When I talk to Blake Resnick, he’s walking through his drone startup’s newest office space in Seattle, a cavernous 50,000-square-foot facility that Resnick estimates won’t be fully installed until later in the year, potentially in November. Still, the large (and for now, largely empty) building offers the promise of a fast-growing company trying to conquer its particular industry.
The industry in question is public safety and the startup is Brinc, which sells drones to police and public agencies across the United States. The company wants to be the “DJI of the West,” as Resnick has put it, a nod to the Chinese drone maker and a sign that Resnick wants Brinc to become equally synonymous with the technology it sells.
an ex Companion Thiel – a prestigious program that funds young entrepreneurs to skip or postpone college – Resnick founded Brinc in 2017 and soon after sparked the interest of then-OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who eventually served as one of Brinc’s members. first seed investors. Since then, Brinc has enjoyed several rounds of financing and, in the last one, was valued at almost half a billion dollars, Resnick tells me.
jump launched their new product on Tuesday, a new public safety drone called the Guardian that Resnick said is “the closest thing to a police helicopter replacement the drone industry has ever produced.” Brinc claims it is “the world’s most capable 9/11 response drone” ever.
Guardian certainly comes with some formidable specifications and capabilities. The drone can fly at speeds of up to 60 mph and can sustain a flight time of 62 minutes, its creator says. It also comes equipped with thermal imaging cameras, as well as two additional 4K cameras, all with zoom capabilities. “Even from a significant altitude, a police department could read, for example, license plate details,” Resnick tells me. Plus, there’s a spotlight and a speaker louder than a police siren.
The drone’s landing station (which Brinc calls a “charging nest”) offers battery changeand can be stocked with critical safety supplies such as defibrillators, flotation devices and Narcan, all without human intervention.
Guardian also comes with a Starlink panel integrated directly into its body, making it, according to Brinc, the first public safety drone with such a capability. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, offers drone connectivity anywhere in the world. “Starlink has never been integrated into a commercially produced quadcopter before, so it gives this airframe unlimited range anywhere in the world,” Resnick tells me.
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Resnick clearly sees public safety as a huge opportunity. “There are about 20,000 police departments in the United States, 30,000 fire departments, 80,000 police and fire stations, and we think the top half of that market in the future will have a 911 response drone in a recharging nest on the roof,” he said. “It seems that we are facing a market opportunity of between 6,000 and 8,000 million dollars,” he said, evaluating the markets both in the United States and in other countries.
On that front, Brinc recently associated with the National League of Cities in a program to expand “drone as first aid” programs in communities across the country, a move sure to help foster relationships between the startup and communities that could ultimately become customers.
Additionally, Resnick believes that recent geopolitical events have worked in his company’s favor. Until recently, DJI enjoyed a unofficial monopoly in the global drone market, including in the US, where security agencies have trusted for a long time about the products of the Chinese company. However, the Trump administration recently banned prevent the entry of drone models manufactured abroad into the country, thus opening a huge potential market.
“There’s a huge need for a DJI of the West, or a leading drone manufacturer for the free world, and ultimately that’s what we want to be,” Resnick says.
