This Is Even Bigger Than You Think (Most Aren't Ready)

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The robotics revolution is advancing faster than anyone expected.

[00:00:04]>> You're talking to the robots and drones.

[00:00:06]Autonomy at scale.

[00:00:07]>> This tiny AI robotics company has built an operating system so advanced >> there's no need to actually fly the drone. The only thing you have to do is basically tell the drone what you want it to do and everything else happens autonomously by AI and by the software.

[00:00:20]>> They're now working with the biggest names in the drone and defense space. So together with Loade, we're actually making a unified control system for unmanned vehicles.

[00:00:28]>> From Loheed Martin to Andis, Redcat, and Unusual Machines, this AI platform is truly leading the way on all the advancements happening in this robotics revolution. And this is just the beginning.

[00:00:40]>> We call it the AI Commander. It's not there yet. Maybe 2, three years in the future.

[00:00:44]>> Joining me today is an AI robotics company, the CEO of Extend, Aviv Shapiro. Aviv, thank you so much for being here today to talk about just how fast this area of the market is progressing right now. About 6 months ago, we started talking about the robotics revolution and how this was really going to be the next phase of AI is taking AI and putting it in the body of something. And that's exactly what your company does all the time. So, I want you to just start out by talking about how much of this is already here.

[00:01:13]How much is already happening right now?

[00:01:15]>> This industry is moving very very fast.

[00:01:17]I sometimes call it AI at the speed of flight and that is exactly what we're doing. So essentially you know you know these robots and drones are basically tools to get something done right things you know seeing like video above the hill uh you know inspecting indoor buildings rescuing people getting you know so many things done where basically people are are are are sitting behind and and and actually avoiding physical risk. So we've been one of these companies actually for the past seven years uh really doing complex missions without taking physical risks by humans.

[00:01:47]We've deployed these drones and robots in many many places across the planet uh usually in you know defense related scenarios, security, law enforcement. So if I can send a robot or a drone instead of you know a police officer or a soldier into battle and replace him in these very very dangerous missions, this is exactly what we do. The secret sauce is how do we actually do this from remote and uh um zero training. Yeah, you are really all about that AI operating system and making the system work inside these drones and other robotics vehicles. Um, so let's talk a little bit about how much you can control with the AI operating system that you have. I think that's the advancement that's really taking this robotics revolution uh to that next level is that you're able to control a lot of machines from one human person, right?

[00:02:34]>> It all started uh about 6 years ago. I tried to be a drone race pilot. I don't know if you heard about the drone racing league. People are flying drones as as like a sporting competition. It's really, really hard. How can you fly a drone 150 or 100 miles per hour inside this very crazy race? So, we figured out, you know, as hard as it is and as fun as it is as well, we actually created a software operating system that allows anyone to be, you know, an advanced uh um um FPV pilot within minutes of training. The way we did that is instead of uh the pilot actually uh telling the drone how to do things like turn left, turn right, we actually uh created a system where the operator tells the drone what to do. Anyone basically knows how to point in space and say I want to go through this hoop.

[00:03:18]I want to fly straight. I want to go through the window and so on. And that operating system became today one of the best operating system for actually you know combining AI skills with machine autonomy and actually making autonomy very very practical in a way. And most drone companies uh today um a lot of amazing companies out there actually fly drones manually. So you you know you need to physically tell the drone turn left, turn right, go forward. Uh we're we're we're more advanced in a way that there's no need to actually fly the drone. You actually the only thing you have to do is basically tell the drone what you wanted to do and everything else happens autonomously by AI and by the software.

[00:03:55]>> That sounds incredible to think about. I want to talk about how quickly you got there. You talked about 7 years ago you started developing this thing. How quickly have you gotten to this point of really just telling a a drone what to do and it does it?

[00:04:07]>> You know, as I mentioned, starting as a gaming company, the first thing we did is is basically open the opening these leagues across the world where people can actually fly FPV drones and race in competitions. That was like the first year of the business. But what happened is we figured out that if it's so easy to fly a drone, why don't we use this technology to actually save lives? And we understood that you know drones and robots have an amazing role in uh urban warfare and especially in modern warfare as well. If you have to um you know physically do something on the ground you know walking between buildings if you have to you know look uh above the hill using a drone if I can use this technology to actually save people's lives by reducing train time and allowing them to actually do much more then this is the market I want to be in.

[00:04:46]So, as a company, we did a very strong pivot from the world of gaming to the world of security and defense. And I'm, you know, I'm happy to say and and and we've been really privileged and we had the power to save lives in many many places across the world, from Ukraine to Afghanistan to the conflicts around Israel. Nothing wrong with gaming, but as an entrepreneur, I have the power and the privilege to save lives.

[00:05:09]>> Yeah, I think there's another small company out there that kind of started in gaming and is now huge. Nvidia comes to mind when you're talking about these advancements being made in AI kind of starting from a space of gaming and then seeing what the real world applications can be. So let's talk a little bit more about the the life-saving the the use case for what the the software that you've developed the operating system that you've developed for using AI. How is that being used today? Not just in warfare like you talked about, but what does it actually look like?

[00:05:38]>> So um as as I mentioned, most most companies fly drones manually. We figured out that that requires first of all a long training time, but it also requires the operator to be in the field. So, if you're talking about warfare, it requires that soldier to be in the field geared up, you know, and and and ready to go with with a drone in his hand, with a controller in his hand.

[00:05:58]And that is really not scalable. People don't want to be there and it's and in some in most cases, it's actually dangerous to be there. So, we created a software that can actually control these drones from remote. The way we did that and the way we used AI is that instead of uh telling the drone you know how to do things, we use something called task autonomy. So imagine you want to fly a drone through a window and go inside that building. So the only thing you have to do as a drone operator is is you basically tap that window and the drone does everything by itself and goes into that building. This is what we call a task. Then you want to survey the room and look for you look for some something or someone. You basically talk to the drone and you tell them scan the room, scan the building, find something. One of the most notable things that we did is uh is actually save people in the earthquake in Turkey. We've actually sent a a team of people to actually go into these buildings and use indoor drones. So indoor drones are drones that have to work without GPS and sometimes even without communication and actually search for people. So we had AI applications that were looking for heat signatures of people in buildings. And I'm happy to say we saved some lives in in in that event. And it's made me understand as a CEO, as an entrepreneur that I think, you know, this must be the reason why we are here. If I can save even one person's life, um, you know, this is this is why we we we exist as a company.

[00:07:19]>> And we're going to dive into the details of your company a little bit more later on. There's been some huge developments again in a short period of time. Your company's been growing so much very quickly. So, we're going to get into all of that. I want to talk about the technology a little bit more and what it means maybe for this entire robotics development, the AI race that's happening right now. Back to this specific technology you mentioned, uh, making it easy to use seems like such a competitive edge for your company, and I'm sure it's something that many other drone providers, robotics companies are looking for. So, talk about that. Are you partnering and working with other companies that our investors might be familiar with?

[00:07:54]>> Of course. So, uh, this is a very big industry. You cannot do everything by yourself. So, I'll I'll I'll tell a few names. There's a company called Unusual Machines, um, amazing company out of Orlando that we actually partner with.

[00:08:04]They make uh US-made components. So, they make all almost everything that we use inside our drones like uh batteries, like electrical motors. They're they've been an amazing partner for us uh um in the US. Another example is a bit of a bigger company called Glock Martin. So, together with Gloade, we're actually making uh a unified control system for unmanned vehicles. So, I I'll explain what that what that means. You know, when you're watching TV, you sometimes have like three remotes like one for cable, one for the TV, one for your sun system. So imagine a soldier that has to fight a war with like 10 robots. Each one has a different controller. How does that work? It doesn't. Um so together with Loit Martin, we're actually creating a unified controller system. So you can actually allow one operator with one control to control everything within the ecosystem using one interface.

[00:08:53]>> Yeah, that was one of the biggest questions I had is when you're talking about this easy to use interface for a soldier or someone in the field to use.

[00:09:00]Is it a onetoone? Is it one human per machine? Are you able to as one person control multiple of these at a time?

[00:09:07]>> Yes. So, uh, traditionally one operator control controls one drone. That is what we call level one autonomy. Imagine flying a drone underneath trees, inside tunnels, you know, it's very complex.

[00:09:18]So, we invented something called AI assistance. The only thing you have to do is tell the drone, you know, what do you want to do? And it does the rest.

[00:09:24]So, that is level two. Level three was invented because we figured out I don't want to be in the field. So, uh, when you're outside like let's say 2,000 mi from from your, you know, from your mission, you cannot manually fly a drone and and you cannot even you cannot even tell it how to do things. You have to work in what we call task autonomy. You know, rescue that person, go to that building, find something, blow something, pick something up. That is level three. Between level two and three, we have about 10,000 systems uh deployed. We're very active. And now we're working on level four. Level four is what we call uh um AI pilots. So imagine, you know, you want 10 or 100 or even a thousand drones to do something for you. I want you to go to a city or a village and I want you to find a person with a with a red shirt. You know, you want to do you want a mission to be done from end to end. And this is what we call level four. You're talking to the robots and drones. You don't you don't have to even point. And that is, you know, autonomy at at uh at scale. This is what we do. Level five is where the mission is actually curated and orchestrated by AI as well. We call it the AI commander. It's not there yet. It will be ready maybe two or three years in the future. But that is the future of how we see robotics and that's you know the scale of autonomy. Yeah, this is fascinating. The the timeline that you mentioned is also what's really fascinating when you look at how quickly we've gotten from using a remote control to control a a drone manually. That stage one you talked about to now working into stage five potential in the next couple of years. That's a lot of growth in a very short time frame. As a company, you know, you're the CEO of a company. How do you stay competitive in a space where there is so much advancement happening so quickly? It feels like drone company, robotics company really has to stay at the cutting edge to find success in this kind of environment.

[00:11:12]>> So first of all, we're a bit different in this industry. We combined two very different technologies together. So obviously the world of drones and robotics, that's one end. I actually came from the world of AI and teleresence. My my previous company was acquired by Intel company called Replay.

[00:11:26]And we actually created teleresence technology. Imagine putting VR on your head and finding yourself somewhere else in the world doing things from remote.

[00:11:34]And by combining these two technologies together, we actually allowed for humans operators to actually control a team of drones and robots from far far away. Our play in this industry is the software.

[00:11:45]If I can if I can have non-rade professionals actually uh uh orchestrating a team of robots and drones at the other side of the planet, this is what we do. That software is unique to us and that software is is actually making us a bit different. If you look at the industry, there are tens of thousands of robotic companies and they're all creating um like another smaller drone, bigger drone, faster drone, you know, carrying this payload, the other payload. It's a race to the bottom and and we understand that the you know, the way to actually be there and can keep on keep on uh being competitive is is by owning the software that operating system that makes all the difference. And that's been such a trigger word for a lot of retail investors because software stocks have been struggling as there's this dialogue happening right now where people say that uh and anthropic and other AI platforms are going to do away with the need for software and operating systems.

[00:12:35]But in your specific industry uh what's your thought on that that discussion that's happening right now?

[00:12:40]>> So I can tell you that AI has sometimes negative implications and people think it's like not necessarily a good thing.

[00:12:46]I mean obviously everyone uses GPT and they like it but I can tell you for drones and robots it's amazing because AI is much more ethical. If you're talking about you know sometimes drones and robots are doing you know uh used as loitering mission weapons I can tell you that with AI these are much more ethical. They can they can think they can abort they can actually you know make decisions and make uh I would say uh quickly tasks much quicker than actually humans can react to to these types of uh scenarios. Imagine these drones and robots inside schools, in universities, in cities, actually protecting people. You know, we've seen last week what happened in Louisiana, right? Uh people got shot and killed. Uh this is exactly where drones and robots can actually fill that gap of the missing personnel. You know, you can't have a police officer or security guard everywhere. Imagine these drones inside schools actually dealing with these situations instead of humans, instead of, you know, people dying.

[00:13:41]>> Yeah. For some people, this might seem like a the sci-fi type of world to think of that being a reality, but it is almost here and this technology is developing so quickly. And part of that is because I think there's not only private companies, but also lots of different governments who see the value in this and they see the potential in the future. So, I want to talk about those contracts a little bit for your company, Extend in particular, but also just in the field. I mean, we're seeing a ton of investment going into companies just like yours who are making these kinds of advancements.

[00:14:10]>> Yeah. So we've uh we've been lucky to uh raise a significant amount of money to scale. The way we scale our companies first first and foremost in the US. This is an amazing market, a big market for us, but we're actually very global as well. And we have to be because that's the only way to to diversify the business. So we have actually five companies today across the world. We have a the biggest companies in is in the US catering the US government. H we have a company in Israel, company Latvia, in Singapore and in the UK. And we're now opening Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the UEE. It sounds a lot, I know, but this is the only way to do business in this market. I'll give you an example. A Japanese trying to sell to the US government, right? It it it doesn't work. It's all about culture.

[00:14:50]It's all about, you know, people who trust one another. So, this is why we're opening these local companies. We call them XFABs. They do uh local production like manufacturing. Like we have an an amazing factory in Tampa. So, the same thing we're now opening in Japan, in Germany, and other places across the world. Um it's also about self-reliance.

[00:15:08]Every one of the countries actually want to have everything in house and this is why we we've created these uh local entities specifically the US markets. We won some amazing programs. Uh very recently we've won a program called Acme DK. We are actually solving complex missions using a swarm of drones that also have fiber capabilities. So they they operate in in contested environment. if they're being jammed, they can continuously operate without uh any interference and can actually solve some of the biggest problems for our end user community across the US Army and the SOCOM community as well.

[00:15:42]>> Yeah, a lot of potential here for your company, a lot of interest in your company. Before we move on to the new merger that you have to talk about too, I want to talk about some other partnerships too that growth is happening internationally. You mentioned all the different companies with the different governments that are interested in what you have to offer, but there's some other familiar names in the the drone space that you're working with too. I know uh you mentioned Andis is one I think that you work with, but talk about what you do in partnership with some of these other other names out there that are very popular. Our retail investors would probably recognize these names too.

[00:16:11]>> So we we are as an operating system working with a lot of hardware companies. Onas is is manufacturing not only manufacturing but they have like 20 25 companies underneath the the you know the group and we're actually working with a lot of them to actually supply our software on their hardware. Uh for example they have a company they acquired called Centrics uh and together we're actually creating what is called an aerial defense system. So they are providing uh uh the detection of UAVs.

[00:16:38]Uh we've all seen what's happening in the Middle East in the past few months.

[00:16:42]So they recognize for example shahed UAVs and we uh intercept them. So our software actually allows um you know these these hardware providers to be much more modern and and actually have the AI capabilities of the future.

[00:16:56]Imagine like uh imagine for example an iPhone without the internet and without applications that piece of hardware you're not you're probably not going to use it. So we are exactly that enabler.

[00:17:05]So we enable these AI applications to work with other companies. Onas is an amazing example, great partnership, amazing CEO, me and Eric Brock go a long way uh and and and I believe we have an amazing future together.

[00:17:17]>> Yeah, we have quite a few viewers who are a big fan of that stock and I want to get into your stock and your company specifically too. You are just entering the US market through a a merger. Let's talk about that and why you decided to make that move as a company.

[00:17:31]>> We want to scale. We understand that our software can save lives. We've seen that in five different conflicts across the world. We want to acquire some companies around our operating system like uh company in in the space of maritime ground robotics UV companies as well. Uh so we we are in need to actually have access to the capital markets in being a public company. In addition to that we believe that our mission uh and that is to make the world safer using AI robotics supervised by humans. Our mission is actually exactly what the world needs and people would resonate with that. People want their kids to be safe in school. people want uh you know more more robotic solutions you know helping security guards and police officers. So this is why we went to into the public market. We find an we found an amazing part partner. It's basically a construction company called JFB. We are actually doing two things with them.

[00:18:17]One is we're going very strong into school security. So this company is known for building schools and we are uh a good company to actually make these schools more secure and the second thing is that we are basically building manufacturing facilities. Uh now we have today a huge manufacturing facility in Tampa. We're building more more facilities across the world and they are a perfect a perfect partner uh to actually help us with manufacturing, supply chain, production and and we found one another. It was it was a great uh love at first sight.

[00:18:47]>> Very good. Well, that that that merger is still underway right now that it's not all the way through. Right now the stock is trading under JFB Construction Holdings. It's its own stock. The goal once and if this merger is complete will be eventually to trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker XTND. Uh that is not happening yet, but the timeline could be later this year. At least that's what's been published in some holdings. So we won't talk too much about that. But I do want to talk a little bit more about what you're manufacturing. So you're a software company. You're working with all these different drone companies, Loheed Martin, different defense companies. What exactly are you producing? Is it the software itself? Is it um are you making your own drones? I want to talk a little bit more about what all your company covers.

[00:19:30]>> We've acquired several drone companies and robotic companies across the years in order to actually uh give our end users an end toend solution. So we are selling the software as you mentioned uh you know Loit Martin by the way Boston Dynamics is also using our software you know other companies as well but when it comes to the US government we are mostly selling the solution as is. So we're selling a drone control station, a drone or a swarm of drones together with that software and that is what we're manufacturing in Tampa. So imagine everything from the from the flight control itself all the way to the you know to the complete drone. We are working with companies like unusual machines uh to to you know to supply us with like the components very very important for the US government and for us to have everything made in the US by US supply chain and US manufacturers.

[00:20:16]This is uh this is our goal as a US company and we're we're great partners together to actually make that happen.

[00:20:22]>> So you're partners with all of these companies. Do you have any direct competitors or are you partnering so much with so many of these companies? I mean is there any other company that's doing as much or the same as what you guys are doing in this space?

[00:20:35]>> I know it sounds like we're doing a lot there. There are many many amazing drone companies out there. when you compare a drone to a drone. Of course, we have companies that we compete with like Skyo and Brink and Teal and Redcat, but it's all about the software that actually makes our drones and robots smarter and more capable. And I would say um um it's because that AI is advancing so strongly and we are actually that enabler. So imagine someone develops this amazing application using AI to do something with a drone or robot. They will be hosted in our drones, in our robots because this is what we do. We are we are platform we're a platform business allowing this market this ecosystem to actually grow together and being plug and play. So anyone can actually work with us and and and and many many more partnerships to come and uh in a couple of months hopefully we'll be in the market uh working with all of you investors.

[00:21:26]>> Thank you so much for sharing some really great insights today on just how rapidly this robotics revolution is advancing right now. This is something we've been talking about on this channel since late last summer. Make sure to watch this video on the first major warning about how much of a financial impact this robotics revolution can have on the entire market. You can find that video