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I've always maintained that if you had to pay for your Gopro, I don't want to see your shit.
Now that is a helluvan accurate assessment if I ever read one.
I think some firms could rebrand themselves as Vibes Venturing firms or Private Vibing firms just in time for the vibe coding fade to start deflating.
Oh it exists. For instance... https://vibecap.co/
Complete with purple gradient background and all.
They are are literally funding someone to develop infrastructure.....on the moon
speechless
Holy crap, is that site a parody?
I absolutely cannot fathom working in this space. JFC.
Ok, but like Jeff said, they're a lifestyle brand masquerading as a tech company. You should have seen what brands like Burton and Oakley were willing splash out on dealer/industry events in the heyday.
Imagine the synergies
But wait, there's more! They are funding a child labour startup.
"Is the state of manufacturing in the US really that bad that a company, backed by the most important VC firm achieving 30 million motors per year is an achievement?"
I'm not in a great position to comment on the annual global production of drone motors, but I can tell you that yes, the state of manufacturing in the US is pretty bleak.
By one measure, China's manufacturing sector accounts for roughly 26% of their GDP, Japan is at 25%, Germany is 18%, but in the US that share is only 9% of GDP and continuing to trend downward annually, The numbers are extra depressing if you look at the decreasing share of advanced manufacturing in the US.
A not insignificant share of domestic manufacturing here is made by prison inmates earning a dollar an hour or less, and complex drone motors are exactly the sort of thing that America's current manufacturing base is making the least of. But if you want a gas powered pickup truck*, coal, or a 2x4, we've got you covered.
So if Jeff's guesstimate is even close, and this startup wants to be producing 10-15% of the current drone motor market within 4 years, and they're able to do it, that would be a really big deal for the US.
*Bad news about that American made gas-powered pickup: less than half of the components in a Ford vehicle are actually manufactured in the US, between 13% and 46% depending on the model. It's even less for GM, between 2% and 39%.**
**So, it's actually even lower than that. Those numbers come from the American Automotive Labeling Act (AALA) list, a government index that was created after the the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement as a way to track the cumulative impact of that policy before the rollout of NAFTA in 1994, which opened the US to Mexican auto manufacturing. So when the index says "Made in America," it isn't distinguishing between vehicles or components that were made in Canada or the United States. They all get lumped together as "Made in America" for the purposes of the index.
Funny coincidence, few days ago a friend shared that he was offered a position in a top F1 team and his comment was that while it sounds interesting he prefers to keep designing drones from home :D
i don’t remember where i read it, but ukraine uses about 10 fpv drones per killed russian per day currently, that’s about 10-15k drones a day, times 4 motors.
I was reading earlier today that Ukraine has also started producing their own electric motors for drones.
Drone != quadrocopter.
FWIW regarding production, I thought about it some more. Making the stator is easy. Stamp some sheet metal, injection mold isolations and wind the thing with copper wire.
Decoupling magnet production from China is the hard part. Regardless of how many motors we produce, all the magnets for them are coming from China.
That's the reason why automotive makers are starting to make excited rotor motors where they replace magnets with winding on the rotor (besides other performance advantages). This works for big motors (drive motors for electric cars) and even there contacting the rotor is the hard part. It doesn't work for drone motors.
show me the non quadrocopter fpv drones they use in combination with an explosive then. afaik the most drones they use (bomber drones, fpv and the ultrafast ones against shaheds) use at least 4 or more motors. only the loitering types and the long range ones have less. therefore, they use a huge ass amount of motors per day, which was my point
A drone is any kind of remote controlled aircraft. A quadrocopter is one of them. You can also have a manned quadrocopter if you'd like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_warfare
As you can see there are more classic airplane type aircraft shown in this article than there are "quadrocopter" types. Furthermore if you need to fly fairly long distance (ideally a few kilometers or more), need to be fast and at the end of the day don't need to be particularly agile, it makes ALL the sense in the world to go for an airplane type aircraft with lifting wings over a quadrocopter. It will be faster and will have more load carrying capacity while also using a lot less power to do so (thus the propulsion system is lighter and leaves more space for payload). Plus you're using less of the valuable resources (you know... Motors and batteries if electrically driven).
As to what Ukrainians are using, a quick image search will show you the breadth of options...
Note that Orson Scott Card (who wrote Ender's Game, about using child soldiers to fight aliens) turned out to be one of these neo fascists like the Dilbert guy. You can bet that the guys for that VC are all about deregulation...
RE: Magnets - something I broadly agree with you on. (china owns the market)
As to the future, I know the American Dynamism team at a16z, along with other VCs, has been circling this general problem: rebuilding domestic capacity around critical minerals, magnets, motors, defense supply chains, and industrial manufacturing. A16z wrote directly about the critical minerals side last year in It’s Time to Mine (linked below), and you’re also seeing magnet-specific startups going after the downstream bottleneck. Vulcan Elements, for example, announced a $1B rare earth magnet facility in North Carolina, partly backed by the Pentagon.
I know y'all hate it, but the reason I keep referencing a16z is because they are one of the few true mega-platform venture firms (which is very new, btw). It used to be insane if a VC had $500M under management. To go where they've gone is crazy. For instance, Reuters reported earlier this year that they had more than $90B in AUM after raising another $15B across new funds. That is an absurd amount of private venture capital. So when they decide a category matters, especially one that requires serious capital formation, they have enough money, network, and political/industrial gravity to help make a real dent.
That does not mean they can magically solve mining, refining, magnets, or motors. Those are super hard, physical-world problems with permitting, capex, offtake, China dependency, and execution risk everywhere. But it does mean serious capital is moving toward the problem.
Links
Essay https://a16z.com/its-time-to-mine-securing-critical-minerals/
Magnet startup https://www.reuters.com/business/rare-earth-magnet-startup-vulcan-elements-build-1-billion-north-carolina-plant-2025-11-18/)
Their investment list: https://a16z.com/investment-list/
There's more to that Vulcan investment... https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-ho…
It's obvious Trump & co are doing oodles of gross stuff. But unless this is just a money grab that will go nowhere, they are still trying to solve a problem. And it is a problem. Recently (tariff wars) we were unable to buy magnets for our products because the Chinese government had to confirm the release of them for every customer. You can imagine the burecrautic gridlock that caused. But buying complete rotors or complete motors? Not a problem. Just to ensure more margin stayed in China.
The situation has since gotten better and you can again buy raw magnets without much of a problem, but the underlying issue persists. The world is fully dependant on China for anything related to electric motors. While the situation with other industries is not as dire (rare earth materials are the extreme of the extremes), manufacturing overall is dominated by them and as I see it, the world is turning against it, more and more, with small steps. Because we are finally realising what that means.
@jeff.brines yeah, obviously I'm not a fan of Marc given the writings (network states) and the impact it would have on the little people, but credit where credit is due, they would not be in a position they are if they weren't doing something "right". Not necessarily morally right, but right given the market conditions. When it came to my original criticism, I was more surprised at the numbers (30 million per year) which just doesn't seem right at first glance for a high profile project. But I do come from an automotive electric motor manufacturing background, so to me it doesn't seem that hard given my surroundings. Magnets plus the state in the US probably changes things a lot...
Yeah, I was stunned at how on-the-nose the naming was...
I have a friend who works high up at one of the big five Defense firms and he said his firm is under increasing pressure from the DOD for all of their products, components, required maintenance parts and supplies, and the rest of the supply chain to come from within the US, so as not to be dependent on or beholden to foreign manufacturing, especially in regards to potential geopolitical adversaries. To be clear, they aren't able to meet 100% of their needs entirely within the US, but the planes he was talking about featured a shockingly high proportion of US-made components and parts.
That knocked my socks off for two reasons. First, that's a pretty smart policy from a defense standpoint, and I didn't realize there were still people high up in government making thoughtful/holistic macro decisions. Second, I was blown away at how complicated and comprehensive that supply chain must be compared to any other category of products manufactured in the US. As I mentioned, even modern US cars aren't truly made in the US, they're mostly assembled in the US from components that were built elsewhere. I imagine that singular DOD mandate for a closed loop domestic supply chain is probably responsible for a large chunk of the manufacturing capacity that we still have, especially when it comes to advanced manufacturing.
I'm not a big fan of the DOD or weapons manufacturers, but it actually made me happy to know that SOMEONE in the government is thinking strategically and gives a shit about maintaining our domestic manufacturing capacity. There are a million and one economic, social, and political reasons why offshoring everything we buy hasn't been a great long-term strategy for the country, even if it makes next quarter's line go up in the C-suite.
After my macro professor finished going on and on endlessly cataloguing the economic benefits of defense spending and war, he'd always bring it back home by asking "What if we could spend money like this on education, health, and everyday goods and services instead of only spending it on bullets, tanks, and killing people?" In the US, we can have good macro economic policy, but only if it's going to pay for bombs and soldiers.
More info if you're curious, here's an action plan from Biden's Executive order from 2022: https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/24/2002944158/-1/-1/1/DOD-EO-14017-REPORT-SECURING-DEFENSE-CRITICAL-SUPPLY-CHAINS.PDF
"Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act of 2025": https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/257
Domestic manufacturing/sourcing has been been a requirement (for some products, at least) in DoD procurement since the Berry Amendment of 1941.
Why I love this forum. Learn something new every day.
This is one reason I tend to roll my eyes when people talk about slashing the U.S. defense budget. I'm not saying every defense program is a good use of money, spending 2 billion on one jet can be debated, but defense and aerospace spending support more tier 2&3 manufacturing than most people realize.
Sure, you might work at a company that doesn't make defense products, but the reason you can get raw materials, machine service, coatings, or manufacturing supplies locally may be because a handful of ma&pa shops in your area stay in business making aerospace and defense parts. Those shops help sustain the workforce, equipment, and supplier networks that many other industries rely on.
Yeah it would be nice if those shops helped make people smarter or healthier instead of weapons, but the defense industry has spent decades building this system to keep the tap running. Why have only 2 senators fighting for your jet program when you can have 100?
In my business making ski trail grooming equipment we have to comply with an act called the Buy American Act because we sell to the Forest Service a lot. It's like the Berry Amendment but it details purchasing guidelines for federal agencies or organizations using federal money that aren't the military.
Congress has a challenge to write a laws that are broad enough to have impact while being specific enough to influence business practices. At the same time my business is strongly influenced by the Buy American Act when the verbiage of the law seems focused on larger projects like building bridges and such.
As one example, for the size of my business we use a lot of hardware like screws, bolts, washers, nuts etc. From a certain reading of the BAA it can read like all of those steel products must be acquired domestically; we buy from Fastenal; so we are compliant, but I'm pretty sure Fastenal buys a lot of their bulk hardware from overseas.
I'm reminded of significance and vagueness of the word "manufactured" specifically as it pertains to tariffs and consumer perceptions. To bring it back to bikes, and this is not recent news, but Allied has switched to manufacturing in Asia, but even when they were making bikes in Arkansas I'd bet dollars to donuts they were using raw carbon from Japan. I don't want to just pick on Allied, the world economy is broad and interwoven. The steel and ti building world is similarly complicated, since True Temper stopped producing steel bicycle tubing it is not a simple task to build a bike that is entirely sourced from American materials (depending on what that means to you).
Luckily I don't deal with magnets.
Does anyone know why spesh got out of soft goods? They were great value and very popular and I wish they kept at it.Even if selling tech apparel is not sunshine, rainbows and 80% margins, they had to be making some money while keeping me happy.
I think it was discussed earlier; iirc it was due to already thin margins being squeezed further by tariffs, crowded market segment, the contraction in the bike industry and a desire to get back to their core business...
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