

look at the the shifter and you'd be

like, "Hey, that looks like my

Mercedes." And that's because they had

their steering column from Mercedes, one

of the early investors. The HVAC was

from somebody else. But eventually, he

had materials coming in one side of the

factory, cars coming out the other, and

he made every single thing in that car.

He was now no longer dependent on any

third party manufacturers or a supply

chain, you know, and famously the HVAC,

I think in the Model 3 and Y when it

came out reduced massively the drain on

the battery, right? So, it's

purpose-built for that mission. So, I'm

assuming you're doing that from first

principles, but what what's the secret

to this rapid production and lowerc cost

production? Yeah, listen, I think

there's, you know, within the ship

building industry at large, there's a

bunch of different challenges of of why

the production isn't as high as it

should be. And one of those core

reasons, and the Navy's talked about

this extensively, is is investing in the

supply chain, right? Um, when you don't

when you only build five commercial

ships a year, your gen set

manufacturers, the marine engine

manufacturers also don't have to produce

at a at a very high rate. So one of the

things that we get the luxury of doing u

by being vertically integrated is that

we get to work with these manufacturers

directly do non-recurring engineering

work invest in really digitizing a lot

of the components that historically have

been very analog right um you know you

asked earlier like what do people what

do the people do on the ships like what

are they going to do if if the ships are

autonomous well when you think about you

know Dina mentioned the life cycle of

these ships are 30 years you think about

a ship that was built 30 years ago you

know you have people that are doing

extremely manual things in the engine

room that today should be extremely

trivial to automate through software.

Um, and so a lot of that work actually

gets completely absorbed by the software

stack and so you don't have to worry

about it. Um, and as we choose

components, we invest in the supply

chain. We invest in invest in the

industrial base. We actually help bring

all of these analog components that for

a long time were you know meant to be

operated by humans. We give them

software APIs. We make sure that they

can be controlled by you know MCP or

software stack somewhere else and can be

you know remotely accessed and whatnot.

Um,

>> so the complexity is going to go down

massively when you're building one of

these. Yeah,

>> absolutely. Yeah. And and you know,

frankly, I don't think the the person

who's sitting in the engine room is

super thrilled about it anyway.

>> No, not a great idea.

>> You're actually changing the um you're

democratizing the decision-m, right?

Like now there's going to be you have

more mass out in the ocean. More sailor

is going to be making decisions about

what those what that mass is going to be

doing and where assets are going to be

instead of worrying about, you know,

coolant pressure in an engine, right?

Um, and so, you know, when we think

about the the actual design, there's

there's a lot of different variables

there. There's some components that are

commercial off the shelves, right? Elon

in the early days, um, from a compute

perspective, they had to invest in A6,

right? The comput stack wasn't there to

run, you know, large models and and run

inference at the speeds and and power

budgets that they wanted to. In 2026,

it's a totally different game, right?

Um, and so there's there's a lot of

different parts of the supply chain

that, you know, sometimes we're looking

at, you know, investing in the

industrial base and making sure that,

you know, our engine manufacturers and

genet manufacturers are keeping up. Um,

on the other side, there's there's

particular components that we're like,

hey, the marine industry actually hasn't

had this level of investment in in a

long time, so we're going to have to

build this in house. Um, you know, a

couple of examples around that are

related to a lot of the electronics,

related to the sensors and compute. Um,

but you know, bunch of different things

there that that help us build and

assemble quickly.

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>> Let's talk a little bit about Adino on

the business side. How you work with the

Department of War, formerly known as the

Department of Defense. Emil Michaels and

a bunch of the folks over there are

really focused on getting startups

essentially like you are uh more

contracts but you also are moving out I

assume of this cost plus world and

you're just figuring out hey what what's

the right price for this and take us

inside that paradigm shift. You have

these primes and then you have these up

starts and it seems like based on

history the incumbents sometimes don't

uh take this lying down. So take us

inside the paradigm shift from cost plus

to what these I guess they call the new

primes like yourself and Andrew are

doing.

>> Yep. And I'll just define cost plus

everybody that's listening basically

means hey we're going to go build you

something Mr. government and however

long that takes, however much it costs,

you're just going to pay us 10 to 15% on

top of that. So, I'm actually

incentivized and I'm not saying there's

malicious intent, but I'm incentivized

to make it take longer and cost more

because if it costs $100 million, well

then I only make $15 million. But if it

costs a billion dollars, then as a

company I make $150 million. So, there's

this perverse incentive to drive up

cost. Now, that's not the only reason

the industry is where it is today, but

we're we're very encouraged

by the push from the administration um

to adopt things at at speed and scale

and to do that quickly and to do that

differently and to move away from cost.

Plus, you hit it like we invest our own

capital. To date, we're we're just about

four years old. We've raised $2.5

billion in private capital. We're

pouring that into R&D. I remember when

we decided to build Marauder again 180

foot ship. Viv and I were talking and

it's like who who's crazy enough to go

and build a ship on Irad? And it's like

well well we are cuz that's what the

country needs. That's what it demands.

That's what we're going to go do. And

our investors are giving us the capital

to go do it. They're actually entrusting

us with that capital. That's the reverse

of what's happening in the large primes

where their investors are kind of

demanding share buybacks. They're saying

give us our capital back. So the country

very much needs us to build for needs

companies like us to build for the

future. Um, and when you look at what

the administration is doing, even just

in ship building, just recognizing that

ship building is a critical strategic

industry, right? The president, one of

the first things he did was put out the

maritime executive order that was

followed with the maritime action plan,

right? There's ships act sitting in

Congress. You had the Secretary of War

give a whole speech on defense

acquisition reform, talking about how

we're going to push the department to be

better, to move faster, to work with

companies like us that are building on

firm fixed price contracts that are

focused on delivering at speed and scale

and driving down cost for the taxpayer.

So all of that is extremely encouraging.

But I want to be I also want to be clear

here on the flip side. We're in the

early days, Jason. Like very early days.

When you look at the overall Defense

Department of Wars budget,

1%

1% goes to autonomous systems. That's

not nearly enough. Make that 5%. Make

that I don't know the right mix, but it

needs to go up and it needs to go up

quickly. I I'll just add one more thing

that um that you know historically ship

building you know the design is

bifurcated from the builder right so the

design someone gets paid to do the

design um and the groundup general

assembly and all of that and gets handed

off to a totally different person to go

build a ship um and I think there's a

statistic out there that's like 70% of

sequence critical components on on some

Navy ships are sole source suppliers

like single source suppliers um and so

to Dino's point it's not just that

you're incentivized to to take longer

it's that you're not incentivized to

change that necessarily um because you

know that you're still going to get

paid. Um whereas like from our

perspective when you own the design, you

own the shipyard, you know, software

engineers, ship builders, naval

architects, and welders can all all sit

down and eat lunch together in the yard.

Um there's end to end optimizations that

you get that, you know, the system from

a from a historical perspective just

wasn't set up to gain.

>> Yeah. Let's do a little uh look at what

happened in the straight of Hormuz. Uh

we weren't able to control it

completely. doesn't seem like anybody in

history has been able to uh control it.

If we were to fast forward and you had

your entire fleet, you had let's assume

uh not unlimited but massive capacity,

how would you or would you be able to

secure something like the straight of

Hormuz with these autonomous vehicles?

What might that look like? Take us into

a you know scenario five years from now.

What would it take?

>> That's the type of scenario that that

we're building for. I think before

talking about the scenario, let's talk

about the straight of Hormuz itself,

right? The environment, the part of the

world like what neighborhood is it in,

right? It it connects. So you have the

Persian Gulf which is 200 miles wide

which narrows down to a 20 mile wide

strip which is the straight of Hormuz

and then it connects to the Indian Ocean

and connects these large oil producing

countries to global markets. On the one

side of the Persian Gulf, you have, you

know, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE,

Qatar, and Oman. And on the other side

of the Persian Gulf, the north side is

all controlled by Iran.

So now Iran is saying, well, how are we

going to disrupt traffic in the straight

of Hormuz? Well, it's only a 20 mile

wide stretch. I can use missiles. I can

use fast attack vessels. I can use naval

mines. I can use cheap drones because I

don't have a large distance to cover. I

can launch these things anywhere from

shore. So, it becomes this completely

chaotic environment that sending in

naval destroyers into or trying to get

commercial ships pass becomes extremely

dangerous. So, using large numbers of

autonomous vessels, you can combat these

threats in completely different ways.

You can offer scale, persistence, and

risk reduction in ways that, you know,

man vessels just can't. And again, we

won't get into too many of the specifics

on the types of operations that we're

building towards, but autonomy is a way

to counter these effects, these these um

these effects that are overwhelen

meant to be countered by traditional man

ships alone. We can counter that with

scale and technology and keep people out

of harm's way.

>> Well, you have some small ships. So

yeah, you got the cutless and you got

the spy glass in this uh you know

buildout. Those are 6 foot 15t or

whatever.

>> We actually started with those and I and

I'll give you an interesting story. We

actually don't build those aren't we

haven't productized those. Those were

great subscale demonstrators but our

real flagship product is Corsair. And

when you talk about again the the

scenario in the straight of four moves

and what type of volume can we bring

there like it's not only five years in

the future. We could build 2,000 Corsair

per year right now at our manufacturing

facility in Austin.

>> So I I know you live in Austin. We'd

love to show you around. When you see it

when you see it, it actually comes to

life. You're like, "Oh, wait. We can

actually build thousands of these

vessels every single year."

>> How many would you need? th000 5,000 in

the straight hormonous I don't think

it's a 20 mile wide straight

>> so you're just going to and and they

this is their offensive strategy they

have these speedboats that they use I

don't know what they're called but

>> they call them fast attack vessels

>> fast attack vessels these guys

essentially are kamicazi right they just

zip in you know no regard for safety in

their life etc and they will attack

>> they're using fast attack vessels

they're using cheap drones so you have

to be able to count have counter UAS

capabilities. They're you they're using

mines. They're just floating mines into

the straight without regard for what

those mines may set off. So, it's a

really complicated environment that you

need to bring a lot of capabilities

towards.

>> Yeah. But it sounds like VIB with

artificial intelligence, which is the

next card that I think is going to turn

over. You put these Corsaires out there.

Could they with AI be able to, you know,

be using satellite data from planet or

whoever is providing it to just and or

military satellites and just zip out

there and know, say, somebody's putting

out some mines. Hey, somebody's putting

out some of these fast attack vehicles.

Just intercept them. And now they have

an actual cost, human life, and a

limited amount of resources. And hey,

we're America and we have you guys

building ships at scale. They don't have

this ability to build AI based ships. So

talk about what AI on these ships could

do eventually.

>> Yeah. So I would I would say today, you

know, there's a bunch of different, you

know, machine learning applications that

run on our boat today. Um there's heavy

amounts of compute on all of our crafts.

Um that allows people to have tons of

capability, whether it's, you know, the

navigation and kind of the autopilot or

self-driving of the craft itself or

compute for payloads, whether that's

counter UAS, as Dino mentioned, or or a

bunch of other things really. Um there's

a variety of different mission sets. The

end state here is that you know you have

a distributed fleet you know across the

ocean that you know in variable like

listen the ocean is a tumultuous place

like by default without war zone like

the ocean's still bad um you know

saltwater hits antennas you lose you

lose comms uh so there's a bunch of

different communications on this there's

a bunch of different sensors um all of

those things kind of areworked together

with ML with a bunch of different

software components of the software

stack to make sure that you can

basically translate intent

from a commander or a sailor and then

result in a mission outcome.

>> Let's talk Dino a little bit about the

adversary China and they have started to

put weapons on robots. I'm assuming that

they're doing the same if they're

willing to put it on a you know one of

those dog robots like the spot robots.

They're putting weapons on them. They're

demonstrating it and whatever they're

demonstrating they've already got in

production. Let's just call it what it

is. And they're not signing some UN

treaty to not put autonomous and AI

weapons. This is a different type of

adversary. And I'm sure North Korea and

and other bad guys are doing similar

things. We have um I believe treaties

where we're not allowed to put weapons

and use AI based weapons. Am I correct

about that? In the West here,

>> there is a autonomous weapon system

standard called 3009 that basically

outlines exactly how AI can be used on

an on an autonomous system. Yeah,

>> tell us all about that. Like or cuz this

is the Robocop scenario. This is the

robotic soldier or the robotic boat

that's able to engage the enemy without

a human, you know, if it loses comms or

to do a kamicazi mission, which seems

like something we might have to do.

These are things we might have to do,

Dino, versus the Chinese because they're

not signing these treaties. They are not

thinking ethically. They are not

respecting the Declaration of Human

Rights. They've got their own playbook.

Yep. Yeah. And I think the the important

thing to to articulate here is

especially when you use the kind of

Robocop example and just to kind of

quell people's fears a little bit is

even in that example where we're sending

boats off the off of Taiwan and we're in

the Taiwan Strait and they're engaging,

we're still using artificial

intelligence to bifurcate between an

enemy vessel and a friendly vessel,

between a non-combatant and a combatant.

And people are still making the

decisions and setting the mission

intent. It's just government policy

that's setting, okay, when are you

authorized to engage versus not.

Artificial intelligence actually just

gives the military the opportunity to

one operate at a greater scale and then

operate more efficiently. These aren't

robots actually just making decisions on

when to go to war or not.

>> Got it. So it says, hey, this is a bad

guy. Hey, our recommendation is to, you

know, neutralize it. And then a human

has to say, okay, neutralize it. But if

you're up against an adversary who says,

hey, no, no, we built this thing.

Anybody comes in to the blockade in

Taiwan, which, you know, we think is uh,

you know, a pretty significant nonzero

probability in our lifetime. If you're

up against somebody who says, "I'm just

going to have these ships kill anything

that's not our ship." Period. Full stop.

Then we lose, don't we?

>> No. Because the the technologies the all

you're doing is putting policy

thresholds and approval thresholds into

the technology. There's a real world

scenario where doomsday scenario, we go

to World War II, the Taiwan Strait is a

complete conflict. Exactly what you

said. Our commanders are going to make

that same judgment, right? and they be

like, "Hey, if anything, there's no

fishing boats out here right now."

>> Yeah.

>> There's no cruise ships coming through.

>> If you're not if you're not a friendly

vessel, you're an enemy vessel. And

that's that. And our technologies

actually enables that. What we were

talking about earlier is like the

autonomy, the artificial intelligence,

and everything else is there. And you're

building the policies into the software

based on government procedures. And when

those authorizations need to be in

place, those authorizations will change

based on

the threat environment that we're in.

>> Is the plan for you to sell to our

allies? And what are the rules there?

Because it sounds like we need as many

ships for our navy as we can get, but if

you can get up to capacity, then hey,

the French, the Germans, and the English

have essentially just stopped making

ships, right? and they they they have

very deprecated militaries. My

understanding is the only people who are

really doing a great job at this are the

folks in South Korea which I believe are

building but one ship for us. So maybe

you could talk about the other uh top

countries in the world, democracies and

our allies and what their capability is

and then your ability to help arm them

and sell to them.

>> I mean very very focused on our allies

and partners. If you talk to the

Department of War, if you talk to the

United States Navy, they actually want

our allies and partners to have these

capabilities as well. This is this is

going to be a combined effort, right? We

mentioned earlier that China has 57% of

the world's ship building capacity.

That's not limited to just that one

industry. We could go industry by

industry and talk about their

manufacturing might and their

manufacturing dominance. Um, so you

really do need a combined effort. We

need our allies and partners to have

this technology. We're talking to um our

allies in Asia, obviously, in Europe,

and in the Middle East right now about

getting not only our our products there,

but also how do we stand up, you know,

domestic production in those countries.

How do we give them the sovereign

capability? How do we have production

lines overseas so that they're already

forward deployed if we get into a

conflict in the first place?

>> Pretty amazing stuff. And you have an

announcement today, I understand, that

we're going to share with the all-in

audience for the first time.

>> That's right. So, we've been working on

Port Alpha for a long time now. So, Port

Alpha, just for the listeners, is our

shipyard of the future. This is going to

bring American ship building back to a

place that we haven't seen since World

War II. Um, to be clear, we're already

operating a shipyard. We have a shipyard

in Franklin, Louisiana. That's where

we're building Marauder. We're ramping

that up to 20 Marauder. We can bring

that up to 50 marauders per year, every

single year. And that is a 100 acre

shipyard.

What we're doing at Port Alpha is 10xing

that. We're looking at a shipyard that

is well over a thousand acres. We've

been doing this search for over a year

now on what is the ideal location for

this shipyard. Where are we going to

find the right partner, the right land,

the right workforce, the right community

to be a part of? Um, and we're proud to

announce that we found that in

Brownsville, Texas. So, we're we're

headquartered in Austin. We're going to

be basing Port Alpha in Brownsville.

We're going to start on a 800 acre plot

of land, which in and of itself, 800

acres is now the largest shipyard in the

United States.

>> Amazing.

>> Just to give you a sense of scale, we

have the opportunity over time to scale

that to 4,000 acres. We're going to

invest billions of dollars into this

project. We're going to create 10,000

jobs over the next 10 years and we're

going to bring ship building in this

country back again to a place that we

haven't seen since World War II. And

we're just grateful for the partnership

from the state, from Governor Abbott,

from Cameron County, and then the city

and the port of Brownsville for making

this happen.

>> I mean, this is one of the great things,

Vib, about being based in Texas. They

let us build things in Texas. Yeah. As a

recent resident here, it's pretty

amazing to live in a state where the

state's like, "What do you want to

build? How can we help?" as opposed to,

"Hey, uh, you know, f off like they told

uh Elon in California." And he got the

message received reply uh to that

lunatic. So, maybe you could talk a

little bit about operating VIB in Texas

and the crazy support you get from

Abbott and everybody.

>> One of the uh questions that we used to

get like back in the day was, "You guys

are a maritime company. There's no water

in Austin. What are you guys doing

there? Um, and I would say like, you

know, Austin has this like magical um

kind of nexus of both digital and

physical labor forces. Like you can find

software talent, you can find AI talent,

you can find designers. Um, but you can

also tap into, you know, the industrial

base from San Antonio, from the oil and

gas industry in Houston. Um, and when

you marry those two together, like you

can actually start to co-design these

things across the entire stack, right? I

mentioned earlier like typically ship

design and ship build is is totally

independent. Um but with port alpha we

get the luxury of like green field

designing what the the manufacturing

plant for ships should look like. Um and

so you can design the you can you can

optimize the design as ship for the yard

and the design of the yard for the ship.

And it's very similar to kind of like

you know how how companies today like do

hardware software co-design on chips,

right? You design the compiler and they

stick together to optimize both for for

the other. Um, and we can we have the

luxury of being able to do that for for

ships here. And um, I I can't think of a

better place to do it than Texas.

>> Well, and uh, Starbase is right down the

block. SpaceX obviously and Elon's made

that work. And I think it's like a four

what, maybe four, five, six hour drive

down to the coast. Yeah. So you guys can

either zip there on a PJ or you can just

drive. So it's pretty straightforward.

>> It's pretty straightforward. It's easy

for logistics. What what SpaceX has did

has done in Brownsville is incredible. I

think what Brownsville has done for

SpaceX and helping them build out build

the community down there. Um, we were

very impressed, very very excited to be

basing Port Alpha there. And look, at

the end of the day, it's the people that

are going to make this work. It's it's

the labor force. It's the workforce. Viv

mentioned it earlier, and we can talk

about, you know, why the American ship

building industry has declined so much,

but it's the supply chain and the

workforce that has suffered the most.

And so like one of the things we focus

on is really how do we rebuild that

workforce? How do we upskill existing

talent to advance manufacturing? How do

we take somebody that's building a car

at Ford and get them building ships very

very efficiently, very quickly, right?

And that actually all starts with the

design. If you design a ship from the

ground up from a first principles

approach to be more simplistic to be

designed and manufactured at scale, then

you can put in the training, the work

instruction, the processes and

everything else where hey, let's go make

this much faster. Let's train, let's

build the workforce. And then let's be

honest, like you have to make it cool

for young people to go work in a

shipyard again. You have to you have to

pay them good wages. like every one of

our employees, every welder, every pipe

fitter, um they have good wages, the

same benefits as our Silicon Valley

software engineers, they have equity in

our company, um they're they're fired

up. Like I mentioned our our shipyard in

Louisiana. Like people are fired up down

there. And it's not just the workforce,

it's the community. Like some of the

some of the stories I hear when I'm down

there are like so encouraging. People

are like, I'm wearing my hat in the

grocery store and people are coming up

to me saying, "You guys are kicking

butt. Keep building ships because nobody

else in the country is doing what we're

doing."

>> And these are great salaries. People are

getting paid significant amounts of

money obviously to work in manufacturing

at your company at uh down at Starbase.

And now you have these two incredible

companies. I I don't know if there's any

other ones in Brownsville, but this is a

small community. There's only like

200,000 people down there. This is going

to be an incredible boom town. Oh, it's

going to be incredible. SpaceX, you

know, and

I mentioned earlier like the cost of

building ships in the United States. And

the United States just isn't competitive

in the commercial market. And again, we

can go through the specifics and what

happened over time, five to six times

the cost of building a ship in China. We

think just by investing in product and

processes and new shipyards, we can cut

the cost of a ship in the United States

in half. So if you have a ship that

costs $300 million, we can get that

under $150 million. And that's not by

simply just paying people less. We're

paying people more, but we're investing

in our product. We're investing in the

process. We're designing the product to

be built that way in the first place.

So, we're making the investments that

are needed for long-term sustainability

and to rebuild the workforce.

>> All right. If people want to come work

with you, VIB, how can they apply their

career page and what are you looking

for? What what talent do you need to

come do this incredibly patriotic duty

and go work at Seronic?

>> Yeah, I mean sur uh we have a careers

page. Um you can you reach out on

Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever you want. Um

we're we're hiring pretty aggressively

right now. I would say that, you know,

the biggest thing, you know, we look for

generally speaking is, you know,

especially in 2026 when, you know, Chad

GBT and Claude are getting so much

better every year. Um, it's pretty

important right now to be fairly, you

know, neuroplastic. Um, you know, be

ready to adapt for what the future looks

like. Computing is changing. Um, you

know, there's there's going to be agents

that can help you on the manufacturing

floor to to assemble faster if you have

an issue. uh there's all these digital

systems that are they're kind of

changing the paradigm here. I mean, when

we first got to Golfcraft um in in done

in Louisiana, a lot of the processes

were were pretty much pen and pen and

paper, right? And that's pretty common

across most shipyards. Um so, like kind

of bringing that into the 21st century

really quickly. Um I mean, it's just

going to require people to be um

thoughtful um adapt to the future and um

and really be passionate and excited and

and about about kind of building the

future.

>> Yeah. go to the uh website s ar nic.com

join the mission 300 jobs listed on the

website there's something there for

everybody and uh listen just as a fellow

Greek dino uh you know we were obviously

the cradle of innovation and or science

math technology art and everything

happened but we were also the great

warriors uh and we patrolled the sea

obviously Greece has a lot of coastlines

so you're you're doing our Greek u

brothers and sisters and ancestors Greek

has a lot of Greek has a lot of

coastline and they're actually big in

the shipping industry. So now they are

big. Yeah.

>> So So now I hear more more often than

not now. Oh, it's good to see a Greek in

building ships.

>> I you know what? I can sleep now at

night. I was very worried about the

straight of Hormuz. I was worried about

the Pacific theater, the South China

Sea. Dino, now that I know that my Greek

brother is on top of this, my head's

going to hit the pillow. I'm going to go

right. I'm going to sleep like a baby

tonight. I know you got us covered. Uh

thanks so much guys and uh sincerely uh

on behalf of all Americans like thank

you for doing this work. You know this

is something where we really need

technologists and entrepreneurs uh to

really help us innovate because we're

falling behind and we're the good guys

in this. We're the ones who are

spreading democracy and freedom and

protecting that. The only thing in the

world that isn't trending in the right

direction, man, if you look at

lifespans, if you look at, you know,

infant mortality, if you look at uh

people's standard of living, everything

is trending in the world in the right

direction except the spread of

democracy, which has been on the decline

in our lifetime. Let that sink in,

folks. More people living under

authoritarians than democracies. It's

it's a modest amount, but you've seen

the statistics, I'm sure, Vib and and

Dino. And we need to have a great

military. We need to have this advanced

technology if we're going to maintain uh

the number of people living under a

democracy of in and freedom and

hopefully increase it. A lot of bad guys

out there and uh you know just thank you

so much for doing this work.

>> That's right. Well, thank you for having

us and I I will end on a positive note

where look we're seeing that starting to

turn around in a really big way. It's

not just Sironic. You mentioned Android.

there SpaceX and Palanteer before that

and now there's just a big wave a big

push into defense tech because people

realize the importance and the magnitude

of the moment that we are living in

right now. I I tell our team I'm like

this is our generation's version of the

space race.

>> Make make no mistake about it and we

cannot lose. So that's how hard we're

working at. That's how we're working

with a sense of urgency and there's a

lot of other companies into the coming

into the space that are working with

that same sense of urgency. So I am I am

very optimistic. I know this country can

do it. When we put our minds and we get

a collective effort behind something,

nobody can beat us. So

>> nobody can. Yeah. Nobody can beat us.

And listen, if you were thinking of

going, listen, there's no no dig to

anybody, but if you're thinking about

going and optimizing an ad network at

some big tech company, like it's

incredibly boring and it's incredibly

meaningful. You'll get 20, 30 years into

your career and you'll say, "What did I

do?" Go work at Seronic. You'll get

couple of years into your career and you

say, "I'm doing important work."

>> That's right. That's right. Every person

that walks through the door every single

day is quite literally changing the

world and we remind them of that and

they they know it.

>> Yeah. All right, Vib Dino, thank you so

much for coming on and we'll see you

next time on the All-In Interview.

[music]

>> I'm [music] going all in.