why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable
ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't;
assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card:
▮▮▮▮▮ certainty ·
▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Opinion
Bry: Skydio is the only non-Chinese company scaling autonomous drone manufacturing
“We find ourselves in a position of really being the only company in the world, certainly the only company outside of China that's capable of delivering these things reliably at scale.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio's biggest and fastest-growing business is civilian, not defense
“Our biggest, fastest growing businesses are in the civilian sector. They're not in defense.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio has rapidly declining capital needs unlike AI peers
“We're in the very rare and hard earned position amongst robotics and AI companies of actually having rapidly declining capital needs.”
Assertion Supported
Bry: Chinese government sanctioned Skydio and blocked component suppliers
“A year and a half ago, we had the great honor of being sanctioned by the Chinese government, and it was a pretty aggressive action. They announced the sanctions, and then they showed up at the suppliers that we still had in China, shut them down, stop them fro…”
Opinion
Bry: Skydio is the only surviving drone hardware maker from the 2014 wave
“I think we're really the only surviving company that's building drone hardware from that era.”
Opinion
Bry: The East Bay can become a hardware hub like Shenzhen
“I think, actually, the East Bay, where we are near the Bay Area, has great potential for this. Like, there's some alternate universe Where this looks like what Shenzhen looks like, and I don't think there's anything fundamentally that should stop us from getti…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio drones arrive before police 70% to 80% of the time
“I think across our customer base, when people are sending drones, they're getting to the calls roughly like, 70, 80% of the time, they get there first”
Disclosure
Bry: Skydio is charting a roadmap toward flying agentic AI drones
“From a product perspective, I think the course that we're charting is towards Our drones being like flying agentic AI, just like you have an, you know, an agent that you interact with on your computer or in the cloud, this thing is an agent that can move and d…”
Assertion Contradicted
Bry: Skydio drones respond to 911 calls in most major cities
“Skydio drones are in most major cities responding to nine one calls today at sort of small scale, like maybe part of the city, some fraction of the incidents that they're dealing with.”
Insight
Bry: Companies should abandon cascading OKRs for small autonomous teams
“I am not big on these, like, sort of, like, super granular cascading OKRs through the whole organization. I'm very big on coming up with, like, targets that we're aiming at. I sort of think of these things as, like, you know, We think that this product for thi…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: 16 million Americans live within two miles of a Skydio dock
“We did the math on this, I think, sixteen million Americans now live within two miles of one of our docking stations for first response, about five percent of the country”
Assertion Supported
Adam Bry: Skydio's dock drones operate 24/7 without a human pilot.
“The new way is the drones live in these network connected charging base stations. We call them docks. And they're just available to fly 24 seven. So these things are flying themselves fully autonomously. There's no person in the loop.”
Insight
Adam Bry: Engineering small drones is harder than designing rockets or aircraft.
“Designing these things is really akin to designing, like, a rocket ship or an aircraft, because there's just so much physical constraint, vibrations, thermals, aerodynamics, and because it's small, it's actually harder. Like, most of the ways that you solve pr…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Adam Bry: US public safety customers launch Skydio drones every 30 seconds.
“So, on average now, in public safety, our customers are flying once every 30 seconds”
Assertion Partly supported
Bry: Skydio F10 fixed-wing drone reaches 100 mph and uses robotic arm docking
“So this is called F-Ten. It's reusing a lot of the same core technology blocks from X-Ten and R-Ten, but it's in a fixed wing form factor that can fly a hundred miles an hour in a couple hours of flight time, and it is launched and caught by a robotic arm.”
Assertion Supported
Bry: Skydio drones can be summoned via Axon body camera button
“So, you know, the drone can fly to the location of a body camera, so an officer can just push a button on their body camera. If they're in trouble, they'll summon a drone to get there, and then after it lands, it'll upload the footage to Axon's evidence.com pr…”
Assertion Contradicted
Bry: Skydio operates the largest US drone factory at scale production
“So we're in what I believe is the biggest drone factory in the US that's actually at scale production right now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio generates hundreds of millions annually producing thousands of drones
“It's already, you know, thousands of drones a month, hundreds of millions of dollars a year in, in revenue.”
Assertion Supported
Bry: Skydio raises $110M Series F at $4.4B valuation
“This was a hundred and ten million dollar fundraise, 4.4 billion dollar post-money valuation led by insider investors.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio serves 4,000 customers including every US military branch
“We're right around 4000 customers. These are enterprise government agencies that are using the products. So this is every branch of the Department of War, number of allies around the world, 1200 public safety agencies across the country, almost every State Dep…”
Assertion Supported
Bry: Skydio's life preserver payload originated from NYPD request
“One of the most common requests we got from public safety was helping people in the water in trouble. There's a lot of coastline work here so this originally Came up with NYPD, the beaches around New York.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Site security is Skydio's biggest, fastest growing application
“So site security is our biggest, fastest growing application where they do a combination of responding to incidents.”
Assertion Supported
Adam Bry: Skydio's R10 tactical drone perches for hours for two-way communication.
“If you have a barricaded suspect or something, you can land this perch for hours and establish two-way communication without ever putting a person in harm's way.”
Disclosure
Bry: Skydio will triple drone production this year
“We will be tripling production over the course of this year.”
Disclosure
Bry: Skydio expands into indoor and fixed-wing drones
“So now we're in a position to use that core technology to apply it to different form factors and use cases, and that's where the indoor drone comes into place, because a lot of Dangerous work happens indoors. It's where the fixed wing drone that can cover much…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bry: Skydio hires many Tesla Model 3 production alumni
“Tesla has generated some great alumni, and we have a lot of fantastic folks that have come from floors in the fire of production hell on Model Three”
Disclosure
Bry: Key Apple turnaround engineering executives are Skydio investors and advisors
“A lot of the engineering executives and leadership team that was in place there have become investors or advisors or mentors for us.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Adam Bry: Skydio tests docks 24/7 using 35 mph wind rigs
“This is a fully autonomous testing rig. So this is again just running unattended, 24 seven. So it's a bunch of drone propellers that generate 30, 35 miles an hour wind, and then we've got a dock sitting in front of it.”