# Inside Saronic’s $9.25B Autonomous Boat Factory | CEO Dino Mavrookas Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · 2026-09-07 Saronic co-founder and CEO Dino Mavrookas tours Molly O'Shea through the company's 420,000 sqft autonomous boat factory in Austin, Texas, arguing vertical integration of hardware and software took the 2022 startup to a $9.25B valuation. He shows the Corsair line, which can build 2,000 boats per year, and credits its linear flow with exposing bottlenecks. He boards Mirage, a 52-foot vessel with 2,500 nautical miles of range and 3,500 lbs of payload, and points to Marauder, a 180-foot ship. Port Alpha, the Brownsville shipyard on 800 acres, will add 150,000 gross tons — 1.5X U.S. capacity — and 10,000 jobs vs. China's 230-to-1 lead. He traces the $800 Amazon-raft origins, the $392 million Navy contract, and Corsair combat use in the Strait of Hormuz, including an autonomous rescue. ## Questions this episode answers ### Why is Saronic based in Austin, Texas if it's a maritime company? Dino Mavrookas says workforce was the critical reason for choosing Austin. For Corsair, the talent resembles auto manufacturing, and the city supplies it. For shipbuilding, where bottlenecks are real, Saronic invests in training, work instructions, and designing ships for manufacturability so workers don't need 15 years of experience. [9:23](https://sourcery.podhood.com/4e919f2b-c5b5-41ef-9c9f-3f3e193c2fff?t=563000) ### How many Corsairs can Saronic build per year? Dino Mavrookas says the Corsair production line being walked in the Austin factory has capacity for 2,000 Corsairs per year, and that doesn't count the second production line on the other side of the columns, which could double that and is currently used for Mirage and additional products. [7:52](https://sourcery.podhood.com/4e919f2b-c5b5-41ef-9c9f-3f3e193c2fff?t=472000) ### How has Saronic's autonomous boat been used in combat? Dino Mavrookas says Saronic announced a $392 million contract with the Navy in December of 2025, and Corsairs were actively used in the Straits of Hormuz, including the first-ever combat search and rescue done with an autonomous system, rescuing two downed Apache pilots, and an offensive attack on an Iranian port that took out an Iranian submarine. [15:16](https://sourcery.podhood.com/4e919f2b-c5b5-41ef-9c9f-3f3e193c2fff?t=916000) ### Why did China outbuild the U.S. in shipbuilding, and by how much? Dino Mavrookas says China outbuilds the U.S. 230 to one, the U.S. has 0.1% of global shipbuilding capacity, and the naval fleet is shrinking. He traces the decline to the 1981 removal of a commercial shipbuilding subsidy and a 1993 drop where the Navy's budget fell by 41%, turning shipyards into apartment complexes. [26:39](https://sourcery.podhood.com/4e919f2b-c5b5-41ef-9c9f-3f3e193c2fff?t=1599000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Intro** - [0:20] Saronic has raised $2.6B at a $9.25B valuation and won a $392M Navy contract, says CEO Dino Mavrookas - **[0:56] Factory tour** - [0:56] Saronic's 420,000 sqft Austin factory just cut over its Corsair production line a month ago and is already running at full speed - [2:25] Saronic runs 7 US locations and is building Marauder, a 180-foot fully autonomous ship, in Franklin, Louisiana - [3:45] Port Alpha: Saronic's 800-acre Brownsville shipyard will add 150,000 gross tons — 1.5x current US shipbuilding capacity - **[6:01] From garage** - [6:07] Saronic's vertical integration puts hardware engineers steps from the production floor so fixes happen same-day - [6:47] Saronic employs about 1,000 people in Austin and 1,800 total, after rescuing a closing Louisiana shipyard's workforce - [7:26] Port Alpha's Brownsville shipyard is projected to create over 10,000 jobs in its first 10 years - **[9:03] Hiring & training** - [10:01] Saronic started four years ago in a 5,000 sqft garage, telling 20 employees the future of maritime autonomy depended on them - [10:47] Inside the Corsair line: a linear flow from SpaceX's playbook makes bottlenecks visible at a glance - **[10:49] The magic** - [12:32] Saronic's Austin line can build 2,000 Corsair autonomous boats per year — and could double that - **[14:56] Deployed** - [15:23] Why a maritime company is based in landlocked Austin: Dino Mavrookas says it was all about the talent pool - [16:53] Saronic designs ships for manufacturability so workers don't need 15 years of experience to build them - **[17:40] Redundancy & testing** - [18:24] Dino Mavrookas: Saronic's software is the most advanced maritime autonomy stack in the world — controlling 2,000 boats is the hard part - **[19:47] Aboard Mirage** - [20:19] Tesla vs Chevy analogy: Dino Mavrookas argues hardware-software co-design is why integrations fail at legacy manufacturers - **[22:12] Diesel & the raft** - [25:16] Saronic Corsairs were used in the Strait of Hormuz to rescue downed pilots and destroy an Iranian submarine - **[26:08] Why ships** - [27:36] Navy SEAL veteran Dino Mavrookas on the 2005 helicopter shot down rescuing trapped SEALs — and why autonomous rescue matters - **[28:32] Port Alpha** - [29:11] Saronic builds N+1 redundancy and has logged 25,000+ test hours with Corsair across three US test sites - **[30:43] Dream job** - [31:51] The ocean breaks everything: real-time sea testing is the bottleneck autonomy simulation can't replace ## Speakers - **Molly O’Shea** (host) - **Dino Mavrookas** (guest) ## Topics Defense Manufacturing ## Mentioned Saronic (company), SpaceX (company), Corsair (product), Marauder (product), Mirage (product), Port Alpha (product), Spyglass (product) ## Transcript ### Intro **Molly O’Shea** [0:00] Today an Austin-based company announced they're building a new shipyard called Port Alpha in Brownsville. The company's announced a $3.2 billion investment building a next-gen shipyard. You raised $2.6 billion in total funding at a last valuation of $9.25B. **Dino Mavrookas** [0:16] Yep. **Molly O’Shea** [0:16] And now you have an entire fleet of boats and ships being built here. **Dino Mavrookas** [0:20] We've announced a $392 million contract with the Navy in December of 2025. We have the capacity to build 2,000 Corsairs per year. Port Alpha will initially support 850-foot ships, and we'll expand up to be able to support 1,200-foot ships. These are floating cities. Now we're going to go build the largest shipyard in the country, the most advanced shipyard in the world. We're going to bring shipbuilding back in a way that we haven't seen since World War II. ### Factory tour **Molly O’Shea** [0:56] Dino, welcome to Sourcery. **Dino Mavrookas** [0:58] Thank you, and thanks for having me. **Molly O’Shea** [1:00] Well, thanks for having me in Saronic's, Austin, Texas HQ. **Dino Mavrookas** [1:04] Yeah. I'll show you around the Corsair production line in a minute, but the real crazy part is we actually just cut over our production line to this facility about a month ago. We moved in, we have 420,000 square feet in this campus. We moved in 6, 7 months ago for the very, very first time, and we're already completely full. The production line is running at full speed. We have other products that we'll show you, but it is, it is moving all out. **Molly O’Shea** [1:31] This is crazy. So you were founded in 2022. You've raised over, you've raised $2.6 billion in total funding at a last valuation of $9.25B. **Dino Mavrookas** [1:41] Yep. **Molly O’Shea** [1:42] And now you have an entire fleet of boats and ships being built here. **Dino Mavrookas** [1:47] That'sright. And keep in mind, too, that this is only a fraction of what we have going on. We have 7 locations in the U.S., we have 2 locations internationally. Our main manufacturing hubs are Austin, Texas. For everything below, call itright around 50 feet, or our Mirage product, which we'll show you. Then we have Franklin, Louisiana, which is our second manufacturing hub, where we're actually building ships. We're building Marauder, which is a 180-foot fully autonomous ship for defense and commercial. And then we just announced Port Alpha, which is going to be the largest, most advanced shipyard, literally anywhere in the world. We're starting on an 8, about an 800-acre footprint. Just for context. **Molly O’Shea** [2:30] 800 acres? **Dino Mavrookas** [2:30] 800 acres. **Molly O’Shea** [2:32] Oh my God. **Dino Mavrookas** [2:33] Just that footprint alone will make it the largest shipyard in the country. That's our initial phase. We have the ability to expand to over 4,000 acres of that shipyard. We're going to bring online 150,000 gross tons of capacity within a few years. That's our initial build-out. That 1.5X is the United States shipbuilding capacityright now, which sits at 100,000 gross tons. And we can take that yard all the way up to 2 million plus. So this is how you get back to scaled production of ships. And a lot of things we're doing around software and autonomy, ship design, shipyard design, will enable that. So what you're going to see here, for as awesome as it is, it's a piece of what we have going on. **Molly O’Shea** [3:15] And on this Austin campus, how many buildings do you have? Because we just walked over from one huge building, and it seems like that was just a lunch hall. **Dino Mavrookas** [3:23] That's just, we have 7 buildings total. **Molly O’Shea** [3:25] Okay. **Dino Mavrookas** [3:26] We have 2 that are primarily people spaces, so think of engineers, finance, G&A. I sit in the corner, they stick me in the corner kind of thing. Very, very collaborative workspaces, conference rooms, things like that. The space that we're just in, it's not quite a lunch hall, but it really serves as a divide between our campus, where you have the rest of the, so 7 buildings total. The 4 buildings on this side are really all production, manufacturing, and industrial space. And that space in the middle is to bring both sides of those camp, the campus together. To give people a space to work together, to collaborate. Yes, grab lunch, hold all hands, do things like that. Because one of the things that we did very, very early on was really, really invest in this concept of vertical integration. It means you design the hardware, you build the software, but then you also build the physical things. You build the boats, you manufacture, you have a machine shop, you have your inventory, you have everything that's needed to produce at scale, and you bring all of that together as one. So while it's technically not one roof, it's one campus, and everybody works together. So if something's not working on the production floor, the hardware engineers areright there. **Molly O’Shea** [4:38] Yeah. **Dino Mavrookas** [4:38] And we just go grab them, look, this isn't working, let's redesign, and let's get back to speed. **Molly O’Shea** [4:43] That's crazy. So how many people are on this campus? **Dino Mavrookas** [4:46] Right around 1,000. We have about 1,800 people total across all of our locations. We have 300 to 400 in our shipyard in Louisiana alone. We started that shipyard about a year ago. There were 30 people there when we started the yard. **Molly O’Shea** [5:00] Wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [5:01] Yeah, it's pretty incredible. We actually acquired that yard, but it was closing down. So closing down, the owners were laying off their work for. **Molly O’Shea** [5:08] How do you want to deal on that? **Dino Mavrookas** [5:10] Well, it was pretty fortuitous. I mean, this was a really good yard. The owners wanted to retire. The shipbuilding capacity in that yard was going to zero. We'll talk a lot about shipbuilding capacity, but we can't afford any shipyards to go to zero. And we wanted to start building very, very quickly. So we stepped in, we retained the workforce, and we penexed the workforce in Louisiana, in Franklin, Louisiana, to be specific. And then here in Texas, which is our headquarters, we have about 1,000 people. And then Port Alpha, which I mentioned earlier, that's going to be based in Brownsville, Texas. So expanding within Texas, and that site's going to create over 10,000 jobs just in the next 10 years. **Molly O’Shea** [5:49] That's amazing. Okay, so before we walk down this way, I'm just going to ask Brett to just show a little glance of how big this space is. ### From garage **Dino Mavrookas** [6:01] And then just to follow up on how big this space is, our first space, which was not even 4 years ago, was about 5,000 square feet. So literally. **Molly O’Shea** [6:12] Oh my God. **Dino Mavrookas** [6:12] From about here to the wall, and where you see this blue tape rectangle. **Molly O’Shea** [6:17] It's like a standard-sized Austin house. **Dino Mavrookas** [6:19] That's all we had. It was, it was a, it was a garage. It was, it was literally just a garage. And I remember telling 20 people in that garage in Austin, I'm like, the future of maritime autonomyright now is dependent on what we're buildingright here in this garage. And now I just remind them, I'm like, well, it's a much bigger garage and we have many more people, but the future of maritime autonomy is still very much dependent on what we're buildingright here. **Molly O’Shea** [6:43] Wow. Okay, so as we walk through this, what are we going to be seeing? **Dino Mavrookas** [6:47] So this, thisright here is the main Corsair production line. You can see workstations, subassemblies, everything that flows into high-rate production. The top caps are over here, the holes are over here. There's steps at every single workstation. So they'll complete one step, move it to the next station, and onward in this linear flow. It makes it very easy to actually spot bottlenecks in the production line. Our head of manufacturing came out of SpaceX, he was at SpaceX for 10 years, and he always talks about building the system that builds the system, but then also very quickly identifying where the system is not working. So when you have this linear flow, like there, you can see there's actually no boat in that workstation. If we wanted to dive in, I would just go up to the folks working here and say, hey, why hasn't this boat progressed? Is there a holdup in the supply chain? Is there a part missing? Basically, my kids can walk through this production line and identify where something isn't flowing appropriately, and then start asking questions on how do you get it back to rate. That's what our leaders are doing. The team's pushing it through the production line. And all of this is focused on rate production at scale. So in just this line we're walking downright now, we can build, we have the capacity to build 2,000 Corsairs per year. **Molly O’Shea** [8:09] Oh wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [8:11] That doesn't even count the production line that's on that side of the, of the columns. So we could actually double that. Right now we're using that production line for Mirage and additional products, but that gives you a sense of scale that we're talking about here. And then as you look around, it's really just a rectangle. This is not a complicated building. It's not a really exquisite manufacturing facility. So if we needed to, and then we're talking a lot about just expanding production capacity here in the U.S., but also as we talk to our allies and partners overseas, how do we quickly stand up production internationally? You know, it's a warehouse facility. And we have, because we have the system, again, the system that builds the system, you basically have the blueprint for everything. You have the supply chain, the processes, the work instructions, the training, and you can get up and running very quickly. ### Hiring & training **Molly O’Shea** [9:03] So that's a good question. In terms of building out the talent in this facility and the ones that you're expanding to, one, how do you find people? Where are you pulling them from? And then two, with the training and the system, how does that, how do you actually train them? Like, what is the process there and how quick do they start to run the line? **Dino Mavrookas** [9:23] Yeah. So workforce is actually a critical reason why we selected Austin in the first place. Folks have asked us in the past, you know, you're a maritime company, why based in a landlocked city? And it was, it was, it really, I say that jokingly, but it's a good question. **Molly O’Shea** [9:40] It is a fair question. **Dino Mavrookas** [9:41] And the answer is it all just revolves around people. It revolves around the talent that you, you see around you. And I'll kind of bifurcate the workforce into two segments, because for Corsair, a lot of the talent exists. It's very, very similar to auto manufacturing or anything else, where you're, you're just building things. And we actually can build a lot of boats in this country, smaller vessels. When you talk about workforce for shipbuilding, that's where the real bottlenecks come in. And so as we think about creating 10,000 jobs in a shipyard,right, that's where we're investing so heavily in the training, in the work instructions, in the processes, in the infrastructure, in the design of the actual ships themselves. How do you make the ships more simple? How do you design for that manufacturability? So that you don't have to have 15 years of experience to come and build a ship. It's, we're building ships so that we can rebuild the workforce. Not saying, oh, the workforce doesn't exist, so we can't build this ship. **Molly O’Shea** [10:49] So for people who don't have full context on Saronic, which I would be very surprised if you don't at this point, many headlines a lot of the time. Can you just share, like, what the magic is behind Saronic? ### The magic **Molly O’Shea** [11:01] What are, what is so special about these boats? **Dino Mavrookas** [11:04] It's a good, I get that question so often. And it's not just one thing. Like, we could talk about the hardware and how we design the boats and how we design for autonomy and manufacturability, which drives down cost and opens up mission capability. We can talk about the software. And the software we're building isn't like any other software for the maritime autonomy market in the world, period. It's the most advanced. It's what enables the control. It's one thing to build 2,000 boats. It's another thing to actually control 2,000 boats. And it's software and autonomy that actually enables that. But the thing that really makes us special is the ability to put that all together. It's not just building one or the other. It's not, okay, we could build a lot of boats. Mastercraft can build a lot of boats. It's not just building software. It's actually doing all the integrations. It's tying it all together. It's actually doing that hardware-software co-design so that you're delivering the most advanced product to the Department of War and to our allies that's actually working and actually delivering capabilities in a wartime environment. I'll use the, I'll use a Tesla analogy here for a second. And we can sit and debate if you think Teslas are the best cars or not, but you can't really debate if they're the best autonomous cars when compared to Ford and General Motors and other things. Like, I used to use an example, and it's silly. It's like, I could pull out my phone, turn on the air condition, open the door, call my Tesla to come pick me up. And I'm like 50/50 if I get in my Chevy Tahoe and my Apple Car, Apple CarPlay connects or not. Like, there's fundamental reasons behind that. And if you're not co-designing with that hardware-software production in mind, then things aren't going to integrate and they're not going to work. It's always going to fall down at that integration layer. **Molly O’Shea** [13:04] This episode is brought to you by Brex. My favorite. You become what you spend on. And I refuse to spend my time on work that shouldn't exist. Expense reports, receipt chasing, and manual closes. The companies building what's next from Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic, Granola, and Deepgram, all made the same call. They all run on Brex. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that combines cards, expenses, and banking into a single stack with agentic finance built in. AI agents that handle expenses automatically, enforce policy before spend happens, and close your books in minutes. That's why Sourcery runs on Brex, so I can spend time on building and not busy work. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com/sourcery. That's B-R-E-X.com/S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. Bye. 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Okay, so we're nearing the end of the Corsair fleet that's currently in production. ### Deployed **Dino Mavrookas** [15:02] Yep. **Molly O’Shea** [15:02] Where do these go after they're done? **Dino Mavrookas** [15:04] So. **Molly O’Shea** [15:05] How does this flow? **Dino Mavrookas** [15:06] Right here. You'll have the finished product, the top caps will get installed, and then they'll go out that big bay doorright there. And then they get shipped out to the customers. **Molly O’Shea** [15:15] Wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [15:16] So we have Corsairs operational in use. We've announced a $392 million contract with the Navy in December of 2025. And then recently put out in the news, Corsairs, which you just saw, were actively being used in the Straits of Hormuz. Two examples that were made public were one, the Apache pilot rescue of two downed pilots, and then an offensive attack on an Iranian port, which actually took out an Iranian submarine. **Molly O’Shea** [15:47] Wow. Can you explain that? Because you served in the Navy. **Dino Mavrookas** [15:52] Yeah. **Molly O’Shea** [15:54] How, how insane is that, that you actually don't have manned ships doing that, but you, you have autonomous ships completing missions like that? **Dino Mavrookas** [16:01] Well, that's what it's all about. It's about the mission,right? We talked about the software and the autonomy and the importance of it all working together. If you aren't completing missions, you're not actually giving commanders optionality. Cool boats that can drive themselves, or autonomous platforms in general, boats, planes, whatever, you actually have to complete the mission. Like, what is the commander's intent? If you're not building for that, you're actually not delivering a capability. And then that commander is going to revert back to the resources that they have at their disposal, traditional assets, manned platforms, et cetera. The importance of switching to autonomy, again, to complete the mission, is you're actually able to complete these missions without putting people in risk, without putting people in harm's way. And that's super powerful,right? Take the Apache pilot rescue, for example. That was the first ever combat search and rescue done with an autonomous system. I can personally give you the importance of that because I lived through, I was in the Navy SEAL teams from 2004 to 2015. In 2005, there's a helicopter that was shot down while trying to rescue SEALs that were trapped behind enemy lines. So now to be able to perform those rescues without putting additional people in harm's way, and look, you might not always be able to do it with an autonomous system, but when you can, we absolutely should. ### Redundancy & testing **Molly O’Shea** [17:40] So in able to ensure that, what kind of redundancies do you build onto the ship or the boat? How do you ensure communication, bandwidth, all that is reaching? **Dino Mavrookas** [17:51] The way our engineers talk about it is always N plus one redundancy. You have to have 99.99999% confidence that the platform's going to do exactly what it says, what we say it's going to do, and what the, what the military is counting on it to do. There, there's absolutely no room for failure. And to do that, we just invest. We invest in testing. We invest in software. So going back to the hardware-software interfaces, every single piece of hardware is instrumented onto this platform. So they can tell you everything from the temperature to the oil level to how the radios are working to the bandwidth on the comms channel, literally everything. And all of that's important as you're heading into a mission. And then the testing that we invest in, we have three test sites in the U.S. We have, we're testing internationally now in our Australia and U.K. locations. And that's just at our internal test ranges. We have over 25,000 hours tested with Corsair alone. That doesn't count government test ranges and combat operations. So it's just continuously running the platforms, iterating and making them better at the speed of both heart, like modern hardware and software. **Molly O’Shea** [19:07] What have been the biggest bottlenecks there? **Dino Mavrookas** [19:11] Time on the water,right? There's only so much that you can test in simulation,right? And that's a, that's a big way to speed up development of autonomy,right? You test stuff in simulation, you get to the 80% answer, but that you can do in faster than real time. Real-time testing is by definition real-time. And so you have to be out in the ocean. You have to be dealing with waves and saltwater and all of the different elements that the ocean presents. And it's, it's a challenging environment. It's a very challenging environment. I lived in the, the ocean breaks everything. The ocean literally breaks everything. So we have to make sure that we're building extremely reliable platforms. And then this is, this is Mirage. So we can actually walk up there in a second, but it's a 52-foot version of Corsair, essentially, which Corsair's 24 feet. ### Aboard Mirage **Dino Mavrookas** [20:11] So you say, okay, it's two and a half times, two and a quarter times larger. No, it's actually 15 times larger volumetrically. **Molly O’Shea** [20:20] Oh, wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [20:20] So what that opens up is more range, more payload capacity. So Corsair goes 1,000 nautical miles with a 1,000-pound payload capacity. This will carry 3,500 pounds with a 2,500 nautical mile range. So it really opens up the mission set. This from basically where that, and this is our second one actually that we're building. We just launched the first one about a week and a half ago. That's already in sea trials, already going through the testing that we talked about. But basically from about where we're standing back is all payload capacity. It's all just open deck space. So I'll just, I'll let you use your imagination for what you could put on the back there. And then I would, I'd love to walk you up just so you can get a sense for the, the machinery and the equipment that goes into these vessels. 'Cause it really is quite complex, but our engineers like have made it so, like, it's really hard to design something simply. It's not easy, but it's simple. And that's how you get to manufacture at scale. I will ask the camera to stay down here. **Molly O’Shea** [21:27] He's going to stay down here. Right, you're going to have fun. **Dino Mavrookas** [21:30] But once you get up here, you can see, I mean. **Molly O’Shea** [21:33] Oh my God. **Dino Mavrookas** [21:34] Massive engines, fuel tank, additional payload space in the front. So this is what I was saying about deck and cargo space. You can see the top cap on this side. That is all cargo space. **Molly O’Shea** [21:48] That's wild. So do you have a big crane that takes this over here? Like, how do you do that one? **Dino Mavrookas** [21:52] We do. So we have two, we have four, actually, four overhead cranes that can be used to lift and mount. And then we have two mobile cranes that are around here somewhere. One, that blue oneright there, and then I think the other one's around the corner. So yeah, we have all the machinery to move these things very, very quickly. **Molly O’Shea** [22:11] Yeah. **Dino Mavrookas** [22:12] Through the production line. ### Diesel & the raft **Molly O’Shea** [22:13] And so you guys went with diesel. Did you try to do anything? **Dino Mavrookas** [22:18] We tried though. Like, we went all electric. We did hybrid diesel electric. Actually, our very first product was a six-foot all-electric mini jet ski. So when you think about it, I mean, six feet isn't probably even as big as that engineright there. **Molly O’Shea** [22:33] Yeah, that's huge. You can't see it. **Dino Mavrookas** [22:36] And what we learned from all-electric is you just don't get the range and the payload capacity that the military's looking for. So that platform actually became a great subscale demonstrator. And we iterated on that. We tested, we developed, we put it in front of the customer. And that's what actually, that iterative process is actually what led us to Corsair. **Molly O’Shea** [22:58] The first prototype you did, wasn't that on a raft or a dinghy or something? What was that? **Dino Mavrookas** [23:04] You, you guys. **Molly O’Shea** [23:05] I was listening to this pod you did. **Dino Mavrookas** [23:07] Yeah, you guys are, okay, so we don't technically count that as a prototype. **Molly O’Shea** [23:12] Well. **Dino Mavrookas** [23:12] But it, I guess it is. It was an $800 raft that we bought on Amazon. **Molly O’Shea** [23:17] Wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [23:18] And it was just this plastic fishing boat. And our software engineers took $30,000 worth of cameras and batteries and electronics and everything else that basically went into Spyglass, which is that six-foot mini jet ski that I was talking about. And they built out the software stack. They built out the autonomy while we were building out the hardware in parallel. And that philosophy is actually what's, is what lets us move so quickly into developing new platforms. It's why we're showing you Mirage today, why we have Marauder out in Franklin, is because a lot of our software, a lot of our autonomy translates across all of our platforms. So we're not rebuilding everything every single time we launch a new product. So that lets us move very, very quickly, keep making, making the software better and better every single day and just launching new hardware platforms. **Molly O’Shea** [24:12] Enduring global leadership demands advanced mission systems and technologies. At Applied Aerospace & Defense, they unleash the power of precision manufacturing with unmatched scale and agility. Their customers can focus on innovation, knowing their production is backed by an undeniable heritage. Applied Aerospace & Defense, engineered for the edge, trusted to deliver. Visit applied-ad.com. Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow, or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Public's AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single U.S. stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500. So you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond Generated Assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sourcery paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit deel.com/sourcery. That's D-E-E-L.com/sourcery. Did you imagine that you were going to be building ships like Marauder? Like, did you, how did the progression start? Was it just demand and? ### Why ships **Dino Mavrookas** [26:18] It was iterative. **Molly O’Shea** [26:20] Okay. **Dino Mavrookas** [26:20] It was iterative. If you, if you asked me four years ago if we would ever build ships, I would have said, no, you're crazy. That's why we're actually building Corsair. So you don't have to build ships,right? And the realization that we had what, why we needed Corsair was really around shipbuilding in general in the first place,right? China, we're in a shipbuilding crisis here in the U.S.,right? China outbuilds us 230 to one. Our naval fleet is actually shrinking, and we have 0.1% of global shipbuilding capacity. That's a nonexistent industry. And if you understand history and what has dictated naval power, it's really just the ability to build ships. So you're like, oh crap, we can't build ships. We need naval power. What can we build? And it turns out we can build a lot of boats. So we started building Corsair and said, we can scale that. We can make a lot of these. We can make them very cost-efficient, and we can deter the Chinese from crossing the Taiwan Strait. The other thing I want to highlight there is we actually started working on this before the very, very first U.S.V. strike happened in Ukraine. **Molly O’Shea** [27:28] Really? **Dino Mavrookas** [27:28] So that's a super significant moment,right? And now looking back on it and seeing what the Ukrainians have done, it's like, okay, yeah, a lot of speedboats could be very, very effective against a much larger fleet. That wasn't really obvious when we started building. And then back to your question, I'm like, okay, so how do we even get here? Well, Corsair was extremely successful. That gave us more resources to go after even bigger problems. And as we looked at the shipping industry, it was, or the shipbuilding industry, it was a lot bigger of a problem. And it, you know, in some regards, you just can't replace gross tonnage. So while we looked at Corsair as saying, okay, like how do we deter the Chinese fleet? There, there is demand. There is a need for the shipbuilding industry in general. There is a need for larger platforms, for more range, more payload capacity. And as we proved out our success, we said, yeah, you know what? We're going to go tackle that problem too. Now we're going to go build the largest shipyard in the country, the most advanced shipyard in the world. We're going to bring shipbuilding back in a way that we haven't seen since World War II. ### Port Alpha **Molly O’Shea** [28:32] So how big does this get? Are you going to build aircraft carriers? **Dino Mavrookas** [28:38] We will certainly. So Port Alpha will initially support 850-foot ships and we'll expand up to be able to support 1,200-foot ships. Those are the largest ship. These are, these are floating cities. I don't know that we'll ever build a traditional aircraft carrier. I think the hybrid fleet of the Navy moving forward looks very different. And there's companies that build traditional aircraft carriers today. What we want to do is supplement that with platforms that can scale in really large numbers. And we also want to focus on commercial shipbuilding. If you go back 45 years or so, the very first thing that happened to the U.S. shipbuilding industry was the removal of a commercial shipbuilding subsidy. This completely decimated the international commercial market for U.S. ships. And with it went supply chain workforce and everything else. Then in 1993, in the last separate and the decline of the government, of the Department of Defense budget happened. And everybody kind of focuses on that in the defense tech industry as well. It's kind of a Waterson moment, and it certainly was, but it wasn't the first Waterson moment for the shipbuilding industry. So it was that first one in 1981, followed by that second one in 1993 where the Navy's budget went down by 41%. That just took the shipbuilding industry, turned it upside down. If you look around, like shipyards turned into apartment complexes. There, there's a reason why you can go and rent an apartment at a, at a place called the Naval Yard,right? All over the country. It's 'cause they actually used to be Navy Yards. They used to be shipyards, and they just, they just shut down. So now we need to rebuild that infrastructure. We need to invest in infrastructure. We need to invest in net new capacity to get the shipbuilding industry back to where we need to. But not just building the same ships we've been building for the last hundred years, really building for the future, building for autonomy. **Molly O’Shea** [30:43] Okay. So as we walk through here the entire facilities, I have to ask you, if you didn't have your role as CEO, which job, you can choose any of these jobs in here, would you choose? ### Dream job **Dino Mavrookas** [30:58] I don't want to build the boats. **Molly O’Shea** [30:59] You don't? **Dino Mavrookas** [31:00] Yeah. No, I do. I do. I would want to build. I would want to be on the production line. I'll tell you, I actually, so I started my, this is 25, 30 years ago. I was actually an engineer. I was a hardware, I was a computer and electrical engineer in college. 9/11 was my junior year, and that's what drove me into the military. But I actually like building things. I wouldn't say I do it very much. And I do come down and spend time on the production line, and the team kind of walks me through a station. It's very handholding. **Molly O’Shea** [31:33] Really? **Dino Mavrookas** [31:33] They're like, do this, do that. **Molly O’Shea** [31:35] Wow. **Dino Mavrookas** [31:36] In their heads. **Molly O’Shea** [31:37] Do you get too excited sometimes? **Dino Mavrookas** [31:38] I love it. I love it. But I know in their heads they're thinking, please don't mess this up. 'Cause I just have to go fix it later. But it's, it's actually a lot of fun. I would want to be here building the boats. **Molly O’Shea** [31:47] That's so much fun. So do people try to stay here over the weekends? **Dino Mavrookas** [31:51] We do whatever it takes. **Molly O’Shea** [31:52] Yeah. **Dino Mavrookas** [31:52] People do stay here over the weekends. We work long hours. I tell the team, it's team and mission,right? How do we accomplish our mission and what does the team need to do that? And everybody's bought into that, but they're bought into the mission. They understand the importance of what we're working on, theurgency behind it. I mean, Corsairs are being used in a combat environmentright now. **Molly O’Shea** [32:15] It's pretty crazy, yeah. **Dino Mavrookas** [32:16] Like that's our customer. That's who we're delivering for. That's, that's not a nine to five. **Molly O’Shea** [32:23] Yeah. It's a big, big deal. Okay. So as we wrap up this portion, we're going to go head into some sit-downs with your other three co-founders. And if you haven't watched it yet, check out all those interviews. Thank you. **Dino Mavrookas** [32:36] Awesome. **Molly O’Shea** [32:37] Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sourcery.vc, where we deliver a once-a-week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sourcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. 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