Chariot Defense and Bringing Power to the Edge

Andrew Couillard (00:14)

Welcome back to Pirates Only, the Black Flag podcast from Harpoon Ventures. I'm Andrew Couillyard and I met today's guest two years ago at a Stanford DEF CON event when his company was still in stealth and he was building it out of a garage in South San Francisco. I actually nominated him for the first Black Flag 100, but he was still in stealth, so we kind of had to hold that off. And in between then he went from a seed check to air assaulting software into force-on-force exercise as the 101st airborne in six months, raised a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and won a DIU contract to build Army's tactical power group.

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Adam Warmouth is the founder and CEO of Chariot Defense, which builds a battery and power electronic system and a pelican case that charges from a generator, a vehicle, or a solar panel, and powers everything the modern formation carries, from drones to radios to electronic warfare kits, sensors, lasers, edge compute. The pitch is that power is still that third layer of robotic warfare after comms and compute, and the army still plans in the terms of gallons, especially with fuel.

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Adam is a Stanford engineering physics and mechanical engineering grad who spent his twenties trying to make electric aircraft real at Kitty Hawk, Uber Elevate, and Archer, then ran encounter drone engineering over at Andrew and scaled it into programs of record before starting Chariot in 2024. Adam, I mean Kitty Hawk, Uber Elevate, Archer, you spent a decade on electric aircraft that mostly haven't really flown passengers yet.

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So what did that teach you about hard tech timelines and when did you decide that defense was where physics and your background would actually get used?

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Adam Warmoth (01:38)

Yeah, it's a great way to kick it off. So you know, I was really fortunate that the first industry I worked in coming out of school was was this brand new industry of electric aircraft.

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you know, was they had the opportunity to do some research for one of the founders of the industry, Alon Crow, who had founded Z Aero back in 2010 when Larry Page had come to him with a check and saying,

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Andrew Couillard (01:55)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (01:55)

Hey, I want a flying car. Where's my flying car? so got in at really the ground floor of that industry and and was very fortunate to to spend a lot of time in my early career hands-on hacking on hardware, building advanced aircraft, you know, leveraging kind of these technological breakthroughs and batteries and power electronics that took that from an impossible problem to just a really hard problem.

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And you know it is a very hard problem, that whole concept of that, you know, vertical takeoff, transition, right? It's a it's a very challenging engineering problem, but was something I was really excited to sink my teeth into. and and you know, like the hardest version of all of these problems around software, electronics, right, mechanical engineering, aerospace, aerodynamics. so really cool challenge for to start my career in.

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You know, I think that, you know, what I learned from that, right? And what I learned from my experiences in in EVTAL, one is, you know, hey, it's it's it's a noble and worthy cause to go after these hard problems. but two, I kind of learned, you know, that there's there's some businesses that are that are the moonshots, right? That you just have to kind of

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Andrew Couillard (02:49)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (02:49)

set the tenure vision and go. you know, I learned where where I excel is really kind of the scaling, the the the in the weeds, the execution. and that's what I was doing at Androll. So I've scaled the counterintrusion business,

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Andrew Couillard (02:59)

Nice.

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Adam Warmoth (03:00)

scaled the counter UAS business.

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and and during that time at Anderol, I kind of found a problem that that my background in EVTEL happened to be particularly exactly suited to solve, which was that every

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Andrew Couillard (03:09)

Yeah, exactly, and then before

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that, with the EV talls, what was your reaction to the Tesla announcement where they're doing barrel

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Adam Warmoth (03:15)

Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (03:16)

rolls over cars? Like, how did that feel and land on you?

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Adam Warmoth (03:18)

Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing there is like it's not actually that's actually the not electric piece of it that they're using to fly, right?

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Andrew Couillard (03:24)

Yep.

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Adam Warmoth (03:25)

so it's it's a it was a cool it was a cool gimmick, but I think I think it also is an indication of how hard this problem is from first principles, right? Elon's a very famous first principles thinker. I think everyone was wondering, hey, when's Elon gonna come out with his EVTAL?

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and I think, you know, he's looked at the fur of the problem from first principles and just the the VTOL, the sustained flight, the transition is just actually a very hard physics problem to model going from kind of vertical to horizontal.

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it's just very hard to model and the only way to do it is build at full scale and flight test. your modeling doesn't work, your subscale doesn't work. and so that's really what extends the timelines. And so I think you know Elon probably looked at that and was like, okay, hey, I'm just gonna use my rocket tech. because that's actually easier than than than than making an EV tall.

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Andrew Couillard (04:08)

That's so true. I mean it making EV talls as hard. So now bringing it back to Andrew, I think what's so unique about there is like you scaled that really into programs of records. So what did Androil teach you about selling into the government? And from that experience, what did you deliberately do at Cherry Defense or what did you do differently because of that?

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Adam Warmoth (04:24)

Yeah,

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so so I'd like to say the things I learned at at Anderol,

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you know, definitely learned kind of the the hardware side and you know was was very involved in engineering in my role, but also yeah, learned the business of what does it take to sell into defense, especially in kind of this modern kind of disruptive world we're in in the defense industry, right? When when Android started, you know, there was only one other company that had that had successfully sold into the department as a startup, and that was you know Palantir, right? You SpaceX, maybe count maybe two, right? and so

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Andrew Couillard (04:50)

Yeah. Yeah yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (04:53)

the model of like, hey, we're gonna build products.

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And sell those, right? That's been talked about on a lot of pods. I don't need to, you know, riff too much on that, but really kind of learning around this like kind of disruptive model of we're gonna go out in the field, we're gonna find the problems.

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But uniquely, we're not just going to like we're not just gonna be technologists, right? We're not just gonna say, hey, we're gonna go like find this problem and then we're gonna go spend three years in a in a in a lab building the exquisite version that solves this and then show up with our thing and say, Hey, don't you like it? Right. you know, because that's one failure mode of of a defense company is it's like, you know, you fall in love with the tech and you lose sight

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Andrew Couillard (05:25)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (05:25)

of what does it actually take to sell it. but the business model that Androids was disrupting of the primes was also, you know, you know, very business development dominated, which

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Which

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is, hey, I'm just gonna go sell something to the government. You know, they're I'm gonna give them exactly what they ask for. And then I'm just gonna take those specs and I'm gonna throw them over the fence to the engineers, right? not really

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Andrew Couillard (05:43)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (05:43)

leaving any room for creative freedom. That's how you end up with the faster horse, right? The kind of classic example. If I asked them what they wanted, right, we'd we'd give them a faster horse. you need that innovation to get you the automobile, but it needs to be centralized and grounded in a realistic capture strategy, a realistic understanding of the operational problems, and a realistic understanding of the of the

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Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (06:05)

You know, and

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I think especially you not having a military background, you've had such a deep understanding of what the warfighter actually needs and especially at the operational, strategic and tactical level, how this is all gonna go down. Like how did you learn so much about this problem that then led you to start chariot defense?

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Adam Warmoth (06:19)

Yeah.

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you know, it really like, you know, and so my role at Andrew was like kind of product manager, program director, you know, kind of program ch you know, engineer leader. it's kind of this this kind of bubble of of a of a thing kind of sitting between the you the B D and the engineering side, but

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You know, what I tell any kind of like young product manager is like, you have to earn your right in any room. The BDE people are gonna understand, you know, the the sales process better than you. The engineers are gonna understand the tech better than you. What you can be the expert in is like the customer and the problem. and so from my early days at Androll, I really took that seriously. and it and it's only kind of double down on that at at Chariot. I, you know, you know, I crossed you know, a hundred thousand miles, but you know, you know, I think up to one hundred and fifty thousand miles.

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in the air, all short haul, right? All domestic, you know, driving down to NTC over the

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Andrew Couillard (07:01)

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (07:04)

past couple of years.

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We've we've supported over a dozen CTC rotations. you know, six months into the company talked about that aerosalting equipment into a force-on-force exercise. For that whole three weeks, I was living out of a Hampton Inn in Leesville, Louisiana. you know, getting out into the box with the soldiers and and just kind of really observing what's the status quo, how do they operate today? How do we make sure that we don't show up with a thing that expects them to change and adapt around our thing? How do we make something

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Andrew Couillard (07:27)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (07:28)

that fits into how they operate today? and the test I've kind of derived around this is.

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Is is like, okay, how do you kind of you know assess product market fit in in defense, right? Not just, hey, does the innovation guy like it? Can you win a SIBR, right? Can you win some RD contract? Do you actually have product market fit with your operators? And it's if you give them your system and you give them an equivalent-sized system full of food and water and nicotine, you know, which one do they take? and you know, from from kind of that very first exercise, we've had guys try to steal our stuff, like

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Andrew Couillard (07:55)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (07:56)

we

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had Sergeant Majors trying to squirrel it away, right? we had one, you know, one sergeant say, like, no, I hey, I don't want that in my vehicle. That looks big and heavy. And then we started explaining what it does after we'd given it to a different guy. And

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Andrew Couillard (08:06)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (08:07)

and so yeah, we really just, you know, think about get in the field, you know, learn the soldier's actual needs. And like you don't win unless you're unless that E3 is picking your thing, right? You know, the innovation, you know, major, right, you gotta win over that guy too, but

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You don't really have product market fit unless you've gotten in the dirt and and understood the the real needs of these guys.

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Andrew Couillard (08:25)

And hey, you're understanding Maslow's Hard King needs the military, right? Food, water, shelter, nicotine, maybe even nicotine and zin are going up in certain cases. But like for when

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Adam Warmoth (08:30)

That's right. That's right.

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Andrew Couillard (08:33)

you're finding product market fit, who do you know who the actual end user is? Because I think there's so much nuance and understanding of there's an end user, there's a customer, they're not always the same people. The people that are the customer in government buy on behalf of the end user, they never talk to each other.

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When you're trying to find product market fit, who are you seeing as like this is the validation that we need? Is it the the E3, the E5, is it the O four, is it the O six? Is it the program manager? Like how do you think through that? Because I think for founders they

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Adam Warmoth (08:56)

Yeah, it's

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Andrew Couillard (08:57)

get so lost in like who is the end user?

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Adam Warmoth (08:59)

Yeah.

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in the the the you know I wish I had an easy answer. Just like, actually, hey, it's just this one. You can just focus on that one and turns out all this other stuff is noise. unfortunately that's not true, right? it's it's it's really all the above. I like to say that kind of in defense, like all of your customers, like the the the kind of champion the support that you get from your customers, kind of the buy-in from your customers across all these different people, right? You're your end, you know, you're

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Junior enlisted, right, your NCOs, right, your battalion brigade commanders, your division commanders, your labs, right, your appropriators on the hill, right, your senior leaders, right? Like there's all of these different stakeholders that all have a say in whether your your product's successful and whether it gets fielded. and I'd say their support multiplies, not adds. which sounds great. You're like, great, like multiplication, like great, that's exponential, right? But then you realize if there's one zero, the whole thing's a zero.

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and it's it's really kind of like ever Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (09:47)

I like that. It's multiplication, it doesn't add. Yeah, and I think that's

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why each component is so critical because if you do have a zero in there, if you find yourself in the frozen middle or something gets stuck, it's in, right? Something can yeah. That's a really

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good way to frame

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Adam Warmoth (09:58)

Exactly.

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Andrew Couillard (09:59)

it. I'm gonna steal that. I like that. but let's rewind the clock a little bit, right? I think when

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Adam Warmoth (10:01)

Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (10:03)

I first met you, you had a core innovation or an insight that you found when you were at Archer. And I think that led you to have the conviction to start this company. Can you just talk about that and like what led you to like, now I gotta start this thing?

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Adam Warmoth (10:14)

Yeah,

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yeah. The light bulb moment was really kind of the confluence of kind of the experience I'd had at Andoral and the experience I'd had at Archer and in EVTol, right? So the the light bulb moment kind of struck me, you know, Matt's off week in in 2024 and kind of have this. it was the week that Archer announced that they'd completed a 50-foot drop test of their high voltage, high-powered battery pack. And

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Andrew Couillard (10:32)

Okay. Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (10:33)

they'd stood up the the completion of their high-volume production line for those battery packs.

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and in that kind of being at the softweek environment, kind of thinking about the the challenges I'd had at Andorrol, the biggest pain I had, right, was power, right? That was the biggest limiting factor on our operations. you know, everywhere we went, like we just brought our really cool robots. You know, nowhere in our requirements document did it say we had to solve the power problem. But when we got to the field, that became the limiting factor on the effectiveness of our systems, especially supporting special operations, you know, outside of kind of a static GWAT kind of counterinsurgency environment.

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And more of an expeditionary, distributed, you know, really kind of seeing the future of like where things were headed for everyone else. That's one of the advantages of working with SOF, right? Is you get kind of that early insight to those, to those where things are going and the problems that are coming for the conventional force in five years, right? And so that had seen that problem, right? Had you know been pulling our hair out, just dealing with these problems of power where we make these really cool robots, but they just become paperweights because the generator's broken, right? And so

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Andrew Couillard (11:29)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (11:30)

and and so kind of how

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Had that problem like ruminating my head, had that announcement happen that week while I'm in Tampa at Soft Week, and realized, the technology that can solve the problems that I had in Anderol is now like mature and ready, and there's a supply chain for it. But all that innovation has been happening outside of the defense sector, right? All that innovation has been happening

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Andrew Couillard (11:48)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (11:49)

at places like Tesla, Lucid, Apple, Archer Joby. these breakthroughs in battery technology, power electronics technology, embedded compute happening in Silicon Valley, kind of completely separate from where where.

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you know, where the army buys its equipment, right, for, for, for terrestrial, you know, land-based warfare. and so saw an opportunity to kind of bring that technology to bear against that problem set. In a way that I kind of model with Palantir and Anderl did a similar thing, right? Palantir took credit card fraud algorithms and realized, hey, we can use these to find terrorists. you know,

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Andrew Couillard (12:19)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (12:19)

Andrew took self driving car technology, right, in computer vision. That was the only novel thing on the initial Century Tower was it was running in, you know, NVIDIA GPU and running in computer vision.

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Model, right? The radar wasn't there, it wasn't Android's, right? The camera wasn't Androul's. The concept of SLUTEQ, we certainly did not invent. But that addition of that advanced commercial technology that was developed completely outside of the kind of defense industrial base and bringing that through good forward-deployed engineering and good product development practices is kind of the breakthrough that Palantir applied to the network layer, you know, Android kind of applied to the compute layer, and we're now applying to the power layer.

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Andrew Couillard (12:51)

And PayPal applied to, you know, routing out different fraudsters, right? No, and I think you route

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Adam Warmoth (12:55)

That's right.

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Andrew Couillard (12:55)

you identified this tech inflection I think as such a salient time. Let's talk about the problem specifically, right? Like why is distributed power when it comes to the military so important? Why is that so important to the fight?

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Adam Warmoth (13:04)

Yeah,

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so you know what we've seen is really, you know, as we talked about that shift from kind of counterinsurgency, you know, very static environment to a you know peer-near-peer large-scale combat operations conflict. the the the big change is basically there's there's three key factors that have opened up this massive chasm of problem around power. One of those factors is there's a bunch of new electronic equipment on the battlefield.

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in that electronic equipment is getting pushed down to the lower echelons, right? It's getting pushed down to the to the company level, even the platoon level. So units that used to only go outside of the wire with a radio, where you could just bring some, you know, some batteries.

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Are now having to field their own drones, right? Their own EW, their own air defense, their own edge compute, because their ability to rely on that rear support area has been disrupted. You know, it's been jammed, the supply lines have been targeted. that rear area is now un under threat from deep strike and has been pushed back further back. and so you need your own organic capabilities at those lower echelons. And increasingly those capabilities are electronic, right? Their drones, their electronic warfare systems, their edge compute, their advanced sensors and robotics. So that

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Increased, there's been this massive increase in demand for power at the edge. At the same time, you're asking those units to be lighter, leaner, lower signature, right? More mobile. So they're leaving their generators behind. So that they're what they traditionally relied

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Andrew Couillard (14:21)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (14:23)

on for power, these like big trailer-sized generators, are being left behind because they don't fit that that concept of operations, right? The mobility impact of dragging that trailer along, the heat and noise generated.

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Andrew Couillard (14:33)

dude, they're so heavy. We would have

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right outside of our tent and it would literally be fueling basically all of our chargers inside the tent and we'd have to have somebody dedicated to filling the thing, usually at night, at the worst possible time. I feel it. I hated those generators. Everybody did.

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Adam Warmoth (14:40)

Yep. Mm-hmm. yeah. Yep.

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Yeah. So I do a bit with our head of operations, who's a Marine Field Artillery Officer. you know, when we we have a generator, we have a military generator here in the office that we use for testing and integration. It's also part of our demo, our demo loop. where I, you know. And

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Andrew Couillard (14:57)

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, th this is what you could have, yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (15:00)

I'm pointing it out, I'm saying, hey, look, the exhaust port right on top, right? You know, that's that's your heat signature. You know, see all the hearing protection required stickers all over this thing, and I go.

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Hans, you always wear your hand protection, right? And he goes, What? So Yeah. Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (15:11)

A hundred percent. Yeah, no, and that's such a good point, right? Like the heat signature

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is so important, especially as we're seeing in the modern battlefield over in Ukraine. But how do you help educate some of these military planners? Like I vividly remember being in a talk or a tactical operations center or a jock joint operations center and anything that ends in four J four N four is typically with logistics. And on a whiteboard they would always track the key things. And those are beds and heads, right? So like how many people do we have, how much food do we have, usually in days, right? In terms of days, how much water do we have and fuel?

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Adam Warmoth (15:35)

Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep.

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Right.

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Andrew Couillard (15:38)

And

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everybody's looking at the gallons of fuel. Like how do you then change that mindset to be more about kilowatts per hour rather than just fuel?

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Adam Warmoth (15:45)

Yeah, 100%. So, you know, we've this is this has been a big partially opportunity for us, right? But also partially challenge, right? So there is no class of supply that really maps well to kind of power, right? So fuel

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Andrew Couillard (15:58)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (15:58)

is a source of energy, right? But it's not the only source of energy and it's not usable as electrical energy in that form, right? It has to be converted and then it has to be distributed as power, right, which is energy over time.

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a lot of people kind of treat energy and power as synonyms, right? But they're actually like different physics concepts, right? It's like speed and velocity or like position and velocity. It's like it's a it's a rate, it's a consumption.

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and so there's kind of a lot of misunderstanding around power and energy. and and the way that was an opportunity for us was when during the first transformation and contact exercise, Third Brigade 10th Mountain went out to Honefells and they gave them a bunch of drones. And they're like, this is awesome. We're modernizing, we're transforming, we have all these drones, we're we're doing, we're doing the thing right, we're we're we're we're ready for 21st century. They get five hours into the exercise and all the drone batteries are dead.

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And and no logistician,

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Andrew Couillard (16:45)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (16:45)

you know, no S4, right, had that as their job, right? To say, like, hey, how are we charging? That's right. And in the supply system,

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Andrew Couillard (16:49)

No. Gallons of JP or J is not JPA's not gonna help there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (16:55)

a a dead battery and a full battery are treated the exact same. Like

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Andrew Couillard (16:57)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (16:58)

there's no, like, there's no, there's no nowhere in your log stat do you have kilowatt hours, right? or kilowatts, right?

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Andrew Couillard (17:02)

Totally true. Yep.

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Adam Warmoth (17:04)

And so you have your emto, you know, modified table equipment, which is like, okay, what generate power generation does these units have?

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But battalion and below, they're leaving their MTO generators behind because of this mobility and signature management problem. and so nobody was then doing the math to say, okay, well, hey, if they don't have their generators, you know, they can have as much fuel as they want.

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But if they don't have any way to convert that fuel into like rapid charging capability for these drones, these electronic warfare systems, these compute systems. So that was our first big break. That's how we got invited to JRTC so early into the company's life was, you know, Dr. Alex Miller was out there. you know, I had just met Dr. sorry General Michelle Donahue, who was the Cascom CG. they were talking and they're like, Hey, Jariot, we got a problem. Get in the get get out there with like five weeks notice. Hey, be in Alexandria in five weeks. and you guys are gonna be

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you know, aerosalting stuff into the box and we'll see if we can solve this problem. So it created a a problem in terms of just the the gap

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Andrew Couillard (17:53)

That's crazy, isn't yeah. Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (17:55)

that this just really from not just from a and from a doctrine and a material side. And so, you know, as you think about, you know, as a trying to try to pull a broader defense lesson from this, right, for across the industry, is thinking about the dot mill PF. Right. So that's doctrine, training, right? material's part of it, right? So that is material and and we build up what we think is a great product.

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that solves a material gap. But there's also the training, the doctrine, the

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the just like the understanding of of power, how to plan for it, how to use it, how to optimize it, how to manage it. and so that's that's kind of this missing gap that has been part of, you know, again, the the challenge and the opportunity is there's been a lot of customer education along the

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Andrew Couillard (18:34)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (18:34)

way here where even our material solution kind of fits between two different is it maneuver, is it sustainment?

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Andrew Couillard (18:39)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (18:40)

and so, you know, kind of talking about how you have to talk to everyone. you know my my go-to-market map has a hundred names on it, right? Just in the Army Acquisitions Enterprise. So like if we leave

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Off one of these people, right? You know, we could we could end up, you know, you know, not being successful. and exactly.

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Andrew Couillard (18:53)

Right, it's a multiplication problem, right? And I love that. And I think, you know,

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the 100 first tested this using infantry squad vehicles as charging stations, right, this spring. And a brigade commander said power generation becomes increasingly problematic as they feel technology. And to your point, drones run on batteries. If we're gonna go into drone warfare, drone dominance, all of that runs on batteries. It's not gonna run on fuel, right? And NATO's own Ukraine lessons report says that generators and are found in fuel convoys get hit. To your point, you made once you see exhaust, right, on the heat signature, that is a

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target, right? So

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Adam Warmoth (19:19)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (19:20)

what is Ukraine teaching the army about power?

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Adam Warmoth (19:22)

Yeah. and you know, there's a lot of talk also about not over rotating on those lessons learned, right? And so I think, you know, what we see is actually the way we go. We I think we we know we're not gonna be fighting a a a GWAT, you know, kind of coin war, right? We don't wanna be fighting a Ukraine war, right, which is like trench warfare effectively. You we're kinda back to World War One.

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where where like you know the army wants to fight as combined arms maneuver right we want to be able to maneuver right we want to be able to to to kind of you know tick you know seize territory right we want to be able to to move shoot communicate right those kind of base basic kind of functions of of a soldier right basic you know

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And so there's what you've seen in Ukraine is nothing can protect itself from the drone threat. And so nothing can move, right? Because it's immediately and targeted. And so you've seen

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Andrew Couillard (20:08)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (20:10)

this kind of entrenching. That is not a conflict that the US wants to find itself in. And so what we see is like, hey,

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Andrew Couillard (20:15)

Totally agree.

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Adam Warmoth (20:16)

the mobile power is actually how we how we get out of that, right? Which is if you have power on your vehicles, that allows you to then have counter UAS and countermeasures on your vehicles, right? And then that counter US allows you to.

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actually

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now counter that threat and be able to maneuver, right, and be able to to fight the type of fight that we wanna we want to fight right on on away territory. right that's that's really what where we where we want to win and where we want to excel and right, you know we want to be fighting a desert storm right not a right not not a not a counterinsurgency and not a and certainly not what we see in Ukraine. And so we

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Andrew Couillard (20:49)

Alright, so let's unpack what this is, right? Like what's

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an amphora physically? And the old wise man once said, what's in the box? Like what's in the

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box? What comes out of the box?

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Adam Warmoth (20:56)

That's right. Yeah. So

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we honestly you you kind of caught me here. We we try to get as far into our into our meetings as as possible without talking about the product.

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Andrew Couillard (21:06)

It only took us, you know, twenty, thirty minutes, so that's good, right? Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (21:08)

yep. And so the the reason is is because the product itself, you know, it doesn't fit in well into how the army kind of thinks about buying stuff today, right? They think about buying generators, which they already have,

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Andrew Couillard (21:16)

Yeah. Of course.

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Adam Warmoth (21:19)

and they think about buying batteries, which they also already have.

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Right. And so, you know, when we when we kind of if we if we pitch the product coming out, it's like, is it a battery? Well it's like, well, kind of, it has a battery. Well, is it a generator? No, it doesn't generate power. So what is this thing? so ultimately what it is is it's a kind of hybridization kit, as you can kind of think of it as, where it's kind of this universal kind of power translator.

​

that drops onto your vehicles, that drops onto your generators, that can leverage host nation grid power, can ho can leverage solar power, kind of any input at any time it can pull in, and then it's kind of storing that in like a as like a bank, right? So you're you're taking electrons in, you're storing those, and then you're you're putting electrons out. And you can do all the all the conversion, right? You can do the storage. So you're kind of decoupling your inputs from your outputs. So if you have a an unreliable input.

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Andrew Couillard (22:05)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (22:06)

That doesn't mean you have an unreliable output, right? We're cleaning that, we're storing it. if you have DC input, do you need it? Yep.

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Andrew Couillard (22:12)

So if I'm stuck on an island, right, and I don't

​

necessarily have a reliable fuel supply, I can just have solar power charge these things. And then let's say I have a

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Adam Warmoth (22:18)

Exactly.

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Andrew Couillard (22:18)

hundred ten volt requirement, I can just plug that into this as well. Yep.

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Adam Warmoth (22:21)

Yep. Yeah. If you

​

had a solar panel and a and a drone charger, right, you'd be out of luck because that solar panel is putting out you know, kind of unreliable power, right? Both in terms of just like over the course of the day and shade, right? Like it's it's kind of constantly dropping in and out. Obviously at night it's not providing anything. and then it's it's all DC power.

​

and what your drone charger needs is AC power. and so it's able to do that kind of storage conversion, and it's like, okay, great, we'll take any input and we can provide any output and we create some buffer between those. and so you know, practically though, like what that what that mostly looks like is us, you know, dropping onto vehicles, dropping onto generators. We like to say we're the most diesel-loving battery company out there. diesel is still a very energy-dense form of of moving energy around the battlefield.

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Andrew Couillard (23:03)

Dino fuel, best

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bang for buck, right, per square millimeter. Yep. Or cubic

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Adam Warmoth (23:06)

That's right.

​

Andrew Couillard (23:07)

millimeter, yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (23:08)

Yeah. So you have to bring twelve pounds of batteries to match one pound of fuel from an energy perspective.

​

but what what Amphora does is it basically optimizes the use of that fuel, which means instead of your engine running on idle, you know, inefficiently converting that energy, and if you turn the engine off, you lose all your power output. this kind of decouples that where now your engine's running at max efficiency for a short amount of time, and then you can turn it off, and your output is kind of completely uninterrupted throughout. so we've seen when we drop this onto tactical vehicles, when we drop our larger system and we pair that with a with a generator, we

​

We see 50, 60%, sometimes 70% fuel savings. and so from a from a fuel resupply perspective, massive you know, impact from a maintenance problem, also a big impact because that engine is not running 24-7. You have time to actually do the maintenance. all those generators have maintenance cycles. but if you're in the middle of a fight and you go tell your battle captain, like, hey, I'm gonna go turn this turn this generator off to do my maintenance, you know, that's not gonna happen if if that means all of your command and control is gonna

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Go down with it. And so,

​

you know, significant

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Andrew Couillard (24:07)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (24:08)

impact on maintenance, significant impact on fuel, and then significant impact on signature management, flexibility, reliability, ability to operate in host nation, and and pull in power from allied sources that might be the wrong voltage, wrong frequency. So all those benefits all kind of stack, but it's hard to describe it as like one thing, right? It's like it's not a battery, it's not a generator. So the simplest thing is like it's a hybridization kit. But even that's kind of

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Andrew Couillard (24:29)

It's a hybridization kit where you're taking in electrons in any way, shape,

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or form, whether that's burning dead dyno fuel or if it's getting it from the sun.

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You then put it into a reliable storage configuration, but then on the output side, you can plug in whatever you have, right? Whether it's just a simple iPhone charger, drone charger, 110 volt, 220, whatever you need, right? And I think that's such a unique way to look at it, right? So for this box, obviously this just like basically converting electrons, right? Taking in electrons, putting out electrons. The supply chain is still pretty tough, right? Like you're sourcing cells and silicon carbide power electronics from Tesla, Lucid, Rivian. You know,

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Adam Warmoth (25:00)

Mm-hmm.

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Andrew Couillard (25:01)

what makes the EVTAL supply chain so hard?

​

And you've often said too that you're willing to pay premium for American source product now that's coming through an executive order. Can you just talk through like the supply chain specifically with all this?

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Adam Warmoth (25:13)

Yeah,

​

so you know, again, one of the big theses of the company was was the ability to leverage an existing supply chain, right? Was to be able to

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Andrew Couillard (25:19)

Mm-hmm.

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Adam Warmoth (25:20)

to leverage the fact that there's been incredible breakthroughs and you mentioned kind of silicon carbide. It's like this magic material.

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Andrew Couillard (25:25)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (25:26)

you know, Tesla was able to cut s the size of some of their critical components by a factor of ten.

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literally in size and weight, a full order of magnitude, when they made the switch to silicon carbide. and so there's been these kind of incredible breakthroughs in battery technology, you know, power electronics technology. So and and we have a customer like we like you said that's willing to pay the premium for that for that secure supply chain. So we see our position actually as, you know, you know, beyond kind of the economic interest of chariot, you know, as a as a as a patriotic American, as hey, we can be this the start

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for the flywheel to to bring some of the stuff back on shore, right?

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Andrew Couillard (26:01)

Yeah.

​

Adam Warmoth (26:02)

where we have that higher willingness to pay for that premium secure supply chain component.

​

That can help our suppliers get their initial orders done, right? So they can build units one through a hundred funded by us. Once they're at unit number 100, okay, now they can maybe go serve the the aerospace, you know, market, right? you know, commer like commercial and consumer aerospace, right? Maybe they can go serve robotics, right, you know, market because now they've brought their cost down because they brought their volume up. That maybe gets them from 100 to 1,000. Right. Okay, now when they're at 1,000, now they can go serve broader industrial use cases, right? That gets them from a thousand to ten thousand.

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Okay, now they can go serve consumer use cases. Gets them from 10,000 to 100,000. But you kind of need that initial flywheel to get that initial cost down, to get that initial investment into scaling production, right? And not just like a subsidy,

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Andrew Couillard (26:48)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (26:49)

but a but you know, a purchase order, right? That's gonna create the competition and is gonna create the competitive pressure so that the person who wins that order, right, is is kind of perfectly positioned to scale that. and part of the investment in that is going into that initial scaling.

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Andrew Couillard (27:03)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (27:04)

which is kind of very different from an industrial-based policy that's focused on loans and focused on grants and focused on subsidies. So that's kind of the position we think we play in our in this supply chain. and it puts us in a favorable position because it gives us access to that early technology. but it also is again something we we're we're pretty proud of in terms of our position in in this broader reindustrialization movement.

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Andrew Couillard (27:25)

And you know, you've landed a major contract now with DIU. Seven point six million dollars. It's a twelve month contract to bring Amphora to Army Brigade starting this fall. So what did DIU ask for? What are the milestones you need to hit on that? And then from your perspective, what's next after that?

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Adam Warmoth (27:37)

Yeah,

​

so we're we're really excited to be partnering with with DIU on this effort. we worked with DIU very early on in the company. our first ever kind of I talked about customers stealing systems. We went up to Alaska with DIU and the 11th airborne EW guys up there literally wouldn't let it Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (27:50)

Such a beautiful place in the world, yeah, that's awesome.

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Adam Warmoth (27:52)

And and the and the soldiers there would literally would not let us take our system home. So so our first prototype we ever built is still up in Alaska with our soldiers. That's right.

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Andrew Couillard (27:58)

Pulling the product out of your hands, that's great. Yeah, that's a good indication

​

that like you're getting close to product market fit, if not nailed it, right?

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Adam Warmoth (28:03)

Exactly.

​

So that was with DIU for for their Project Artemis event. we s we supported DIU Project GI. so we've delivered systems to the seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment through that project GI effort.

​

which is a great anchor customer for us in terms of their like rapid tech adoption, but then still being able to have something that's gonna scale to the broader conventional force. and then this most recent thing with DIU is now doing some of that scaling to to the conventional force, saying, hey, let's go. We've done a lot of demonstrations and exercises.

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Where we've given, know, two systems of these guys, four systems of these guys, six systems of these guys. That's enough to validate kind of a vignette, right? And validate a concept of employment, but it's not enough to really assess the impact on that brigade or battalion's ability to accomplish its mission. Right. And so this DIU effort is really about let's go saturate a battalion or let's go saturate an entire brigade with these systems, have them actually go take them out into an extended operation and measure that impact, right? How much more effective are they in terms of lethality?

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Survivability, endurance. When their power problem, which today, if you go ask a brigade commander coming out of a CTC rotation what their biggest problem was, almost every time they're going to tell you power is one of their top, you know, one, two, or three problems. So let's say we solve that problem, right? We we we field

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Andrew Couillard (29:13)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (29:14)

them for across that brigade or battalion. What is the impact, right? How much more effective, how much more survivable is that, how much more lethal is that unit? So that's that's the big effort under this DIU contract. We've already made our

​

first deliveries through that out to to one of our one of the mobile brigades in the army and and we're gonna be kind of continuing to scale from there. that really is is kind of a proof point

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Andrew Couillard (29:35)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (29:35)

that we see one validating our technology, right? But speaking of kind of the dot mill PF piece,

​

There's really just not an understanding of okay, what is the actual right fielding plan for this kind of system into our formations? and so every

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Andrew Couillard (29:49)

yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (29:50)

single one of the systems we're fielding is collecting data during that entire exercise on how much power is coming in, how much power is going out, you know, what over over the entire exercise, right? So

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Andrew Couillard (30:00)

And why is that

​

data important? Is it for military planners to know what their consumption is? Like w what's that data being used for?

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Adam Warmoth (30:06)

Exactly. So I talked about that problem at at at out at Honefells, right? Where we got five hours into the exercise and all the drone batteries were dead. Right. So nobody had done that planning, right, to figure out okay, what kind of power generation, how much fuel, how many batteries do we need at different echelons, right? So at the company level, platoon level, and then up to a battle. What, you know, what is necessary, right? How much power is actually being consumed? is that very spiky power where it's really high peak demand but at but low average? Is it very steady? cause that all influences

​

is how you solve that in terms of how much fuel you bring, what size generator you bring, if you need to bring a generator at all, or if you can use your vehicle. So all that data is is kind of informing this formation-based power concept.

​

that that we're we're discussing with our customer, which is instead of thinking about power for each system, let's think about how do you enable power for a formation. So all of that data through

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Andrew Couillard (30:53)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (30:53)

this exercise with DIU is gonna then inform kind of a broader approach to to fielding and enabling power across our formations.

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Andrew Couillard (31:01)

I mean, that's such a great way to look at it too, because going back to the concept of you're in a joint operation center, you see the whiteboard and it's writing on there how much food do we yet spend per day, how much water per day, how much fuel per day, all that's based on historical data. And sometimes

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Adam Warmoth (31:11)

Right. That's right.

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Andrew Couillard (31:13)

it's just written down in a notebook. It's like, well, we burned 500 gallons, you know, per hour last time, so we'll probably do the same this time, right? But now this is a far more informative metric of how many kilowatts watts is a formation actually going to use, depending on the operation. So if it's heavy on the drone warfare side, they're probably gonna use more. To your point, if there's high peak.

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You have counter UAS or even counter electronic warfare system, that consumes a ton of power, right? I think it's such an interesting way to look at it. But you and I I love your comment earlier about competitive markets. So the incumbents in this space obviously are the diesel generators, you know, battery ecosystem to a degree, especially like 2590s, which my gosh, I hope somebody could solve that problem. but who

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Adam Warmoth (31:50)

Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (31:50)

do you view as your real competition in this space and the way that you're seeing the problem, which I think is unique and different?

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Adam Warmoth (31:55)

Yeah, so you know, because we kind of came in with this unique approach, you know, having having the experience, having worked with with with special operations, fielding counter US technology in twenty twenty one, kind of pre Ukraine, before everyone kind of you know certainly sort a lot of people knew but but but the a broad swath of folks kinda didn't really kind of fully appreciate, I think, the impact.

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of drone

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Andrew Couillard (32:14)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (32:15)

and counter drone technology. and so kind of had that early access, kind of earned insight, had the kind of technology background from from my experience in E VTAL. And so, you know, that kind of put us in a place where and and talked about how the the funding lines for this kind of technology didn't exist, right? The doctrine for for this kind of technology, the training for for kind of thinking about mobile power was wasn't wasn't mature.

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And so it allowed us to kind of come in as a category creator. And so we kind of see ourselves as a unique kind of player where we're not building another quadcopter that's competing against the 50 other quadcopters. And we're kind of creating an entirely new category.

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the product market fit from the end users right we've been working with the program offices also right so you know helping kind of think about how do you how do you actually field this how do you sustain it how do you have the doctrine and training around it

​

And so, you know, that's really kind of the the position we find ourselves in, is we don't really have significant competition for for like, you know, our competition is maybe Jackery's and Ecoflows, right? So we see soldiers going to Home Depot and using their rotational training credit cards to buy these like you know battery banks,

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Andrew Couillard (33:16)

Which is so crazy. Yep.

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Adam Warmoth (33:18)

not realizing that even though that has a nice sounding brand name, that the parent company of Jackery is the Hello Tech Shenzhen Corporation.

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And that the founder of Ecoflow was DJI's battery expert, and that these products are all built in Shenzhen.

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Andrew Couillard (33:29)

Mm-hmm. And DJI

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that is China all over it, written all over it, yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (33:34)

Yep. And so that's that's kind of the competition in the field that we see is is soldiers solving this problem themselves, which is w what you want our soldiers, right? That's the great thing about our our army, right? Is how we empower our soldiers and our NCOs to just go solve problems and and take the commander's intent and execute. But that's leading to filling that gap with with these you know, Chinese battery banks that don't have the same kind of capabilities as our system, right? Don't have the same organization, but critically have those supply chain concerns, not

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Andrew Couillard (33:59)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (33:59)

just from a strategic perspective, but an actual tactical

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you know, potential backhaul or other kind of like malicious injection of of of things into our into our formations. So that's that's really kind of the competition that we're most concerned about. is is is that's right.

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Andrew Couillard (34:12)

Yeah. Yeah, and that's a national security imperative, right?

​

you know, and I think what's so unique about you and how well you can talk not only on the technical side given your background and and technical expertise, but also how well you understand the government. You're also a sole founder, and that's pretty unique. Especially in hardware it's hard, defense it's even harder. Why be a solo founder? Like it was it you couldn't find the right maybe co founder to be with or you were just so convicted in your ability and what you could do, you were just like, I need to do this now.

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Adam Warmoth (34:37)

Yeah.

​

So,

​

you know, I think you kind of said it's like harder in defense. I think I actually have a different take there, which is I talked about at the beginning, you know, it kind of Andrels, you know, kind of, hey, you ha you have to have the engineering innovation and you have to have the business and the sales, right? That you can either be like a Sibber, you know, lab, right, that's just doing like living

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Andrew Couillard (34:55)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (34:56)

off of RD, or you can be the prime that never does any, you know, like real transformative, right, like, you know, generational change innovation.

​

and so, you know, I think that there's just in defense, there's an there's an imp inevitable tension between

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Andrew Couillard (35:10)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (35:11)

like engineering and sales because you have to go sell something before it exists because of how long the sales cycles are.

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Andrew Couillard (35:16)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (35:17)

and the the least favorite thing you can do to an engineer, right, is is sell something before they've built it, right? and then tell them, hey, great, I just sold this, like now we have to deliver, right?

​

and they're like, it doesn't do that. You just other can do this thing. It doesn't do, right? It doesn't do that yet. So it's like there's this natural tension, I think, between engineering and sales in defense. And so, you know, my thought was that I'll actually, you know, I can actually have a competitive advantage here by

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Andrew Couillard (35:40)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (35:40)

having by being able to kind of wrestle with that myself. and not having a kind of competing, you know, sales founder and engineering founder that are kind of have these competing priorities and competing interests, even if you're co-founders of the company and even if you kind of have the best intentions.

​

there's gonna

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Andrew Couillard (35:53)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (35:53)

be that kind of natural bias. so I felt like from coming from an engineering background, right, having a degree in engineering physics,

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Andrew Couillard (35:59)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (35:59)

a master's degree in mechanical engineering, you know, kind of spent my early career as an engineer, but then learning the business side and kind of the later half of my career, that that actually it could be a competitive advantage for us having that that single founder.

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Andrew Couillard (36:11)

Yeah, I think that's a unique perspective. Not many people think that way, but as you're thinking beyond the solo founder aspect, which I totally agree with your your logic there, how were you thinking about what team you needed to build around you? I mean you've got folks from Anderl, Tesla, Apple, Archer, you've got incredible veterans, a lot of army folks on your team. Like, how did you think through the team that you needed to build around you?

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Adam Warmoth (36:29)

Yeah,

​

so you know, there was there was a bunch of people that were kind of on my day one call list. people I've worked with in the past, right? people kind of

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Andrew Couillard (36:35)

How many people are on

​

your day one call list? I love that. Yeah. Was it like a on one

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Adam Warmoth (36:38)

Yeah. and so

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Andrew Couillard (36:40)

hand five or was like no, these are the ten people I need to to hire immediately?

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Adam Warmoth (36:44)

It was it was a probably a core list of like of like, yeah, probably you know, somewhere around, yeah, five or six.

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Andrew Couillard (36:49)

That's cool. Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (36:51)

and yeah, really for you know, some some of those people, you know, are are you know not always available, but but was fortunate to find a couple of those folks at the right time in their careers. to kinda you know, one of those was was I talked about Hans, our head of operations and finance. you know, he lived this problem as a Marine, right? And we call it a we call it a trailer, we call this the brain worm where like

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When we start talking about the product, like, wait, is it batteries?

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Andrew Couillard (37:12)

yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (37:12)

Is it a generator? Like, what is this thing? And then we talk about mission impact. And anyone who's lived that, right? Anyone who's been in that talk and and like here's a generator go down because someone forgot to fuel it, right? Anyone who's had to like, you know, take a like load a backpack full of twenty five nineties and and go carry up a hill. Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (37:29)

Yeah, they're heavy. Yeah, they're so heavy.

​

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (37:32)

They like immediately like, wow, like okay, this is what this thing does, right? I I I still don't necessarily know how to describe it, but like this is the mission impact of this thing. And so, between that, that you know, for some of the veterans who have joined our team, right, like that's been a big, you know, driver for them, for their interest. on the technology side, you know, we provide an interesting thing for people coming out of somewhere like Tesla, which is like, hey, if you're at Tesla today, right, like

​

There were entire teams of engineers whose job was like shutting down a production line for the Model S, right? Like you're kind of at this, you know, you're you're you're in race for your life against BYD, right? You know, everything's kind of driving low cost. And so it's not the early days of Tesla anymore, right? It's still a great company, but like your your your job at Tesla today is not what your job at Tesla was in 2012, right?

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Andrew Couillard (38:15)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (38:15)

and so we're also kind of for those people coming from the electric vehicle, electric aircraft industry, to say, hey, this is a chance to compound on everything you've learned over the past, you know, 10, 15 years of your career and

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Andrew Couillard (38:26)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (38:26)

and be able to like get that compounding impact of like of doubling down on on your skills and your competencies, but apply it to a completely green field opportunity, right? Which is currently being served by diesel generators and like lead acid batteries. and

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Andrew Couillard (38:38)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (38:38)

so so it's kind of this total green field in terms of like really being able to move quickly to be able

​

to like have transformational impact and be able to like, you know, because that higher kind of willingness to pay, take some big bets on some like really cool you know next gen technologies that you just can't do in automotive you know because of costs. So

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Andrew Couillard (38:55)

Yeah, and I think with that framing, right, you had you attract the right talent that wants to build in the startup world because yeah, it's high risk, it's crazy, you got this wild journey, but also you can have a tremendous impact, not

​

just

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Adam Warmoth (39:03)

Yep.

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Andrew Couillard (39:03)

on the company, but the world too. So and you know, beyond the talent side, I think what's so unique about you too is General Catalyst led your seed, and then A sixteen Z led your Series A. It was incredibly hot and you had so much like momentum around the capital rate side of this. For the aspiring founders in the audience, why do you think you were so successful in selling your vision, this company, this brand to the tier one VCs?

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Adam Warmoth (39:24)

Yeah. you know, I think that the I mean the the the the two raises were different, right? you know,

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Andrew Couillard (39:30)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (39:30)

the seed was literally me in a slide deck, and kind of just building a relationship with with Paul Kwan, with Matt Byington who was there at the time. Right.

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Andrew Couillard (39:36)

Yeah, yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (39:37)

And so so Matt, you know, you know, incredible patriot and veteran, right? who had that

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Andrew Couillard (39:40)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, he is.

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Adam Warmoth (39:42)

same kind of reaction, right? That immediate, hey, yeah, like this would would've would have loved to have this thing five years ago, ten years ago, right? so had that immediate kind of you know, demand signal from the from the

​

you know, end user, right? you know, even though that that end user was was no longer an end user. I think that's where, you know, a lot of the the the partners we like to work with are people who have veterans on the team, right? Who can who can directly speak to the operational impact of the technology. obviously something that yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (40:06)

I don't know I'm s so that was like a high conviction founder bet, right? Like they built a relationship

​

with you to like rule and take a bet. So what was different

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Adam Warmoth (40:11)

Yeah.

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Andrew Couillard (40:11)

about the A? Like how did you get them excited specifically on the A sixteen Z side?

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Adam Warmoth (40:15)

Yeah, at the A, I think it was that we'd we'd shown kind of the spark of of the big vision of this kind of power prime, right? To show like,

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Andrew Couillard (40:22)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (40:23)

hey, like we're kinda that that first product was really a systems integration play, right? And was like, hey, this is this is an opportunity to to be that category creator, right?

​

And I think when you think about where A16Z likes to place their bets, right, where Andreessen and the American Dynamism team, you hear this from from people like Trey, right, Founders Fund, right, is you know, the the returns, you know, just aren't aren't good, right? If you're if you're betting on the the second or third, you know, kind of winner in a category, right? The second or third place of a category. Yeah,

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Andrew Couillard (40:48)

Hundred percent. Yep.

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Adam Warmoth (40:50)

and so you have to bet on the winner in that category. and so we were able to show kind of a convincing pathway to, hey, we are the category winner in power. and

​

That is a large enough and kind of meaty enough category to be a compelling, you know, generational company. and so yeah, that was you know a kind of you know a little bit of the traction piece, and obviously getting that, you know, getting our first revenue of an actual sold and delivered system before we had to go out for this series A is a pretty unique position, I think we found ourselves in. I think most defense tech hardware companies.

​

don't have systems in the hands of soldiers, not for an exercise, but for like actual real world operations. where like, no, we handed this off, we put a UPS label on it, and like that is now army equipment.

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Andrew Couillard (41:29)

Right.

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Adam Warmoth (41:29)

I think that's a that's a milestone that not many companies hit before Series A.

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Andrew Couillard (41:33)

I agree. And you know, as you look at the grand vision of this company, I know at one point you said the long term ambition is the tactical vehicle itself. Like is chariot defense in the next five to ten years, five years let's just say, as as a better target, is it a battery company? Is it a power prime? Is it a vehicle company? How do you look at that?

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Adam Warmoth (41:49)

Yeah,

​

you know, I think we really want to continue to double down on our our unique skills, which is building this this power layer, right?

​

Andrew Couillard (41:55)

Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (41:56)

and and one of the reasons I didn't build this inside Andorle, right, is it is it really is a horizontal play, right? It's not it's not a single platform.

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Andrew Couillard (42:02)

Well yeah, what do you mean by horizontal play?

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Adam Warmoth (42:05)

Yeah, so it's not like it's not a single platform, right? It's not a single aircraft, right? It's not a single vehicle, right? It's not a single you know submarine, right?

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It's it's a horizontal kind of platform that enables that. which is that, and that's kind of the like how we think about that formation-based power approach as well, right? Is like thinking about power as like, okay, like how do you just amass the right amount of energy storage, power distribution, power conversion at these different levels? And that's going to be a combination of a bunch of different types of products, but all built on kind of a kind of common core set of technologies. It's all software-defined, right? High efficiency.

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you know high density and so

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That's really the vision, right? And and you know, mobility is a piece of that, right? We talked about look, we want we don't want to be in a static, you know, trench warfare environment. We want our systems

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Andrew Couillard (42:50)

Hundred percent.

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Adam Warmoth (42:51)

on the move, and we want that's what we want to enable is power on the move. but the way we can do that is working through partners, right? And so we're actually on two OEM vehicles now, where we are building our system directly into these next generation army vehicle platforms as that kind of power subsystem. so really doubling down on our expertise, building that horizontal layer that will, you know, and

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in our vision is you know every electron on the battlefield flows through chariot and is managed and orchestrated and optimized.

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Andrew Couillard (43:15)

Yeah.

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Yeah, I think that's such a great way to frame it. And Adam, thank you so much for coming on the pod. I could do this for literally hours with you. I this is so fluid. But for the last question, you is someone listening to this pod, probably an aspiring founder, maybe even considering applying to an accelerator like Black Flag, what's one piece of advice you give to the founders in the audience?

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Adam Warmoth (43:35)

Yeah, I think I think find ways to either get your own reps and sets or spend a lot of time with people who have them.

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And and when I say reps and sets on this, it's really like seeing programs succeed or fail. Right. I think Matt Steckman's one of the best in the world at this. has certainly you know a a natural talent, right? But has been has now seen so many more reps than anyone else, right? Around, hey, we're gonna place a bet on this technology and we're gonna try to see if we can turn that into a real program record. And some of those have been successful and some of those have not, right?

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And kind of from the outside in, if you don't really understand kind of this whole map of this mul multiplier factor right on all these people, a lot of the stuff that looks right.

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it's hard to distinguish from the stuff that's actually wrong, right? In terms of, hey, I'm going to the right conferences, right? I'm going to demos. But you can be doing a lot of activity and just not be ultimately working towards the thing that ultimately wins that program. and and that's not obvious. It's very, it's very, you know, based on personnel. It's based on, you know, who's gonna get promoted, right? It's gonna be based on who's who's who got the budget this year, right? It's gonna be who's retiring, right? Like

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There's a lot of very small things that all that all can add up to or multiply up to. Do you win that program or do you lose that program? And it's stuff you can't learn in a textbook.

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So my advice is like, yeah, go go get some reps and sets at at a company like, you know, and especially, you know, maybe some of these like growing companies like Chariot, right? You know, like Saronic, like Castellian, right? See those reps and sets yourself. See, you know, a program go from idea to win or lose. or, you know, I think with accelerators like Black Flag, right, you can that you can get that direct access to people who have those and who can impart those lessons. but it's stuff you

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Andrew Couillard (45:11)

Right. Yeah.

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Adam Warmoth (45:13)

have to either get yourself or you have to spend a bunch of time just marinating in

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with with with operators, with people who have those that experience, because you can't learn it in a textbook.

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Andrew Couillard (45:22)

Sage advice, Adam. Well, thank you so much not only for being a pirate founder in the best of ways, but also for sharing your time with us and hopefully inspiring founders in the audience to really take, you know, a chance on this problem too. So can't wait to see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us at the pod.

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Adam Warmoth (45:35)

Appreciate it. Yeah. Great spending time with Andrew.

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