NYSE | Varda’s $251M Raise, Firestorm’s Battlefield Factories, and Bedrock’s Ocean Robots

Mo Islam (0:07)

It's Tuesday, October 13th. Welcome to the Space and Defense Update, live from the New York Stock Exchange. I'm here with my co-host, Jack Kuhr. Jack, great to be back, as always.

Jack Kuhr (0:16)

Good to be back.

Mo Islam (0:17)

Did you have a good weekend?

Jack Kuhr (0:18)

I did have a good weekend. I was solo parenting, so it was a long weekend. I have a 15-month-old named Julian, and he's adorable, and he started to walk, but it's also a long weekend.

Mo Islam (0:30)

Yeah, I feel that.

Jack Kuhr (0:32)

It was great.

Mo Islam (0:32)

I feel that. How about you? It was good. It was good. I was actually at a... I was telling you earlier, I was at a music festival this past weekend.

People have been calling it UnkFest. It was where Coachella is held in Palm Springs, and the lineup was basically... Each day was quite short.

Jack Kuhr (0:51)

It was SpaceX and Androel. SpaceX and Androel, exactly.

Mo Islam (0:54)

No, but anyway, Calvin Harris, who's like an old, I should say old DJ, but older DJ who had been... Who I grew up listening to, played, and it was really amazing and super nostalgic. And everyone around me was all in their 30s and 40s, so I didn't feel super out of place. Yeah, yeah, it was good.

Jack Kuhr (1:15)

Yeah, this is Unk is now Millennial. Unk is now Millennial. Actually, I do have a surprise that could have been fitting for last weekend. So let me show you. And I brought it to the show.

And it is...

Mo Islam (1:32)

Oh, wow.

Jack Kuhr (1:33)

Payload bomber jacket.

Mo Islam (1:35)

That is super cool.

Jack Kuhr (1:36)

And that is for you, my friend. What? Yeah, because I have my own one too.

Mo Islam (1:40)

Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome.

Jack Kuhr (1:43)

Yeah, check it. We got the payload, the payload logo here.

Mo Islam (1:48)

Payload branding, American flag. That's pretty dope.

Jack Kuhr (1:50)

I know.

Mo Islam (1:51)

All right, thanks, man.

Jack Kuhr (1:51)

Put it on. See if it works. Put it over the blazer. Let's see if it works.

Mo Islam (1:55)

All right, let's see.

But I had a real... It definitely fits.

Jack Kuhr (2:02)

It's a quince jacket, so.

Mo Islam (2:03)

It definitely fits. We'll rock these on the next show for sure.

Jack Kuhr (2:05)

Thank you. Thank you.

Mo Islam (2:06)

These are great.

Jack Kuhr (2:07)

I had a very New York experience putting that together. It was like days on the...

in Fashion District.

Mo Islam (2:14)

We're gonna have to update the swag shop now.

Jack Kuhr (2:15)

Yeah, I know. I know. This one might be a little pricey, though.

Mo Islam (2:18)

Well, actually, so speaking of payload and Tectonic, so both our space and defense verticals, we had some big news today.

So we have our Investor Summit coming up in a few weeks. So as a reminder, that is one of the most important capital allocator event for the space and defense industry. We have over $8 trillion of institutional capital represented at this event. We just announced today that the keynote, or I should say one of the keynotes, is going to be Dave Lipp, CEO of Blue Origin. So it's going to be an off-the-record event. So unfortunately, we're not going to be able to tell everyone what gets discussed afterwards. We're not doing the show at this. We're not going to be doing the show. But I think it's going to be really, really exciting. I've never heard Dave speak at a conference before. So actually, I don't know if he does this very often, but we have him coming. We're super excited. We're going to have a conversation about all of the huge news that Blue's had, especially the fundraise that they're imminently closing. Hopefully, they'll have New Glenn back on the pad.

Anyway, so more on that. But today, we're not talking about space. We're talking about Defense Tech. We have a number of great guests today. So we have Will Bruey, CEO of Varda on the show, Dan Magy, the CEO of Firestorm, and then Matt Tirman, CEO of Bedrock Ocean. But Jack, I know you wanted to talk about Mr. Paul Graham. So why don't we start there?

Jack Kuhr (3:34)

Yeah, let's bring the Twitter ecosystem into this show a little bit.

The conversation around defense tech made its way to X last week with Paul Graham tweeting, and I'm curious your thoughts on this.

His tweet was, Talk to someone recently who knows a lot about defense tech and he made an interesting point. The test of most military hardware right now is whether the Ukrainians want it. They have a hot war going against a determined opponent and they know what works. There was then an interesting kind of, I guess, response or quote tweet from Michael McFaul, who was the former US ambassador to Russia, saying, Yup, and they mostly prefer their own weapons these days. Interceptors for rockets and drones with rocket engines is what's most needed from the outside world. What's your take on that? I think intuitively, logically, it makes sense. You can be in the Pentagon coming up with these war games, or you can be in Silicon Valley trying to determine what the warfighter needs. But what the warfighter needs is on display right now in the war in Ukraine, and it really triple clicks into maybe tech that isn't really that useful, or tech that is in hot, hot demand. And that can give some pretty powerful demand signals coming from both the Pentagon and what the defense tech world should be building.