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The Airship Startup NATO is Backing · EU-Startups Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You are now listening to the EU Startups podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 0: Hello and welcome another episode of The EU Startup Podcast, as always I'm your host, Dade Senangarcia, the news editor here at EU startups.
• 0:20
  Speaker 0: today i chatted with Yane.
• 0:22
  Speaker 0: he's the CEO of the airship developer Kellu Now, Kellu's out of Finland has been around since twenty eighteen.
• 0:30
  Speaker 0: They recently came to our attention due their fifteen million funding round just raised a couple months ago.
• 0:35
  Speaker 0: now there airships are actually quite interesting because uninitiated into the history and technology, they might seem dangerous or even outdated.
• 0:46
  Speaker 0: But Yane was actually quite convincing in his arguments towards their aerial data use and even their defense uses when it comes to current geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia.
• 0:58
  Speaker 0: Now he's really able talk about not only a defence application but also environmental impact And even practical information of how an airship works how it's lifted up into the stratosphere and every day running, maintaining of such technology in hardware.
• 1:17
  Speaker 0: So I hope you're looking forward to that!
• 1:18
  Speaker 0: Hello Yanen welcome to The You Starbs Podcasts.
• 1:21
  Speaker 0: It is a pleasure to have you on.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Thank-you very much.
• 1:24
  Speaker 0: Yes no i'm looking for our chat today.
• 1:27
  Speaker 0: its not everyday we talk an autonomous air fleet airship uh, developers.
• 1:34
  Speaker 0: So it's really quite an interesting topic and I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 0: And so before we get into the questions i think It's probably best let the audience know exactly what it is that i'm talking about?
• 1:44
  Speaker 0: Who you are
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Sure!
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: My name Is Janne Hiedelaan The CEO at Gillu.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We operate persistent aerial autonomy.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We've actually had a lot of discussion That should we call these things an airships Should be called them LTA Lighted in Air drones or what should we call them.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It will give people, you know different images obviously before they see actually what we do.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: but I think airships is a good description and we want to respect also the history when it comes to aviation and use of airship as a platform.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And still today's day it is very much one of most efficient ways counteract gravity.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: We don't have anti-gravity devices, but we're able to use lifting gas To make aviation and now especially the persistent autonomy very much viable.
• 2:41
  Speaker 0: Well that's an interesting place to start I guess in the history of it all because i hear airship And I imagine a big hydrogen bomb That goes up in flames.
• 2:52
  Speaker 0: You know It has this.
• 2:53
  Speaker 0: you talk about the history?
• 2:58
  Speaker 0: criticizes the idea of it saying, Tim we discard this a hundred years ago.
• 3:03
  Speaker 0: Do you have safety worries?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Well let's get couple facts straight in that especially so airships were first... Especially when we think about the defense concept and where now operating both civilian side than defense side.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So we need to go back to French Revolutionary War In the late seventeen hundreds Where they would first use.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: They actually in a lot ways sort of predate other modes of aviation, if you will.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: When it comes to Hindenburg and the perception of explosion that wasn't even... ...the worst airship accident.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: The worst air ship accidents have actually happened to Akron and Maycon which were US Navy airships later than Hindenberg And they were using helium as a lifting gas.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: So, any aviation is dangerous and obviously Hindenburg was a tragedy when it happened but also one of the early stage where TV cameras started to be available.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It was very well documented and filmed other than other accidents.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to airships on safety... ...it wasn't actually that reason why airship were defunct or not being used.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: It was the second world war where we needed to aluminium that were used in these massive structures, that were longer than football fields.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And it took a lot of time built them and they were defunct at least on large Zeppelin scale.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: But Navy continued use airships until twenty seventeen.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So last US Navy Airship was decommissioned in twenty seventeen.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: We are founded in twenty eighteen.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: But when we take that into what we are doing, We don't have let's say other things common with the Zeppelins or Hindenburg.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: If you will than Let's Say The concept of airships using lifting gas to counteract gravity One Of the hard Things With Airship.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And There Are Multiple Really Cool Airship Companies and Startups Even Today but They're Very Few That Are Operational very few That Are Commercially Viable.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So You Have LTA Research Which Is Founded by Sergey Brin, if that name rings the bell.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: That's Google's founder with a lot of capital to invest then built now actually modern version of Zeppelin.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: so this is a rigid construction and we've had Goodyear blimps.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: people kind recognize these are made by Zeppelin Nt and they still manufacture them.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: These have a gondola and semi-rigid structure And they're able to carry people for sightseeing and in different sports events.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Then we have a smaller blimps, which are non-rigid construction where you basically use the overpressure inside the gas envelope... ...to provide rigidity to the platform.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: because if there's a very non rigid structure that provides propulsion it doesn't tend to work.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: but nobody has been able make airships mass manufacturable so like Ford's T-Motor line.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: That never happened in history where you could actually manufacture hundreds or thousands of airships, and that is mainly due to the size Where LTA research has now been built at the Palfinder One it was the old airship docks In San Jose At the Moffett Airfield And these are literally when they build the old Navy airship These huge hundreds meters long buildings because the Pathfinder one is hundred and thirty meters long, And The next version will be even larger.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So the physics actually dictate.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: your airships generally tend to be very large.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: They're more efficient in terms of the payload or the mass they can carry through that... ...and That tends to happen.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: so you have kind this upwards mass circle that happens.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: We were able to make- This was a hypothesis why we started KELLU?
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Could it benefit from that almost persistent flight capability or perpetual flight capability, because the airships were able to fly around the world when we had the Zephyllins and they did.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Could we use that?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: To make an unmanned platform much smaller by making it more economically viable?
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: but the world hadn't changed as much due to Russia's attack on Ukraine The uptake of autonomy into security and the fact that we do need to have this mass manufacturing capability in order to have scalability.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I would say, it's only kind of recent history analogy with a similar transformation than what we are now doing has been done by SpaceX which is Starlink And concept having ten thousand satellites into low-Earth orbit providing communications.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: It not really something they thought as first but were the one who made it viable.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Gell-O is starting from the hundred year old concept, actually looking at that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Why it makes sense?
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: From the first principle's perspective being efficient counteracting gravity understanding the bottlenecks which we're able to solve to enable that to be mass manufacturable and using modern technology of autonomy.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: AI hydrogen fuel cells have advanced massively And all these different components required to operate autonomy had miniaturized become more available.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But there were still hundreds of hard problems we had to solve, that's why they did it in a you know our version of Skunkworks lab which will talk about little bit more.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: but it just required quite a lot of persistence to be able to create new type of aerial vehicle thats regulatory approved and is able to operate on high wind conditions its able operating in freezing and arctic condition Now as well in a GNSS denied, electric warfare jammed conditions.
• 9:04
  Speaker 0: Okay that was quite the history lesson there but it's very expensive.
• 9:09
  Speaker 0: we covered The French Revolution all the way to SpaceX.
• 9:12
  Speaker 0: It could be its own TED Talk.
• 9:14
  Speaker 0: So you have this information here and clear your passion about it.
• 9:18
  Speaker 0: so I want hear little bit of what drew into this world.
• 9:24
  Speaker 0: airship, serial data.
• 9:26
  Speaker 0: Because you know from what I did which is a quick scan of your LinkedIn and all these things right?
• 9:31
  Speaker 0: It kind...I couldn't really see a lot of connection to that before you started with Kelly.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Well i think it's not sort of surprising.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: why am here in this company?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: My background was in tech.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I grew up on the early stage.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: we didn't have internet in the early nineties, we had bulletin boards.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: But that was their precursor of internet to be able connect and how they grow up on an early stage Internet.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: That enabled maybe look at the world a little bit differently through digital lens... How do you access information?
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: How does it solve problems with this domain?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I always tell the story that i really haven't had a real job, just been entrepreneur all my life since you know very young age and in that sense.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And we were quite successful with previous business which was to build AI enabled enterprise software.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: uh We bootstrapped that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Uh I lived in London for couple years with my family doing that then exiting that business in twenty-twenty one um Retiring four bits.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: it's just to prove That You Know...I can also stop being entrepreneur Which lasted about a year.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: But I think the primary motivation at that stage, you know to jump back there was COVID.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: The war started in Europe by Russia attacking Ukraine.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Finland In general we are from here From Eastern Finland and this is where We're based were About sixty kilometers from the Russian border And Finland has had A long history defense as well.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: That Was kind of the combination Of You Know?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: we need to contribute through technology and where Gellu had entered at that stage.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So I joined a few years later, when it was originally founded.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: they have enabled essentially the Technology to work.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: so if early-stage feasibility of hard grind or can we actually do It?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: They had evidence that well We can actually do it.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And you know i'm very much interested in solving heart technology problems.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: these days With Gello, we've already invested and done more work into the software side than it is to do hardware side.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of the autonomy is about software on AI which my comfort zone.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: but I'm also excited about learning new areas technology when comes to how C-II systems works, how radio links work How different payloads and sensors work?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And how mass manufacture at scale.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: But you know if have a fantastic team.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It's not me doing this, but we have a fantastic theme that enables us to do what we do.
• 12:18
  Speaker 0: Well you're great mouthpiece for the company clearly in your passion and so it's good to have you on.
• 12:23
  Speaker 0: And now that you've brought up is kind of a defense angle I guess It's a good time to jump into that topic because it's an interesting side Of what the company does?
• 12:31
  Speaker 0: i found That since the Russian invasion of Ukraine there has been such A push For dual use technologies.
• 12:38
  Speaker 0: right.
• 12:39
  Speaker 0: So technologies that have a defense element but also have another element to them, whether it's data analytics or what-have you.
• 12:47
  Speaker 0: So I kind of want to hear about how you personally think about building a company and building an offering that has a defense tech angle to it... But from your press materials i've read the idea is make a digital twin on earth monitor for forest fires That kinda thing.
• 13:06
  Speaker 0: so How does balance developing both uses?
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: No, that's it.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: That's a very good question.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and we started purely from the civilian side.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So that was about making making the old tsunami aerial autonomy scalable.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: so can We have airships?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: That cover Finland Europe and provide valuable data About the physical world for us to be able to solve hard problems.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Hard problems could be environment natural disasters You know degrading critical infrastructure And generally like the combination of early stage AI, when it started from chat GPT two models to GPT three.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that hard to see at the point of well there's going to be a physical world dimension off the AI?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Now literally now emerging and biggest difficulty there is that while their infrastructure they collect the physical data satellites are not sufficient.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: They aren't able provide granular level on a centimeter or millimeter level about the physical.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So can we approach it from another dimension?
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But that's still the long-term plan, and our technology is able to do sustaining habitation in Earth.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily other companies will build humanity into multiplanetary species which are pretty fantastic and inspiring.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: We're all about making life sustainable here using this alternative technology.
• 14:30
  Speaker 0: but
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: The priorities change and priorities especially Europe with defence being very underprepared, under-resourced for tens of years in Europe and NATO that the security picture changed rapidly when Russia attacked Ukraine.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: In a lot ways we are still playing catch up.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: The reason why we need dual use technology is that traditional defence works on ten year cycle.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: When it was first world war second World War It is not, you know unknown that technology gets developed very fast during warfare.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Europe hasn't had war really in that scale and now even though it's in Ukraine.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: but we feel similar as Finland felt in the Second World War defending against Russia with under-resourced.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And that's what Ukraine is really very much doing.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: They're using everything they can to innovate, discover use of drones.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: people recognize but the sense of urgency in other European countries hasn't happened.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and thats whats being done.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: where we need move from ten year development cycle into weeks or months that Ukraine does.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: In order have a credible deterrence The defence starts by having ability to defend having a credible ability to defend, and that means when you have the credibility to defend it's not worth attacking.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: So deterrence is missing because innovation in drones has happened.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: When we look at Ukraine being able use few hundred euros drone destroy million euro tank.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: That's an example of this.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Recently we've seen in Iran where US attacked Iran being able to destroy billions worth of high value radars, surveillance planes.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody reasonable made the calculation that would happen.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but world has changed through autonomy and mass manufacturing.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: in a way now actually these low cost drones are able take out at long range very expensive capabilities not just military capabilities.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: critical infrastructure part, our communication or power lines are sort of power plants and others that will be seen happening in Ukraine.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: And that kind means it's no longer a defence responsibility.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: It is the responsibility of industry society what Finland has been done very well to actually create solutions that rebuild back those credible terms.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So we play a part in that.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: We've gone through NATO's Dian Accelerator, so the Defence Innovation Accelerators of the NATO and that was designed especially for sourcing out thousands of applied companies solutions to core innovations which NATO can use to solve these problems with traditional defence cannot solve in time And again one highlight company going to phase one, where there was two thousand three hundred companies that applied.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Seventy-four were selected from those.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the fifteen companies would downselected into AIS II and we became the first ones who received rapid adoption service contract which is a framework contract with thirty-two NATO allies for kind of direct procurement against all source from us.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: our technology capability because they identified their capabilities as critical gap between satellites and ground-based sensors and drones.
• 18:21
  Speaker 0: Okay, I have to ask because we shall also reference of course your fifteen million euro funding round that you raised back in April which is indicative of all these interests but it does make me wonder about if there wasn't this kind of geopolitical tension as just a technology would still be seen as valuable and worthy of this kind of investment, research or has it been pushed forward by in large part by its defensives?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Well I think getting let's say reflection on the investment landscape is helpful there.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Looking at from government perspective you know problem sets with environment e-regulation regarding restoration of environment that had a multi-billion impact in the Finland, for example.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Understanding how to maintain our biodiversity into forest or critical infrastructure was still a problem at this stage.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: so the investments and investors were looking at impact investing environmental CO² carbon capture, carbon markets.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: A lot of these capital is now shifted into defence shifted because of the sense of urgency in a lot of ways.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Now we need to have technologies capable actually defending and building that deterrence, but also customers have shifted.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: The governments have shifted investments they're making... That's what you see with Finland.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Finland has had an economy which hasn't grown as strong other Nordics over the last twenty years.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So Finland is saving everything else right now.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: But they are investing into defence.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: So this is a reflection in the way that Gellu had very high growth and high value opportunity to push into environmental use cases, demonstrate at large scale.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: But priorities have shifted.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: so now we need to deal with defence in Europe And we have unique technology.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: thanks because of civilian use case problem sets that we were solving earlier, now we can uniquely help solve these defensive cases.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But for us this is an intermediary step going back into that infrastructure play using the autonomy in a larger scale.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: so In a lot of ways This is accelerating to pace.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: We are going through the market and how technology's maturing.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you Can take the same analogy.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: do Starlink where?
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: You know I think in a lot Of Ways Where Elon Musk started First looking from first principles perspective that well we need to decrease the cost of kilogram or tonne to orbit by having a launch capacity.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: and he was successful building that reusable launch capacity with the Falcon rockets.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Now, hey needs have a payload in order to accelerate the process.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: so let's launch satellites.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: what could be do?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Let's launch ten thousand starlings And now that is hugely profitable business because they basically revolutionized communications globally, how that's being done.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So That sort of similar analogy and the Starlings are used also in defense and resilient communication.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: They play a critical role in Ukraine's ability to defend itself.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't started originally Defense purely in mind.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: It's its sort of journey where you have your main quest And then you'll have your side quests.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: but the long-term plan like for them Is kind of big picture?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: For them is making humanity multi planetary species.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: For us, it's sustaining habitation here in Earth.
• 22:06
  Speaker 0: You've mentioned this kind of environmental aspect too to what you do which I think is important to get into as well because from whatever I read there are no emissions involved.
• 22:18
  Speaker 0: It's near silent.
• 22:20
  Speaker 0: How important is the environment impact especially when comparing it with drones?
• 22:27
  Speaker 0: helicopters, planes whatever that could be kind of doing similar work than you are.
• 22:31
  Speaker 0: How important is it to the company?
• 22:32
  Speaker 0: To making sure there's an environmental aspect for your offer?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Well these all features in technology and if we would have thousands drones which has companies with a vision they're pretty annoying.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: They look like flying spiders on their backyard.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: People get annoyed.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: We get a very positive reception because it's non-threatening.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: It kind of floats in the air, literally that is what kello means and doesn't make a sound.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: but you can use these properties to describe our capabilities in defence.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: being hard to detect target in many ways Because your silent You don't have emissions.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Being able to use hydrogen fuel cells You can see actually large-scale drone operators that are using drones in Ukraine moving into hydrogen fuel cell technology for this exact reason.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: When you don't have a thermal fingerprint because your gasoline engine is burning fuel making very loud sound, it's easy to detect the target in multiple ways.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: so these sort of properties were important for us to be scalable and also important.
• 23:54
  Speaker 0: And what's the plan?
• 23:56
  Speaker 0: Because I'm not sure how many of the airships are now in our operation, which if you have that number would be great.
• 24:03
  Speaker 0: But how large do we want to take this?
• 24:07
  Speaker 0: Is there a kind of block at some point where it says is too much or can these be scaled globally as large as they need them?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah!
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: It isn't huge numbers.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: so... Now we're manufacturing genuine airship and operating.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Just to give you an amount of, you know indication of scale.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: If we would operate Belgium We will need five airships to cover whole Belgian and we are now operating most likely the largest unmanned Airspace in Europe?
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: We cover about hundred thousand square kilometers Of one third of Finland And then a large chunk of Sweden.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: right now where we can operate on our space management is so For for Europe were launching the gen two path on this year.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: So it's the same form factor but like Nvidia going from a one hundred chips into B two hundred and be three hundred ships They become better.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I'm powerful when you know enable different things.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: That's what's happening with the genuine gen-two platforms.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: would.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: they're doing so for Europe to cover whole Europe.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for that Persistent aerial monitoring use case, too collection of the data on providing provision of security We need about five hundred airships.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: When we scale that do North America South America?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: You don't take Australia some of the friendly Asian countries we want to work with, we need about three thousand five hundred airships.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: If you put that in the historical context of airship's... In fact We operate today The largest Airship fleet in the world But there are not that many airshipes in the World as Of now.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: but this would be ridiculous concept when You take That into the airship airship world?
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: But if you compare This amount of starlings This is less complex Than a low-Earth orbit satellite.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: It's less complex to operate and it's less complicated.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: get into space.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So, so its not that unreasonable in that sense.
• 25:57
  Speaker 0: Okay Well I imagine anybody who is listening to this probably kind of screaming at themselves saying when he can ask about how it works Practically like how it looks because I imagine a lot of people kind of want to hear about the idea.
• 26:11
  Speaker 0: What does this look?
• 26:12
  Speaker 0: Like do you have a big warehouse and you just kinda let them go up, like a balloon?
• 26:18
  Speaker 0: How often are they maintained?
• 26:19
  Speaker 0: You know what is normal day kind of looked from launch-to-land
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It's very practical in some ways.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: The ground logistics is low tech And we wanted that way as
• 26:33
  Speaker 0: possible.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: One of the airships, its home is a sea container.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: So forty feet standard sea container and now you can imagine like metal box Having one person to be able do take it in and take it out.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: We do fly checks.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: we follow all the regulation that's required for unmanned operations.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: The Airship literally he's taken to start kind of their ship up surface.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: give it that gentle nudge and it will fly straight up because it doesn't understand gravity.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: It can ignore gravity in that sense, And then basically mission command and autonomy takes over.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: so we can operate the fleet of airships from single location form a different country.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: That was always built-in into the concept as well.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Most drones even today will use radio links.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: They will use Radio controls on radio links and that's limiting their fact fact.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: but how far they're able to go from the operator?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: If you take Radio Horizon, it's everything between from ten kilometers.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe the best military data links are able to get to eighty kilometers or a hundred kilometers but You would need to have very large masks that kind of radio line-of-sight.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: For us this was always built in because the flight time is so long.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: The endurance and ability to move so far Is there?
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And we want decrease amount people hours per flight hour.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So in every day and every week we would operate multiple airships from multiple bases for operations, with the intention that primary mode is always there.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit of ridicule of maritime ships but they figure it out if ship is at bottom of ocean.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: something has gone wrong.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: It should be the same way with this mode of aviation.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: To make it really persistent, and needs to be a large factor of time in the air operations.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: So that's what we are driving towards.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: so we operate as much as we can for us.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: We can And that is hard truth of aviation In general.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: when you're creating new aircraft type.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: That why takes so long and take so much money is that you need to operate it a lot in order to discover all the edge cases, and problems.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: When do we need maintenance?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: There's no field guide for airships or unmanned airship but well... You have to maintain them every thousand hours!
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: You've got to figure out how often they are needed.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And look at their wear-and-tear.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: The only way of doing this is just putting them into the air all the time on specific missions to really hard environmental conditions, including freezing conditions here in Finland.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: And now also in this defense domain they need to be under electronic warfare and jamming and spoofing which we have for free here In Finland.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: so Russia They're trying to deter Ukrainian strikes into Russian ports.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that basically bleeds in the Finland.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: It's disturbing aviation.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: it's disturbing everything with GNSS receiver That you rely on get your position.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: You know Door-dash or whatever food delivery company you use, they rely on GPS to track that where they need to go and when their going.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So in here in Eastern Finland we have a perfect test environment with really tough conditions for this kind of thing including the GNSS jamming and spoofing And thats enabled us to go fast because we can test every day.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: We can fly everyday In these harsh conditions.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Now if we operate in let's say Mediterranean That's actually quite easy.
• 30:16
  Speaker 0: Okay, well we're nearing the thirty-minute mark which is usually as long as I try to make these just because if not people will start getting antsy.
• 30:24
  Speaker 0: so and Yeah, yeah really could keep talking about this i think a lot of natural questions come up Because it's not something a lot People know anything About.
• 30:31
  Speaker 0: So I'm sure anybody listening To us also has ten or twenty questions that they wish they could ask you.
• 30:37
  Speaker 0: And I guess, I would encourage them to also kind of look into the company because it is interesting.
• 30:42
  Speaker 0: but with uh...with that in mind i think what I want to wrap on as the idea that The Company started out of a shit which is great story really for any company.
• 30:53
  Speaker 0: and now we're looking at fifteen million raised..I wanna hear-and if have my dates right?
• 30:58
  Speaker 0: That was found.
• 30:59
  Speaker 0: Yeah, so we're talking about eight years ago.
• 31:04
  Speaker 0: So where do you see the company?
• 31:05
  Speaker 0: Eight years from now You know?
• 31:07
  Speaker 0: Do you see it continuing on raising more money to see developing more airships?
• 31:13
  Speaker 0: What's what kind of a plan that you see if your take another rate year mark forward?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Well, just out of the origin story in a way that great companies are founded in garages quite often but you know The best ones are in sheds.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: But for us if You're making bold claims to be able to revolutionize aerial monitoring... ...you need to have evidence and for us That was really the skunk work story or kind Of being in place where nobody can see us We can fail in peace we can experiment And try different things and yourself mode at the early stage.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: But we appreciate that history and have a very large photo of those early days in our factory right now.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Looking eight years ahead, We've accumulated a lot of experiential knowledge on LTA autonomy The lighter-than-air technology And you know...we can scale the technology.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: There's a lot working and making that.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: three thousand five hundred air shapes operate every day all day and you know providing that data, and data logistics.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: So a lot of software problem sets.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: we are now already starting to invest into physical AI.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: so we launch as part of the round.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: We announced our AR Labs because were able to collect unique datasets about physical world And we have already done this for many years.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: That is the unique challenge For Many Of The AR Labs.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: They don't Have Any Differentiating Data Available something that nobody else literally has right now, to be able do foundational research into physical AI understanding and going from let's say... Let's predict pixels in the understanding of this world.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Why these actions are happening?
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Whether they're regarding environment or whether it is regarding critical infrastructure.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Geospatial works in many ways solving one problem at the time, so you need to create a treaty reconstruction that's metrically accurate and then measure certain things of physical world.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: You sort do an analysis based on that out-of-digital twin and then solve one problem.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: but the physical world has millions problems And through AI we're looking to solve all these problems.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: similarly as foundation language models are solving lot different problems.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It's a source of very vast knowledge that you didn't have access previously.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: You had to do a lot of work, specialization now does enabling a lot different things at scale.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: so when we think about eight years ahead That is really what we are focusing on Is that?
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: We have built the infrastructure that provides unique data set and we are custodian of that data using it responsibly For solving really hard problems regarding physical world use in AI.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: We are still looking to partner in that domain as well.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: You know, we already worked with Nvidia were using their hardware as well.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: they're doing a fantastic job In terms of building that infrastructure for AI and now we basically produce petabyte scale datasets And this is quite unique problem That we don't think that we're gonna be the only one working on these.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: there's going to be multiple different ai-labs.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you Know AMI, the Jan Le Coons company was founded for physical AI, they raised I think one billion just for seed funding.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: But we are in the same sandbox but we're solving it from a different side by building that infrastructure.
• 34:49
  Speaker 0: because Well, thank you very much for the chat Yan.
• 34:52
  Speaker 0: It's been a pleasure to have you.
• 34:53
  Speaker 0: as I said before it is not something that i've really ever talked about with anybody.
• 34:57
  Speaker 0: so uh...I think its an interesting topic and here at EU Starbs will definitely be keeping an eye on you.
• 35:02
  Speaker 0: So Thank You Very Much For Joining.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Thanks For Having Me
• 35:07
  Speaker 0: Bye.