Skydio

Shawn Ryan

@ShawnRyan762

In this episode, I sit down with Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of Skydio, to explore the future of autonomous drones and their transformative impact on national security, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure. From inspecting naval ships and power plants to de-escalating dangerous situations with real-time aerial awareness, Adam breaks down how AI-powered drones are saving lives and reshaping public safety. We also dive into the development of Skydio’s groundbreaking indoor tactical drone, real-world missions where drones have taken bullets instead of officers, and how this American-made tech is countering China’s dominance in the drone space. @SkydioHQ

OSINTdefender

@sentdefender

The U.S. Army is currently investigating the theft of four drones from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, this past November. A $5,000 reward is being offered for information regarding the theft of four Skydio X10D drone systems from the 326th Division Engineer Battalion Building. https://t.co/wf1Nh99ptR

DogeDesigner

@cb_doge

BREAKING: Japan has completed its first drone flight controlled directly through Starlink in an area with no mobile coverage. KDDI connected a Skydio X10 to au Starlink Direct, enabling satellite-based flight control and telemetry for disaster response. https://t.co/YG8gWsP9mh

Rick Smith

@AxonRick

I'm convinced Drone as First Responder (DFR) will become an invaluable and standard part of safe law enforcement. @PeterDiamandis spent minutes 21-29 of his podcast 👇 on some encouraging results from the field. The Orlando Police Department went live last month with eleven of our American-built Skydio drones flying out of nine rooftop docks. In their trial, a drone beat officers to the scene about a third of the time and gave dispatch useful information on a full 97 percent of calls. The drones get sharper information to officers sooner, so they can do the human part of the job even better. Officers safely see a situation before they walk into it. They know whether it's serious, minor, or a false alarm, and they match their response to what's actually there. Some people are wary now, but that was true of body cameras and TASERs too, in the community and inside law enforcement. Today almost nobody wants to give those back. When we listen to every side while we build, we get it right, and lives get saved. That happens because we aim for good policy and meet the community at the table from day one. Our core value holds: the technology serves the people doing the hard work, not the other way around.  #ProtectLife #DroneAsFirstResponder #PublicSafety #Moonshots #Abundance

helicerat

@helicerat0x

Skydio CEO - Adam Bry, on turning down DJI's 2014 acquisition offer: "The main reason we decided not to do it was because we felt like they didn't really understand the importance of autonomy and how much that was going to change who could use drones and how they could use them." three founders at seed stage. DJI found them, wanted the company. they flew to Shenzhen, met the leadership, said no to the biggest drone maker on earth 12 years later DJI can't get new models approved for sale in the US. Skydio raised at $4.4B - the only drone hardware company left from that era, he says 35 minutes on how that bet played out, from the guy who made it watch it, then read the article below on how a $200 drone does what a $20,000 film crew couldn't

Owen Gregorian

@OwenGregorian

Americans Are Raging About Autonomous Police Drones Swarming the Skies | Joe Wilkins, Futurism There’s a hot new phrase bouncing around police departments across the United States: “drone-as-first-responder.” From small-town Indiana to New York City, cops around the country are embracing autonomous surveillance drones as the latest innovation in policing. While you might hear about the occasional puppy found in the woods with a police drone, those feel-good stories provide excellent cover for their true purposes: gathering intelligence on peaceful protests, surveilling minority communities, and intimidating activists. Though drone-as-first-responder initiatives may not yet inspire the same knee-jerk opposition as Flock surveillance towers and data centers, fury is clearly growing as a more and more Americans are taking a stand against police drones. In Minneapolis, residents are speaking out against the city police department’s plan to partner with Skydio, a private defense contractor that primarily manufactures drones for military forces. Concerned citizens packed a City Council meeting to discuss the initiative on Wednesday, filling both the main council hall and a back-up overflow room, CBS reported. At the meeting, over 40 residents took the mic to explain that they don’t want Skydio drones — or any drones for that matter — in the Twin Cities. “The deployment of autonomous surveillance drones rests on the presumption that the regular people unto themselves are existential threats,” one speaker exclaimed according to local station Fox9. “But if you accept and normalize that idea that every single person could be an existential threat, then you have already stripped your own residents of any inkling of humanity.” The speaker continued, highlighting the fact that Minneapolis has a particularly grim history of police violence against Black people. “We need respect for our individuals and shared humanity,” they told city council members, “more relational work on the ground, not remote drones in the air.” That movement in Minneapolis seems to be growing following weeks of organizing by local activists. Though Minneapolis appears to the be the main battleground for anti-police drone sentiment at the moment, similar concerns have been raised in Syracuse, Detroit, and Los Vegas. At Wednesday’s council meeting, some Twin Cities residents cast local opposition to police drones as one front in the national struggle over civil liberties. One resident, for example, observed that “every” innovation in police technology is ripe for abuse, a conclusion shared by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. “We watched [federal immigration officers] come in here with drones, we watched ICE come here and violate our constitutional rights,” the resident said. “Every technology given to state and federal law enforcement has been abused.” https://t.co/kRMa1i89OL

Adam Bry

Co-founder & CEO

MIT-trained aerospace engineer who worked on autonomous drones at Google X / Project Wing before co-founding Skydio in 2014. Leads the company as CEO and is a prominent advocate for American drone manufacturing and autonomy.

Matt Donahoe

Co-founder & Chief Experience Officer

Co-founder of Skydio focused on product design and user experience, helping make the company's autonomous flight technology accessible to operators. He rounded out the founding team's aerospace and robotics expertise with design and UX craft.