Autonomy at the Edge, with Scott Sanders (CGO of Forterra)

The Flight Automation Era, with Mark Groden (CEO of Skyryse)

The U.S. military doesn’t have enough pilots—and automation may be the only way to scale airpower. At the same time, Skyryse is formally launching its new defense unit, bringing its software-defined flight system, SkyOS, into military applications. On this week’s episode of Valley of Depth, we sit down with Mark Groden, CEO of Skyryse, to unpack how the company is building a universal operating system for aircraft that can dramatically simplify flight, reduce pilot burden, and enable fully autonomous operations when needed. The goal is ambitious: turn helicopters and airplanes into flexible, optionally piloted systems that can shift between crewed and uncrewed missions—unlocking a new model for force projection, logistics, and survivability. The conversation spans the tragic accident that inspired Mark to start Skyryse, why aviation’s biggest safety problem is really a technology problem, how SkyOS works across platforms from Robinson helicopters to Black Hawks, and why defense demand for autonomy is accelerating faster than most people realize. We cover: * How SkyOS transforms aircraft into software-defined systems * Why helicopters are so difficult and dangerous to fly today * What Skyryse Defense is building for crewed, uncrewed, and autonomous missions * How optionally piloted aircraft could reshape military logistics and ISR * How Skyryse’s Series C positions the company for scale * Why the future battlefield requires simpler, more adaptable systems …and much more.   • Chapters • 00:00 – Intro 01:34 – The accident that changed Mark's life and mission 04:10 – A PhD in sensor data fusion 06:54 – The evolution of Skyryse 10:09 – Product stack 15:30 – New business unit 17:12 – Skyryse's partnership with the Army 19:39 – Why even build for humans? 21:35 – The software distribution of SkyOS 26:40 – Guinness World Record for autorotation 30:58 – Training commercial helicopter pilots with Skyryse 33:52 – Commercial picture for Skyryse 37:43 – Addressing the pilot shortage in the military 42:22 – Commercial regulations 45:39 – What certification unlocks for Skyryse 47:19 – Military regulatory process 48:53 – What Skyryse plans to do with their Series C funding 51:27 – How people's lives change if Skyryse is everywhere in 20 years 53:30 – Can you buy the Skyryse helicopter? 54:05 – What Mark does for fun when he's not building helicopters   • Show notes • Skyryse’s website — https://skyryse.com/ Skyryse’s’ socials — https://x.com/skyryse Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /   https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic’s socials  — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/   • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world’s hardest technologies. * Payload: www.payloadspace.com * Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com * Ignition: www.ignition-news.com

ARKAEA x NYSE Space & Defense March Update

Yesterday we launched our first-ever live show from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) called “The Space & Defense Market Update.” We brought together investors and analysts operating at every stage of the capital stack to stress-test what's real and what’s priced in. Capital markets are moving faster than anyone has clean answers for. Data centers in space are attracting serious money and serious skepticism in equal measure. Public market valuations are demanding a level of conviction that leaves little room for error. And NASA just rewrote its lunar roadmap while an astronaut crew prepares to fly around the Moon for the first time in fifty years. Our guests this month are: * Mike Annunziata, Founder & Managing Partner of Also Capital * Mark Danchak, Co-Founder & General Partner of General Innovation Capital Partners * Mariana Perez Mora, Director, Bank of America Equity Research We get into: * Why data centers in space will be willed into existence * What early-stage investors can see in space and defense founders that later-stage capital only appreciates once it's obvious * How public markets are actually pricing space and defense right now * The Palantir valuation framework: what you have to believe, and whether those beliefs hold * NASA's new lunar roadmap: Moon base over Gateway, crewed missions twice a year, and what it means for the commercial players already in the queue * Why Artemis II launching tomorrow is a bigger deal than most people are treating it   • Show notes • Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam [https://x.com/itsmoislam] Jack’s socials — https://x.com/JackKuhr Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic’s socials — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense

Autonomy at the Edge, with Scott Sanders (CGO of Forterra)

Scott Sanders has seen the defense tech industry from just about every angle. As a Marine officer, he watched promising capability stall somewhere between a program office and the field. As an early employee at Anduril, he helped build one of the companies that bet it could do better.   Now, as Chief Growth Officer at Forterra, he's making that same bet on autonomous ground systems, a market that's been promised for years and is only now being put to the test. In this episode of Valley of Depth, we press Scott on what's actually working, what isn't, and where the hype is running ahead of the hardware.   We get into: * Why the gap between a cool tech demo and a real defense business is wider than most founders think * What investors still fundamentally misunderstand about defense timelines and business model risk * Why most defense startups won't become primes and what the ones that do have in common * How Forterra is approaching autonomy, mesh networking, and distributed operations at the tactical edge * What it looks like to actually get capability to operators, not just into a program of record * The procurement dysfunction that everyone in the room knows about and almost no one fixes   • Chapters • 00:00 – Intro 00:50 – Sun Valley 03:14 – Scott’s time in the Philippines 09:04 – Why Scott joined Anduril 14:01 – Working with the government: then vs now 17:34 – What investors should look for in defense tech 20:27 – Forterra in 2022 vs 2026 25:12 – Forterra’s products today 26:39 – Autonomy-as-a-service model 30:13 – Hardware and software 32:36 – Commercial end users 33:52 – Why acquire mesh networking from goTenna? 37:27 – Current programs and contracts 40:55 – Fully autonomous systems in contested environments 44:30 – Hiring in a competitive defense tech industry 47:25 – How many SVDG companies could become primes? 47:52 – Exciting technologies for investors 51:46 – Forterra in 7–8 years 53:34 – What Scott does for fun   • Show notes • Forterra’s website — https://www.forterra.com/ Forterra’ socials — https://x.com/ForterraDrive= Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /   https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic’s socials  — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/   • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world’s hardest technologies. * Payload: www.payloadspace.com * Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com * Ignition: www.ignition-news.com

The Early Innings, with Mark Boggett (CEO of Seraphim)

In this episode of Valley of Depth, we sit down with Mark Boggett, CEO of Seraphim Space, to break down one of the biggest questions in the industry right now: are we still early in the space economy, or has the easy money already been made? Mark has built one of the first dedicated space-focused venture firms, before the category became institutional. We discuss how the market has evolved from uncertain capital availability to a more mature ecosystem where large-scale funding is now expected and why that shift is unlocking a new phase of growth. We cover: * Why the space economy is still in its early innings of value creation * How capital availability has transformed space investing over the last decade * Seraphim’s strategy and why they avoid launch, space travel, and lunar markets * The rise of European defense demand and the emergence of “neo-primes” * How space companies are becoming real, profitable businesses * Where the market may be overbuilt vs. underinvested * Why vertically integrated constellations remain the core opportunity * What the next phase of the space economy looks like   • Chapters • 00:00 – Intro 00:38 – What current moment are we in in the space economy? 01:33 – Mark's history with the space industry and the changes he's seen 02:50 – What prompted Mark to start taking bets on the space industry? 07:52 – Early pushback in space investing 10:27 – How do you convince investors to invest in space companies if the biggest company (SpaceX) is still not public? 13:27 – Seraphim's strategy for their funds 21:23 – Seraphim's competitive moat 24:52 – Where does Seraphim go from a founder's focused approach to a more guided one? 30:31 – IC EYE 36:34 – Space investment trends that Mark sees in Europe 41:54 – US vs Europe future investments 45:50 – Understanding American vs European aerospace company valuations 47:56 – Where are we currently overbuilt? 54:34 – Why doesn't Seraphim invest in the Moon and Mars and will this change? 01:00:00 – What Mark does for fun   • Show notes • Seraphim’s website — https://seraphim.vc/ Seraphim’s socials — https://x.com/seraphim_space Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /   https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic’s socials  — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/   • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world’s hardest technologies. * Payload: www.payloadspace.com * Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com * Ignition: www.ignition-news.com

Networks in Motion, with Brian Barritt (CTO of Aalyria)

In this episode of Valley of Depth, we dive into Aalyria’s newly announced $100 million raise at a $1.3 billion valuation with cofounder and CTO Brian Barritt and unpack why investors are betting big on the future of networks that don’t sit still. Aalyria is building two core technologies born inside Google: Spacetime, a software orchestration layer designed to manage networks in motion, and Tightbeam, a laser communications system delivering fiber-like speeds through the atmosphere. Together, they aim to solve one of the hardest infrastructure challenges in aerospace and defense: how to coordinate satellites, aircraft, drones, ships, and ground systems into a seamless “network of networks.” The conversation spans laser physics, diffraction challenges in space-to-ground links, feeder link bottlenecks in mega-constellations, and why routing data across moving infrastructure is fundamentally different than routing across fixed networks. We cover: * Why Aalyria’s $100M raise signals a shift from R&D to deployment * What “network in motion” really means and why it’s so hard * How laser communications can reach 100 gigabits per second through atmosphere * The technical challenge of Earth-to-space vs. space-to-Earth optical links * Why interoperability has been a 40-year ambition inside the DoD * How open APIs could become the connective tissue for JADC2 and beyond * What resilience and roaming look like in hybrid satellite architectures * Why optical ground stations require orchestration software to scale   • Chapters • 00:00 - Intro 00:59 – The history of Aalyria 02:47 – Aalyria's Spacetime 06:09 – Building the connective software stack that links all of Aalyria's technology together 07:12 – The non-geostationary network problem 11:12 – The rebirth of Loon Technology 14:50 – How Tightbeam ties in to Aalyria 17:21 – 100gb/s through the atmosphere 19:42 – Brian's mandate as CTO when Aalyria forms 20:37 – State of Tightbeam at formation of Aalyria 22:17 – Why can't other companies do what Spacetime does yet? 26:05 – The significance of having different architectures with different source codes talk to each other without modification 28:21 – How Aalyria integrates a new customer's network 31:05 – What is a long distance for Tightbeam and customer reaction to demos 32:48 – Who has Aalyria surprised the most with their demos? 34:28 – What has prevented the government from making a network of networks? 39:14 – Why wouldn't a space version of the Tightbeam terminal not work? 42:01 – How Aalyria is thinking about customer adopting Tightbeam 45:15 – Aalyria in the defense industry 47:05 – Aalyria's commercial aspects 48:30 – Aalyria's latest investment round 51:39 – Next milestones 53:00 – What keeps Brian up at night? 54:00 – Longterm vision for Aalyria 56:16 – What does Brian do for fun?   • Show notes • Aalyria’s website — https://www.aalyria.com/ Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic’s socials  — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/   • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world’s hardest technologies. * Payload: www.payloadspace.com [http://www.payloadspace.com] * Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com [http://www.tectonicdefense.com] * Ignition: www.ignition-news.com [http://www.ignition-news.com]