Autonomous Drones Have Arrived 😎

Four-year-old autonomous drone startup Skydio has finally revealed their top secret product (and $42M in funding from a16z!). 😱

The Skydio R1 is an AI-powered autonomous drone that flies all on its own. It locks on to a subject (like yourself, going on a run) and follows along through trees and obstacles, without losing track.

Casey Neistat compared the R1's autonomous features to market leader DJI (maker of the beloved DJI Spark and Mavic Air): "It would be a little bit like comparing a Ford Model T to a Lamborghini. This isn’t a small step up, it's a quantum leap in tracking and following technology."

Marc Andreessen tweeted: "I'm temporarily breaking my Twitter break to highlight one of the most amazing tech breakthroughs I've ever seen, from Skydio." Watch the demo video of the self-flying camera in action.

As hardware gets commoditized, it's the software that matters. The company went all-in with 13 cameras (instead of sensors) for tracking.

More low key about your #selfies? There's also now a mini selfie drone that fits into your iPhone case. You're welcome. 🤗

We welcome our new robot overlords. If you're worried, you can now calculate the probability of a robot becoming your boss anytime soon. 👀

future of drones 🚁

We asked 34 customers what Viktor does for them. Not one said chatbot.

They kept using words like colleague, coworker, team member. One CEO called it the glue holding their e-commerce business together, which is a lot, but also… you see why. It lives in Slack and plugs into 3,000+ tools, so instead of jumping between tabs, you just ask for the thing. Pull Stripe against HubSpot, check Sentry alerts, spin up a campaign brief, build a landing page, send a report upstairs. It all happens there.

It has already hit top 5 on Product Hunt with 130 comments, is SOC 2 certified, and your data does not train models.

One user said it was the first time AI felt like a real coworker, which is either exciting or slightly concerning depending on your week.