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Grant Gregory

Partner, Cantos · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorhost@grant__gregory ↗cantos.vc ↗

Grant Gregory is a Partner at Cantos, where he invests in frontier hard tech, aerospace, and defense. He previously served as an investment partner on the American Dynamism team at Andreessen Horowitz and co-hosts the Motion Blur podcast.

15statements → 11claims → 6claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.67/5average certainty → 1.73/5average debate potential →

3 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 8 assertions · 1 opinion · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Grant argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Over 80% of global trade volume is transported by sea
“Trade is somewhere north of 55% of global GDP, and over 80% of that by volume is getting transported on the sea.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 3:43 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
The majority of US trade relies on shifting inland waterways
“The majority of our trade in the U S is tied to the inland navigable waterways, and you have a mix of ocean water and then sediment that's constantly changing the sea floor.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 13:17 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
75% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

222 words/min while actually speaking · 30.2 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Grant Gregory: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 2,916 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Grant Gregory said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Partly supported
Maps of Mars and Venus are 50x more detailed than ocean maps
“Most of what we actually know about the ocean seafloor today has been gathered from gravity data from satellites. And so it's a useful starting point, but the resulting resolution that we have is only about two square miles, I think. And when you compare that …”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 4:13 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Geopolitical and climate disruptions will accelerate maritime tech demand
“We're seeing companies like Flexport, Saronic, and SailDrone, and many others have already started modernizing maritime, and we anticipate that continued geopolitical supply chain and climate disruptions will further accelerate the demand for change here.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 2:22 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Partly supported
Shipping containers reduced global goods transportation costs by 99%
“Something like the shipping container that reduced Global costs of transportation for goods by something like 99%.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 5:39 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The maritime industry still operates largely on pen, paper, and email
“A lot of the current state of the art is very analog. And we're talking about an industry that still operates largely with pen, paper, and maybe emails and phone calls.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 5:59 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Flexport proved maritime supply chain digitization is a viable market
“Flexport's a great example, and there's plenty of others that have kind of proven out this is a real market, and there's real opportunity here to digitize it, and it's difficult, but it's possible.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 8:19 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Opinion
Arc Boats brings Tesla and SpaceX manufacturing principles to maritime
“Arc boats has done a great job of encapsulating what the future of maritime looks like in that, you know, from a process and team perspective, Mitch and Ryan delivered the Tesla and SpaceX vision and mission to maritime. They're not just creating Consumer boat…”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 10:27 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Insight
Maritime tech startups are following space tech toward vertical integration
“Space ultimately had to be done a lot of things in house and vertically integrated, and we're seeing a similar approach with maritime.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 11:32 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Deep-water maritime autonomy will arrive before complex port navigation
“I think there's the reality is that there's going to be different waves of autonomy in maritime. There's going to be the actual autonomy for deep water navigation, which frankly is probably less difficult than some of the other problems. Like once you're in a …”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 15:58 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Insight
Maritime tech adoption requires verifiable proof of downtime-free operations
“And this is a category that, you know, the people in the industry are quite smart, but they're, it's very difficult to convince them to change because most of the stuff that you're trying to sell to them is dealing with mission critical applications. They can'…”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 19:24 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Insight
Hardware acts as a Trojan horse in software-resistant markets
“In categories that are really resistant to adopting software, oftentimes hardware is a great Trojan horse where you can sell that the customer base is used to purchasing some form of hardware. And then from there, you're able to layer in software capabilities …”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 21:04 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Autonomous vessel swarms will emerge for defense and ocean monitoring
“Anticipate there's going to be a number of companies that are able to provide swarms of vessels, both on the surface and also subsurface that are able to not only protect our shores and our allies, but are able to detect environmental damage issues in our ocea…”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 21:42 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Supported
Over 80% of global trade volume is transported by sea
“Trade is somewhere north of 55% of global GDP, and over 80% of that by volume is getting transported on the sea.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 3:43 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Supported
Veterans from SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril are moving into maritime tech
“We're seeing people from a lot of the other American dynamism companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and Andrel, they're taking their learnings and experiences and bringing them over to the ocean.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 8:35 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Contradicted
The majority of US trade relies on shifting inland waterways
“The majority of our trade in the U S is tied to the inland navigable waterways, and you have a mix of ocean water and then sediment that's constantly changing the sea floor.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 13:17 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Assertion Supported
Startups are rebuilding maritime vessels from the ground up for autonomy
“There's companies like ARC, but also Ceronic, and Roll with their dive platform that are building new versions of vessels from the ground up with modern day assumptions on how should these vehicles operate in a digital world.”
Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 ▶ 14:45 Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory Dec 24, 2023 15m
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