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Thank you. call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. now turn the conference over to Brian Siegel, Senior Managing Director, Hayden IR. Thank you Brian, you may begin.

Thank you, Nicole. Good morning and welcome to Paladine AI's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Ben Wolfe, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, Paladine AI issued a press release announcing financial results for the second quarter ending June 30th, 2026. along with the updated commentary regarding backlog and it's reiterated 2026 revenue guidance. A copy of that release along with the accompanying financial tables is available on the investor relations section of Paladine AI's website. Today's call will include prepared remarks from Ben and Trevor, followed by a Q&A session. During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Paladine's 2026 Revenue Guidance, expected backlog conversion, anticipated quarterly operating cash burn, product development milestones, commercialization timelines, Defense program activity, potential customer adoption, market opportunities, and future strategic positioning across air, space, land, and maritime domains.

Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, Paladine AI's ability to execute on development programs, convert backlog into revenue, scale production, manage operating expenses, integrate acquired businesses, secure additional contracts, maintain liquidity, and navigate evolving and commercial market conditions. These and other risk factors are described in detail in Paladine AI's filings with the Security and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Paladine undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, during the call, management will reference certain non-gay In general, management will adjust for acquisition of other transaction related expenses, stock based compensation expense, non-cash warrant income or expense that are marked to market quarterly based on changes in the company's stock price, expenses related to the change in contingent consideration liabilities associated with closed acquisition, conditions and any tax impact these items may cause. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in this morning's press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Every quarter we meet with our board of directors to review our prior quarter and year-to-date performance and to discuss, among other things, the business's prospects, opportunities, and challenges in the near, mid, and long term. Prior to that meeting, I meet with the various leaders across the organization for a comprehensive review of the same topics at a business unit and division level. Our most recent board meeting was last week. And I have to say, the most recent round of quarterly meetings validated the growing optimism I developed over the quarter. I'm feeling more bullish about our process. since I returned to the company almost two and a half years ago. We are seeing meaningful traction across all parts of the business.

Since I returned, we've built the two things that I believed we needed in order to deliver on our vision for making the United States defense industrial base more competitive, more capable, and more responsive. The first is a new kind of autonomy, a decentralized embodied collaborative architecture that enables machines to operate on their own, work together and adapt in real time without being pre-programmed or relying on a constant connection to the cloud or relying on human direction and intervention. What I'm describing is the definition of true collaborative autonomy. What most others mean when they use these words is really nothing more than pre-programmed action where humans have made all of the decisions for the machines well in advance. The second is the ability to make the machines that can put that autonomy to work, which requires world-class aerospace engineering, low-cost next-generation avionics, precision manufacturing capabilities, and ultimately complete weapon systems, including access to some of the most capable battle-proven lawyer munitions on the planet. Together, they will enable us and our customers to field affordable, attributable systems at scale that are designed from the ground up to leverage our decentralized embodied collaborative AI. These two objectives are closely aligned with our nation's priorities.

The Department of War has made it abundantly clear that the United States needs both more intelligent systems and a stronger industrial base capable of designing, manufacturing, and fielding them quickly and economically. We are focused on doing our part to answer that call. This quarter, we began to see every one of these pieces working together in a way that is showing up in revenue, customer activity, and the number of opportunities in front of us. We still have much to do, but the business has meaningful momentum across the company. We generated record quarterly revenue of approximately $5.8 million, up 63% from $3.5 million in the first quarter. The growth was broad-based across our business units, and we expect continued growth through the second half as backlog converts to revenue and new contract rewards and customer wins begin contributing. We ended the quarter with approximately $25 million of backlog up from 17 million at the end of the first quarter, which means after taking into account our Q2 revenues, we booked roughly $13 million of new business during Q2.

Now, backlog will not always necessarily increase every quarter. The timing of bookings... The duration of contract performance and the timing of revenue recognition can all cause backlog to ebb and flow. But the current backlog and the level of new contract awards and customer engagement give us good visibility into the second half. As a result, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 to $27 million. We ended the quarter with approximately $44 million of cash on hand. Operating cash burn, including capital expenditures, was above our guided average quarterly rate, primarily due to increased business development efforts, some non-recurring capex, and the expansion of our engineering team to support new business that will contribute to revenue in the second half of this year. We are also carrying infrastructure that our current revenue base has not fully utilized.

This cash burn was offset by our prudent use of our ATM facility. We continue to expect operating cash burn of $32 to $36 million for the full year, inclusive of CapEx, which means we expect operating cash burn to decline in the second half. The defense market is moving quickly towards affordable mass, large numbers of lower cost autonomous systems that can be deployed and replaced without the economics of traditional weapons platforms. The Department of War is also pushing the industry to develop and field those systems faster than ever. Both trends are directly relevant to what we have built. For the most part, launching 1,000 drones today requires 1,000 soldiers. Other companies are attempting to solve this manpower challenge by automating multi-drone launches that follow a pre-programmed flight path.

But that doesn't really solve the challenge because most of these drones can't react to what's happening around them in real time. That still requires a soldier. Pre-programmed flight, or what we call automated flight, is not a substitute for human intelligence or human direction. but true autonomous flight can be. That's what we do, and it is essential to understand the distinction and how that distinction translates to real-world operations. We put real reasoning and decision-making abilities directly on the drone, and then we enable multiple drones to collaborate in a manner such that the knowledge of each individual drone can be aggregated and used across the entire swarm. This is what we mean when we refer to true collaborative autonomy. And we don't just do this on Paladine drones. We enable UAVs from different manufacturers to collaborate with any drones that are also running our Swarm OS software.

We call our approach Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy, or DECA for short. The intelligence operates on the machines at the edge so they can coordinate and adapt without relying on a continuous connection to the cloud or from a remote operator. We proved this capability in the field under real operating conditions during the Army's IV mass exercise in Q2. Soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division used SwarmOS to command a mixed team of surveillance drones and our own Gremlin X drone in a contested environment. One Army operator controlled the entire group of UAVs. In June, we announced that SwarmOS and GremlinX were awarded contracts by the Army under its disruptive applications program. Following IVMAS, we were informed that certain contract options would be exercised for FY27, and we were formally invited to additional exercises.

That exercise and the future exercises are important steps for us because the software was and is being used by soldiers in an operational setting, not simply being demonstrated by our engineers in a controlled environment. This was not a demo in the traditional sense. Rather, it was a real-world exercise. A few moments ago, we issued a press release about our success at PCC6, which was even larger and more complex than IV mass. Turning to our business operations, I will start with our components business. Brain is our low-cost flight computer for autonomous air systems. It is built into our own Gremlin X mini bomber drone, and it is being integrated on systems designed by us for our defense prime customers.

Thank you. During the quarter, we booked a follow-on order from a defense prime that was five times larger than its prior order. The order covers more than 1,000 brain FC1 units with an aggregate value of approximately $2.3 million. These units deliver the guidance, navigation, and control for a new low-cost counter UAS interceptor. As these systems gain traction with customers, we expect demand for brain to grow with it, and we are expanding our domestic production capacity accordingly. And brain may be just the start. In building our own platforms like GremlinX and Swarmstrike, as well as designing third-party systems, we have developed a range of other high-value subsystems and components, all made here in the U.S. We are now exploring the business case for supplying some of these components to other drone and missile manufacturers as well, but we will only do so where we have a unique competitive advantage and can deliver differentiated capability or performance or cost advantage.

We have no interest in being in a highly competitive, commoditized, or low margin business. Although there can be no doubt that as a nation, we need more UAV and missile components made here to reduce reliance on foreign sources. Our precision manufacturing business accounts for the balance of our components revenue. It machines and fabricates hardware for defense programs and industrial customers. This capability is strategically important because it allows us to produce components that are often in short supply and that impair our country's capacity to produce the volume of weapons that the Department of War is looking for. We also expect it to support the work required to bring IAI's loitering munitions into production in the United States when and as we develop customer demand. Our engineering services for UAVs, missiles, loitering munitions, and spacecraft generate real revenues today and give us a seat at the table to educate and inform customers about the component and software solutions we offer that could give these customers and their products a competitive edge.

During the quarter, we added engineers and moved into a larger facility to accommodate the increasing demand and utilization rates we are experiencing. Specifically, the additional capacity allows us to support existing and new third-party programs, continue developing our own products, and manufacture and assemble Brain and GremlinX without one activity interrupting the other. Swarm OS also continues to mature and is increasingly being integrated with autonomous systems from other OEMs. An operator defines the mission, but the software allows the machines to respond to what is actually happening around them, coordinate with one another, and adjust in real time. It is not tied to a single airframe or manufacturer, which is one reason the Army has asked us to deploy our software across multiple drone platforms. We are also extending the technology to integrate sensors from other domains, including sensors in space, under the recently signed $4.2 million hang time contract with the U.S. Air Force. Today, revenue relating to our DECA AI solutions still comes primarily from development, integration, and trial contracts with the Department of War, but SwarmOS customer inclusion. engagement is increasing and the software remains the foundation of our aerospace and defense astrology.

Our autonomous systems portfolio combines that software with physical platforms. Gremlin X is a reusable mini-bomber designed to deliver a kinetic effect for less than $1,000 per effect. We have prioritized development of this platform, which has advanced from TRL 6 to TRL 7 in just the past quarter. We're also evaluating a modular version that could support missions beyond strike, including potentially ISR and County UAS missions by making the payload modular rather than having to feel different airframes for different missions. SwarmStrike is our low-cost mini cruise missile designed to operate in coordinated groups using our IntelliSwarm product, which combines SwarmOS and Brain. With our alarm contract with the US Navy, we are in the early stages of developing a low-cost, air-launched, near-hypersonic missile for use with the F-35. During the quarter, we were one of only 14 companies invited to the Air Force's Relentless Wolfpack Industry Day, which focused on networked, autonomous weapons salvos.

We had proposed Swarm Strike as an answer to the challenge, and we were the only small company invited to participate. This does not mean we will land a contract, but it shows the DOW recognizes our innovation and capabilities. Separately and importantly, a major Tier 1 defense prime included Swarm OS in its own relentless Wolfpack proposal. Again, we don't know who will be down selected, but this is great validation from a large industry partner. Major defense primes don't make these kinds of decisions lightly. I will now turn to our partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI. In June, we announced that Paladine had entered into a partnership with Israel's largest defense prime.

As part of that partnership, we secured the right to Americanize, manufacture, and integrate IAI's Harop, Harpy, and Mini Harpy loitering munitions for the U.S. Department of War. These are large combat proven systems, not small FPV drones. IAI pioneered the loitering ammunition category more than 40 years ago, and today has a backlog across its business of more than $30 billion. Harpy and Herrick, which have been sold to numerous countries around the globe, are 10-foot wingspan unmanned aircraft that are designed for long-range missions, extended loitering, and the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses. These are exactly the kind of systems that could potentially mitigate some of the aircraft losses country has recently experienced in the Middle East. ARPE is designed to search for and attack enemy radar emitters. I personally am not aware of any other UAV of this size or class that has anti-radiation capabilities.

HAREP has an electro optical seeker, allowing the HAREP to identify and engage a target with precision. Mini-HARPY combines anti-radiation and electro-optical capabilities in a smaller system with shorter range and a lower price point. products have been used in combat and address missions that have become increasingly important as mobile air defense systems become more common and present our military with real targeting challenges. We believe the US military has a meaningful capability gap in this area. As a nation, we typically counter these defenses by launching missiles from manned aircraft. I have been told, but have no way of independently confirming, that the current cost of striking one of these mobile or intermittent air defense systems can range from 10 to $40 million. Our IAI systems can present an alternative at a small fraction of that price without risking human life or the cost of a manned aircraft. We believe that a successful U.S. program based on these IAI systems could ultimately amount to hundreds of millions and potentially even billions of dollars of revenue over time.

IAI selected Paladine based in large part on our engineering capabilities, our U.S. manufacturing capacity, our team, and our autonomy software. Once there is a clear government demand signal and we begin the work to stand up domestic production, we believe initial units could be available in about 18 months. We also intend to integrate Swarm OS where appropriate so these systems can coordinate their actions as part of a larger mission set rather than operate only as individual aircraft. That combination takes the mission capability to a whole new level unlike anything else on the battlefield today. One more proof point worth mentioning is the caliber of people joining our team. This quarter, we added senior military advisors to our defense advisory board, including retired Lieutenant General Sean Ganey, who ran US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, led the operational command behind Golden Dome, and founded the US Military joint counter UAS office. To be blunt, people with that kind of record don't lend their names to companies they don't believe in.

He joined us precisely because he truly believes in our mission, our capabilities, and our opportunity to make a real difference for our nation's warfighters. On the commercial and industrial side, we have sharpened our strategy with Paladin IQ in two ways. First, we are focused on applications where autonomy addresses work that is difficult, dangerous, repetitive, and hard to staff, like surface preparation and corrosion treatment, typically done by hand. A good example is our robotic work at an Air Force Logistics Center, which we expanded this quarter with an additional $2.9 million contract award, bringing the total for this program to more than $10.6 million to date. Second, we are shifting to a partner-led go-to-market strategy for IQ and pilot, rather than trying to sell and deploy every solution ourselves. And we are seeing encouraging interest from ecosystem partners. not ready to announce more today, but we expect to have more to share on both products over the next several quarters. I will finish with the opportunity pipeline.

As of today, we have submitted proposals for more than 20 Department of War funding programs with an aggregate initial potential value of several hundred million dollars. The timing and probability vary significantly by program. Some are relatively near term, others are larger opportunities with longer odds. Of course, we will not win all of them, and we may not even win any of them. But the important point is that the number and size of the programs we are pursuing are materially greater than they were six months ago. increasingly getting shots on goal as the Department of War's requirements continue to evolve and begin to incorporate the types of capabilities we have been developing for years. To continue the analogy, we have been skating in front of the puck for a while now, and I believe we are just on the cusp of that strategy and focus paying off. We have a lot of work ahead of us. and much of the opportunity I've discussed still depends on successful execution and customer funding decisions.

But the quarter showed progress in the areas that matter. Revenue, contractually committed backlog, proving out our autonomy software with customers in the field, repeat component orders, and a much larger opportunity pipeline. The pieces we assembled over the last two years are beginning to reinforce one another. That is why I'm increasingly confident that we are in the right place at the right time. With that, I will turn the call over to Trevor to walk through the financials in more detail. Trevor.

Thanks, Ben. I'll focus on our second quarter results, our liquidity position, and our capital outlook. Revenue for the second quarter was $5.8 million, up 470% from $1 million a year ago, and up 63% sequentially from the first quarter. Product revenue, which today comes primarily from our precision manufacturing business and our brain avionics product was $2.7 million. Engineering services revenue was $1.9 million and AI product development contract revenue was $1.2 million, which accelerated near the end of the second quarter after the government shutdown during the first quarter. Cost of revenue was $4.1 million and consolidated gross margin was approximately 29%. Similar to the first quarter, our margin reflects manufacturing utilization running well below full capacity and includes set up costs and investments related to new program wins that have not yet been covered by revenue. revenue. As these programs come online, we expect that these efforts will turn into a tailwind and as incremental volume runs through capacity we're already carrying.

Research and development expense was $4.3 million, up from $3.1 million a year ago, reflecting continued investment in GremlinX and our AI software. general and administrative expense was $8.1 million, up from $4.2 million a year ago, by added higher stock-based compensation expenses. Stock-based compensation expense was $2.3 million this quarter, up from $1.1 million a year ago, driven largely by executive equity awards approved by shareholders in June. This is a non-cash expense and was a primary driver of the increased general and administrative expense. and operating loss versus last year. Going into the third quarter, this expense will increase materially from the second quarter, since we only recognize roughly one month's worth of non-cash expense in the second quarter related to the new awards. Sales and marketing expense was $2.3 million, up from $1.3 million a year ago, reflecting the expansion of business development efforts within our Paladine Aerospace and Defense Division as we pursue more opportunities with the Department of War. Operating loss for the quarter was $13.4 million compared to $8.1 million a year ago. Below the operating line, we recorded roughly $1.1 million of other income, which includes $800,000 from a non-cash gain on the revaluation of our warrant liabilities, together with interest income of $300,000.

Gap net loss was $12.3 million or 27 cents per diluted share compared to $7.5 million and 20 cents per diluted share a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the impact of warrant revaluation, stock-based compensation, and the change in our contingent consideration liability, Net loss was $10.8 million of 23 cents per diluted share compared to non-GAAP net loss of $6.4 million or 17 cents per diluted share in the prior year period. Turning to liquidity, we ended the quarter with $43.7 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, flat with the first quarter, and down $3.4 million from the 2025 year-end balance. Operating cash burn, which we define as cash using operations plus CapEx, was $11.1 million during the quarter. This includes approximately $10.2 million of operating cash and $900,000 of CapEx. This is offset by approximately $10.8 million of net proceeds ATM program and $300,000 in interest income. During the first half of 2026, we raised $17.3 million in net proceeds under the ATM at an average price of $6.84 per share.

We view the ATM as a flexible tool that we can deliberately use to expand our runway at a low cost of capital. As of June 30th, we had approximately $24 million in remaining capacity under the program. Backlog end of the quarter at $24.6 million, an increase of 43%, driven by approximately $13 million of new contract awards during the quarter, partially offset by revenue recognized during the quarter. We expect a majority of our current backlog to convert the revenue over the next 12 18 months. Turning to guidance, we are reiterating our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 to $27 million, which represents roughly 357 to 415% growth over 2025 revenue of $5.2 million. And we continue to expect organic growth across part of the company. We're also reiterating our full year operating cash burn guidance of 32 to $36 million or roughly eight to $9 million per quarter on average.

We ran above that pace in the first half, although we offset most of that with funds raised via our ATM and we expect operating cash burn to trend lower through second half is revenue and margins ramps. Based on our liquidity position, our access to the ATM, and our expected backlog conversion, we believe we are well positioned to execute our plan.

Operator, we're now ready to take questions. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions.

Our first question comes from Max McEllis with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

hey guys thanks for taking my question congrats on the quarter a couple from me bunch of different topics here first I want to touch on the IAI you guys mentioned it but my real question around that is kind of what sort of has been the progress being made on the Americanization process. Have you identified any domestic manufacturing sites? Do you need that? Have you sort of been in any conversations, preliminary conversations with U.S. governments just.

around these systems and kind of getting your foot in the door on that end? Hi, Max. It's Ben. Thanks for the questions on IAI. So we have been very active. You know, we just announced the deal, what, seven, eight weeks ago, and we hit the ground running with kind of a full court press, ticking down the list of every potential U.S. government customer that could be interested in these systems. And we have engaged now with the U.S. government I would say with about half of those targets. And across the board, I would say that there is meaningful interest, but interest is just the beginning. Then you have to get into the specifics and details about performance and capability and all of those kinds of things.

But the bottom line is, we have yet to have anybody that we targeted us that there's no interest. So we are extremely encouraged and feeling bullish about the opportunity set. In a lot of cases, there was pre-existing familiarity with these weapon systems, but obviously no perception that there was access to them here in the United States. So we're not starting from a stopped position or a standstill position because these are battle-driven weapon systems that the community is generally familiar. with. In terms of your question about the facilities and our capacity to manufacture, you know, we have a fair bit of manufacturing capacity and space today. The real question is what kind of volumes might the government want? And we could quickly outgrow our capability in terms of size and facilities. So we are in the process of identifying additional facilities, not that we would need to manufacture or not that we would need to build and construct because of the timelines associated with that, but we are developing a short list of currently available facilities that if the government were to say, let's go, we'd be ready to jump into and hopefully without a lot of modifications, be ready to start standing up manufacturing relatively near term.

Awesome. Makes sense. A couple more from me. Secondly, Gremlin X advanced from TRL 6 to TRL 7 in a quarter. What was that specific milestone that got you there and I guess what is required to get you guys to TRL 8?.

Over the quarter, we did five different design revs. We've talked in the past, Max, about how our team can move quickly. That was definitely moving quickly. Five different design iterations, flying and testing in each instance. What got us over the hurdle was getting into the hands of customers and have the customers actually fly it as intended successfully. not as managing or demoing the systems, but actually having soldiers in the field, using them under battlefield conditions. So we now feel like we're in a great spot with that. One could argue whether we're at TRL 8 yet or not, but again, because we haven't been in live fire, actual battlefield conditions will hold off on making that announcement. But the bottom line is the system's performed as expected and ahead of schedule.

Perfect. Last one from me. I think you need $15 to $18 million of revenue to sort of hit the guidance range for 2026. Backlogs at around $25 million. That's going to be converted over the next 12 to 18 months. I guess, share what you guys can, but I mean, I think it's a great question. I mean, when we think about that last 15 to 18 million in 2026, what percentage of that is already contracted to be shipped this year, if you could share? Thanks.

So when we talk about backlogs, that number is contractually committed binding legal contracts. What is less certain is exactly the timing of deliveries, hitting of milestones and all of that. So it is a little challenging for me, Max, to give you a straight answer on how much of that backlog will absolutely be delivered in 26 before the end of the year. What I can tell you is we are feeling, based on everything that we see that Trevor and I see, in the business, we are confident in reiterating the guidance that we previously gave. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks, Max.

Thanks, Max. Our next question comes from Mike Lattimore with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, good morning. Great quarter, great bookings. I guess on Swarm OS, can you talk a little bit about the exercises you're involved with and compare that to kind of, you know, some of the programs that are visible like Swarm Forge? You know, what's the difference between, you know, the exercises you're involved in versus, say, the Swarm Forge program? You different requirements, what are the relative opportunities? Maybe just help us clarify that a little bit.

Yes, sure. Thanks, Mike, and good to talk to you. So, you know, the military is like a, you know, You know, it's a hydra. I mean, it's got lots of different groups doing lots of different things. And the DIU has a focus on trying to find and identify conversations companies with products and technologies that could be useful to the military. And so they're kind of on their path that is a bit of a treasure hunt, and they frequently will stand up different kinds of of competitions, if you will, where they will throw out some specifications and requirements, say to industry, can you meet these specifications and requirements? They'll do a bake off, they'll down select, and then they'll give some money to actually develop a product into, or technology, into what they're looking for based on the best, best criteria that they had to choose from. So that's one path of getting, of a young or small or new entrant company getting their products and technologies and audience in front of people at the Pentagon. There is another path, and that other path is to have a finished product that's ready to go, not still under development.

David St. Louis, MD, PhD, MPH, PhD, PhD, PhD, and to get it in the hands of actual users in real-world exercises. And that is what we have just done with both IDMAS and with PCC6. It is not a matter of having some... really smart technologists and some business people take a look at a venture capital type of approach to developing new product technology. Rather it is actually getting your product and technology in the hands of war fighters, let them get real world experience with it and evaluate it. And then develop a report that says to the, operating units and to the buyers and the acquisition people and the requirements riders, hey, this is something we've actually got our hands on in the field. We've used it, and either we like it or we don't like it, or here's where it can improve or whatever, but they give a full written evaluation. So what we've just announced this morning with the press release right before this call and what we talked about in the in past press releases is our success at real world battlefield condition exercises, not demos that we control.

We do a training, we train the team that's going to be using it or multiple teams. We give them the technology, we give them the drones and they go out like they're on the battlefield. They are on the battlefield. and they do exercises using our products. And we have no ability to control it once it's in their hands. So it is not kind of a, you know, it's not a constrained set of environments. And these are generally soldiers that may or may not have any drone experience. They certainly don't have any experience with autonomous systems.

And part of what we get evaluated on is can soldiers without a lot of training or experience actually learn it? How challenging is it? Can they use it? Can they accomplish the intended mission? And we have been graduating. that at every turn and every exercise that we've been in, we've gotten great feedback that we're We're under-promising and over-delivering. We're delivering what we told them we would deliver, and that is resulting in getting invited to more exercises with different and diverse groups of potential users. And I would say our reputation is spreading in a very organic way. across different units. So a couple of different paths that you can go. We have opted to go for the one that says we're no longer in a kind of a bake-off. We're just in real-world execution. Does that make sense?.

Awesome. Thank you. And then I guess as you look to the third quarter here, you know, it seems like there could be a really heavy sweeps sort of period here. And, you know, I think I talked about spending a lot of money, you know, kind of through fiscal year end. I mean, does it feel like this quarter could be another healthy bookings quarter or even better than the second given it?.

It's premature. When you talk about the cleanup money that's available, it's a little bit like watching a game of musical chairs. And everybody, we, our peers, everybody that's in the defense industry is hoping to go capture some of that. So much of it depends on who's actually got access to what capital, what that individual group's priorities are. So I'm hopeful, but I wouldn't yet say that I'm at the position of saying I have any degree of confidence in it, because until it happens, you don't really know. Meaning until the music stops, you don't know who's got a chair.

Sure, sure. Makes sense. I guess last one for me on IAI, you know, they have those three products. Are there... Any sense of, you know, would a customer buy all three? Is there more interest in one? Just curious any feelers there. Okay.

different customers have different use cases and missions. And so when you think about perhaps the, what folks are trying to do to deal with longer range and longer distances. you are talking about the bigger platforms, the Harrop and the Harpy. If you were talking about perhaps launching from a vessel to try and destroy another vessel or launching from shore and you're not trying to go very far to hit a target, you might be talking about them. And you realize, I mean, every potential customer purchaser has their own specific reason to exist and their own mission and use case. So what is uncommon is to have a single customer say, I need all three, because that's just, they generally don't have a single customer. are operating in different environments with different purposes. But if you want to talk customer being, let's say, the U.S. Army, sure, you can see the U.S.

Army buying all three, absolutely. But when you get down to specific groups, that's where the mission set bifurcates a bit. Yes. Okay, cool. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Adam Samuelson with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I guess for me, I want to just hone in on the cash burn and outlook for the balance of the year. Obviously, you've got an outlook that has improved revenue at least on average in the second half each quarter. How do we think about that scaling into the cash line versus margin versus working capital kind of other operating expenses. I'm just trying to think about the kind of base cash spend for underlying the business and how that can kind of scale into cash flow prospectively on greater revenues as we think about Thanks. Trevor, you want to respond to that?.

Yes, so I mean, we talked about our reiterating our guidance for the year and if you do the to hit those numbers in the back half. Cash burns about 12 million is what we're anticipating. There is some CapEx built into that that we're going to use strategically there. But we do see with the revenue trending up and more margin dropping to the bottom that that cash flow does go down and and that cash burn requirement goes down so you know we we we have quite a bit of um both from a manufacturing standpoint and from a, you know, product standpoint, when we started getting into our AI software opportunities to be able to scale the business without having to add a lot of costs. So, you know, we're optimistic about seeing that trend down and still, you know, with some planned investment in the business being able to significantly increase the cost.

get below what the trend has been in the first half in the second half. Okay. And maybe just along those lines of the $24 million of backlog, can you share, is there a proportion of that that's actually software-related revenue or software licenses and so that would presumably carry very high incremental gross margins?.

So the backlog composition that we see going forward is roughly, and this is just kind of very rough, it's about 50% from product sales, which means our precision components and our avionics. Avionics are higher margin, the precision components are higher. a little lower margin. And then roughly in the range of about 30% relating to our software. Now, I don't want to, I want to caution you, most of the revenues that we have coming in from software right now relate to trial contracts and development contracts with the military that have not yet transitioned into high volume licenses. But it does show that we've got a fair bit of software-related backlog. It is a good margin business, but it's not the kind of 85% margins that we will expect to be getting when we start just sending out copies of that software in high volume. And then the balance of our backlog is in the engineering services side of the business.

Okay, that's very helpful, Culler. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Kinslinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thank you. With the successful results at IV mass and PC, C6, can you to talk about the next steps in the sales cycle as the end customer gets educated sees these positive results and how should we think about these events turning into production orders?.

Yes, two different parts of it there, Brian, because we've got both hardware and software that are being used in these exercises. As I try and look at my cloudy crystal ball, what I believe will happen is, Reports will be from each of these exercises will be aggregated and accumulated by the folks that are both writing requirements for new programs and contracts, and also by the purchasers, the folks that actually spend the money. And as the need for on the software side, the need for autonomous solutions and swarming solutions continues to circle up. percolate up, I think that we will wind up with ultimately having, and I don't think when I say ultimately, I don't think we're talking about years away. I think we're talking about months away. solicitations come out that start to define requirements that look a lot like what is being trialed in the field with our software. And so then the requirements come out, we respond, and hopefully we get down selected and we wind up getting the contract. about how we could retrofit our software on drones that have already been deployed to units in the field. and the numbers of drones that they're talking about are not small numbers, they're pretty sizable numbers, starts becoming an interesting logistics question about how do you actually then get our software onto drones that are already in the field and distributed across a lot of people and a lot of users. And just because I've been asked, or we've been asked, that that's going to translate into a contract. But it shows you the kind of thought that's now going into trying to deliver this kind of capability on a broader base.

So that's the software side. On the Gremlin X side, I believe that in the relatively near term, we will probably start getting some inquiries about. volume, volumes that we could deliver both in terms of time and cost. And when I say volumes, I think it's going to my guess is it will start with relatively modest numbers, hundreds of units, not thousands. But I think that the awareness of the need for a mini bomber solution is now starting to spread. As you may recall, we originally submitted our mini bomber as a solution for one of the original drone dominance programs. We weren't selected because we submitted something that did not meet the requirements. As far as I know, we're the only ones that submitted a mini bomber type of solution for a low-cost contractor. cost per effect or cost per kill. And lo and behold, now we have a solicitation that comes out specifically for mini bombers.

And so I think our message is resonating. And I think that as awareness of the cost effective nature, low cost per effect that a mini bomber can deliver, I think there will be increasing demand and opportunities for that. And that's all to say, I think we're just at the cusp of getting to the point where we can start seeing volume coming into business on both the software and the drone side.

Great. I have one follow-up related to that. You highlighted you have 20 proposals submitted worth several hundred million dollars. Can you speak to is this hardware mostly? Because it sounds like the software is a little bit further out in terms of procurement or maybe just characterize how that proposal activity, you know, kind of can be characterized.

I think most of the biggest dollars there, Brian, are combined hardware and software solutions. Meaning one of the things that we think makes our hardware solutions more compelling and attractive is because of the inherent capability of jointly developing the hardware and the software in tandem. We've talked about that. we got back into the hardware business because having systems designed from the ground up that can be optimized from a sensor and compute perspective to be able to leverage our AI capabilities delivers a whole different category of capabilities to the warfighter. And I think, I don't have numbers in front of me, Brian, but I think the vast majority of, I shouldn't say vast A majority of those numbers represented and reflected by what I mentioned in terms of size are combined complete systems that incorporate both our hardware and our software.

Thanks so much. Thank you, Brian. Our next question comes from James Kistner with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So I just want to talk a little more about PCC6. Congrats again on that. You advanced pretty rapidly there from the rehearsal to the larger event. Do you see more kind of what you learned, you know, from operating in that kind of faster, you know, bigger environment, you know, in general about stormwater?.

more or less? You know, some of the takeaways were, that we really can get a single soldier to have the – um the mental capacity to be able to uh focus on those things that really matter that's going on in battlefield environment and not have to try and micromanage uh the uh operations of each individual drone. We knew we could do it from a technology perspective, but until you have a soldier with limited experience with drones actually get their hands on it, you don't know that it really proves out. And we saw no limitations on the number of drones that we could fly or the number of drones that a fairly inexperienced soldier could actually manage. So that from a scaling perspective and from an overall capability perspective was, was extremely encouraging for us. Um, some of the things that we learned when little, little things, like we learned that if, um, uh, comms, uh, is degraded or challenged, which is real world experiences that our system worked as advertised. That sounds like a little thing, but given the fact that you never know what's going to happen to comms degradation on the battlefield, that was an important thing for us to not just be able to have demonstrated ourselves and be satisfied, but to actually have the military see it in action. So that's it. It sounds like a small thing, but it's really a big deal.

We learned a bit about how to best train new people to the system. We compressed the training time. so that you can get more people using the system faster. We got some good feedback about what they'd like to see on the user interface. And we were given a challenge again to integrate with Anduril's Lattice, and we were challenged to do that in a very short period of time, going from basically a standing position to 60 miles an hour with that. did that well. So a lot of great learnings that reinforce our assumptions, but you never know until you're in the field and giving it a try.

Yes, that 30-minute stat is pretty impressive. I guess more broadly, it seems like that hardware independent multi-vendor approach is resonating at PCC6, you know, just as the Army moves towards these larger feats of autonomous systems, like how durable an advantage do you think it is that better neutrality versus the kind of closed single platform ecosystem? Yes.

The mantra at the Pentagon right now is certainly open architecture, not being trapped or beholden to any particular vendor, contractor or system. And so I think it plays well. And then you get into the real world applications, you know, when you have a number of different units units from a number of different divisions or even services that are all trying to collaborate and cooperate to accomplish a mission on the battlefield. you know, I mean, you can see how many different vendors are providing drones to the military today. They're buying from a lot of different sources. Well, how do those drones communicate with one another when you've got, you know, company A providing drones to this unit and company B providing drones to that unit? And we're really missing an opportunity to enable full across-the-board collaboration. Our software enables that to happen. And so I think it is a big deal.

You know, I don't think that the military will ever want it to be just one provider of that kind of capability for the reasons we just talked about. They don't want to be beholden to anybody. But we're there and we're doing it, and I think that gives us a lot of room to run with this software suite.

Last follow-up on that. So you've now integrated a number of manufacturers' aircraft here, including Enduro. So is it fair to say bringing a new platform on is getting faster and more repeatable at this point?.

point? We certainly have learned a lot along the way, but it really depends on the OEM themselves and the architecture for the drone that they've got. We are in the process right now of integrating with our first fixed-wing platform. Everything else has been a the rotor platform. And we're learning a lot. The architecture on that drone is just different than what we've dealt with before. when you think about the altitude that those fly at and the sensors that they have and the compute they have, things are different. And so I wish it was as simple to say, all right, well we used to do it in two weeks and now we can get it down to one week. Um, It's just not that easy because there's not a lot of consistency in the different components that all have to – that our software has to touch and manage consistently. So we're understanding a lot more about what questions to ask and what to get nailed down before we begin the process.

But it's still, you know, it can range from two to four weeks and a couple of people doing it full time to get an integration done from our current knowledge.

Very helpful, Colin. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. And our next question comes from Ralph Wiel.

Please proceed with your question. Good morning, and those good results. Are you involved or trying to become involved at all in the Golden Dome program? And if so, which of your products would fit into that? And the second question would be your StratFi program is now, as you said, at 10.6 million dollars. What is the potential market for that product that is used there? And where will your capabilities be used?.

Good morning. On Golden Dome, the primary focus for Golden Dome right now is on larger, more exquisite weapon systems to be able to intercept big things that are coming in, big weapons. There certainly, I believe, will be an opportunity for us to talk about ways that we can deal with smaller enemy form factors, things like the smaller group one drones that may become problematic. But right now I think that the really big focus and the big dollars are, for example, trying to use space-based assets to take missiles out of the sky. That's not us. We don't play in that sector. But as it trickles down and they start looking at more local and regional effectively domes, I you know, where you're talking about dealing with the interception of smaller weapons that are coming in. I think we, we may have an opportunity to play there, but that's not golden domes priority today. Uh, In terms of our stratified contract, that relates primarily to our IQ product, which is our industrial manufacturing. the organization intelligence platform mentioned in my comments that that is primarily focused on doing the kind of challenging, um, work that humans have historically had to do because you are not able to automate it.

Things like doing paint stripping and surface preparation for large components on aircraft. That's the thing that we're doing with the Air Force right now. And if you look at the total market for that, not just military market, but the market for being able to substitute automated and autonomous machines for doing the kinds of dangerous and awful jobs that humans don't really want to do anyway. but that have historically been too challenging to be able to automate. It is it is a very large town. I mean, it is, you know, globally, it's billions of dollars. So it is a big market opportunity for us. Our focus now is on trying to go deep in individual verticals where we where we have gotten some success.

So we're what we refer to as a land and expand approach, start off showing customers what we can do in a narrow targeted use case. And inevitably, as we're already seeing, they start asking questions about, well, now that I've seen that it can do this, can it do that and that and that and that. So that's our land and expand approach. We introduced the version two of the software at the beginning this year. We've had great engagement with customers and systems integrators to do trials And we expect to start seeing more placements of that software over the second half of this year.

Is that it? That does conclude our question and answer session. Thank you all for your participation today. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.

This live transcript is auto-generated without human intervention or review.

[Call has ended.]

Greetings, and welcome to the Palladyne AI and IAI Partnership Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Brian Siegel, Senior Managing Director with Hayden IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm Brian Siegel. I'm joined this morning by Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Palladyne AI; and Trevor Thatcher, CFO. Note that Ben is traveling, so we apologize if there is a delay or clarity issues.

Yesterday morning, Palladyne AI announced a historic foundational and transformational transaction with Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI, Israel's largest and arguably most innovative government-owned aerospace and defense company. We have convened this call to walk investors and analysts through the significance of the strategic partnership and what it means for the company.

During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Palladyne AI's partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, anticipated Americanization and manufacturing timelines, potential U.S. government contracting activity and demand for the systems, product development milestones, Palladyne AI's ability to manufacture IAI systems as expected, Palladyne AI's ability to obtain any necessary U.S. government approvals, the future needs of the U.S. military, commercialization plans, market opportunity and future strategic positioning.

Some of these risks, factors and uncertainties are described in detail in Palladyne AI's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including annual reports on Form 10-K and subsequent filings, and you are encouraged to read those risk factors. Palladyne AI undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

With that, I will turn the call over to Ben.

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. We're here today to talk about our incredibly important new partnership with IAI, one that is not only important for Palladyne, but also for America's national security and the safety and security of our nation's war fighters. Since I know many of you on this call this morning are new to the Palladyne story, let me start with some context on how we got here before getting into the details of this exciting transformational partnership.

And before we open the line for questions, I will also share some Q2 company updates so that you can get a sense for the drumbeat of momentum that I have the pleasure of seeing and experiencing on a daily basis. In 2019, we started developing the architecture for our advanced Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy software or DECA for short, that could work on all manner of robotic systems. The big idea was that there was a large category of machines that could become exponentially more useful by migrating from being remote controlled or preprogrammed and automated to being truly autonomous, meaning that the machines could make certain decisions on their own and in real time.

Then in November of last year, we took steps to further leverage our embodied AI technologies by enabling us to optimize the simultaneous development of software and hardware, both at the avionics level and at the complete system level. We did this by completing 3 acquisitions that turned us into a vertically integrated aerospace and defense company with the breadth and depth of skills and experience that rival much larger companies.

Today, Palladyne AI is a U.S. aerospace, defense and industrial technology company. Our DECA software provides the high-value layer of intelligence that serves as the foundation for everything that we do. Our advanced engineering services enable us to design, improve and iterate UAVs, missiles, loitering munitions and spacecraft far more rapidly than ever before. Our components business brings onboard flight computers for UAVs, missiles and loitering munitions that can be sold on their own or integrated with our DECA swarming software. And our precision manufacturing business brings state-of-the-art production capability, all of this at speed and at a fraction of what these capabilities typically cost.

That combination is what makes today's announcement possible. SwarmOS is the DECA intelligence layer that connects everything else I will discuss this morning. You hear a lot of companies talk about AI for drones. Most of the time, what they mean is enabling a single drone or a swarm of drones to be preprogrammed with set waypoints established before the drones are launched. This is often coupled with collision avoidance capabilities and then called "autonomy."

According to one of my favorite AIs, autonomy for machines means, "the ability to perceive its environment, make decisions and execute tasks to achieve specific goals without requiring human intervention or remote control." Sorry to break it to you, but preprogrammed flight and collision avoidance is neither collaborative nor is it autonomous. It is more equivalent to cruise control and lane change warnings in human-driven cars. What SwarmOS does is fundamentally different. It enables multiple drones from different manufacturers to share sensor data and collaborate in real time without a centralized controller and without cloud connectivity.

Each drone perceives its environment, makes its own decisions and acts, but does that collaboratively with the other platforms around it, enabling individual drones as well as a swarm of many drones to respond to what is going on both in the air and on the ground in real time without human intervention, all based on mission intent. And it can do this in comms degraded and GPS-denied environments where other systems stop working. That is exactly what the Department of War has been asking for. SwarmOS is not a promising technology sitting in a lab. It is ready for prime turn now.

We recently flew SwarmOS on drones from 4 different OEMs simultaneously, including our own Gremlin-X mini bomber during a 3-week Department of War joint exercise. Real soldiers in real battlefield conditions trained on SwarmOS in about 30 minutes, such that a single soldier could easily assign mission parameters and launch the birds with the ability to oversee and manage the swarm, but not needed to direct individual drone operations. This is huge. SwarmOS reduced the required manpower, enabling more soldiers to be in the fight.

Equally important, SwarmOS enabled the operator to have a full real time perspective of what was really going on, on the battlefield, substantially lightening the soldiers' cognitive load so that they could focus on what really matters, mission execution. Now how we envision building this company is important context for everything that follows. We are not trying to build a better FPV drone. We are not going after the highly competitive small UAS segment, where there are already hundreds of companies doing really great work, some of whom we have partnered with.

What we are doing, however, is pursuing the development of differentiated UAV missile and loitering munition systems that address specific capability gaps in the Department of War's arsenal. Gremlin-X is our low-cost reusable mini bomber targeting under $1,000 per effect, which directly answers the Department of War's mandate for low-cost attritable munitions. SwarmStrike is a mini cruise missile with collaborative strike capabilities, targeting a price point roughly 90% lower than legacy alternatives. And ALRRM, our Air-Launched Rapid Response Missile program, is a near hypersonic missile we are developing for the U.S. Navy.

Our subsidiary, GuideTech, which is comprised of a team of world-class aerospace and defense engineers, many of whom spent years working on major UAV, missile and loitering munition programs at large defense primes, can take a concept from a whiteboard to a flight-ready prototype in under 6 months as demonstrated with SwarmStrike. Our BRAIN avionics suite delivers guidance, navigation and control capabilities at roughly 1/10 the weight and cost of legacy alternatives. And Palladyne manufacturing, combining Warnke and MKR, give us certified precision manufacturing in Oxford and Saginaw, Michigan, already supporting the F-35, F-16, F-22, C-130, Tomahawk, Harpoon, JDAM, Bradley and M1A1 Abrams programs to name a few. These are modern manufacturing capabilities, leveraging state-of-the-art machines and tooling.

And today, we are operating at a fraction of our total capacity. Gremlin-X, SwarmOS, ALRRM, BRAIN, capability gap filling, differentiated systems and products, not high-volume commodities. That same philosophy runs through everything I'm about to describe.

This slide shows the strategic logic and philosophy behind what we have built. Many of the new venture-funded defense tech start-ups are doing great work. They are bringing a Silicon Valley start-up mentality to the defense tech sector. They often bring software-first architecture, fast iteration cycles, agility and an appetite for risk, not exactly the attributes one thinks of when describing our historical defense industrial base. But there is a good reason why few, if any, VCs were interested in funding defense tech start-ups until recently.

Contracts and revenues are often unpredictable. Opportunities to prove that weapons reliably work on the battlefield are few and far between. The whims of congressional funding can whipsaw investors. The list goes on. But it wasn't until Elon Musk and Peter Thiel demonstrated that real companies with patient investors can make incredibly successful businesses with the government as the primary customer. That is when the VCs jumped in. But we've seen this movie before and so have the smart finance and business people who are now making decisions at the Department of War.

I've heard repeatedly that while the Department of War is leaning into innovation and embracing defense tech start-ups more than ever before, they are also appropriately cautious about the PowerPoint claims of the boys with toys crowd. This is why legacy primes continue to be so important. They bring decades of combat validated systems, deep domain expertise, extensive portfolios of intellectual property, scale, credibility and investors who understand the long game. Palladyne Aerospace and Defense was built to bridge both worlds. The GuideTech and manufacturing acquisitions were done with an eye towards something larger.

We believe that with those capabilities, we could be an attractive partner to one or more large defense primes that could benefit from the combination of our technologies, our expertise and our production capabilities. So far, it has worked out better than expected. The partnership with IAI that we announced yesterday is exactly the type of partnership we built Palladyne for. We have been describing our execution path in 3 stages: improving and integrating today, converting to larger revenue-generating contracts in 2027 and scaling from 2028 onward. The IAI partnership does not change that framework. What it does, however, is it becomes a defining event for the current phase and the opportunity to materially uplevel what the later stages represent financially.

So on to the big news. Yesterday morning, we announced an exclusive U.S. strategic partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI, to Americanize, manufacture, integrate and market IAI's battle-proven long-duration loitering munition systems to the U.S. Department of War. Now let me walk through what that means. Israel Aerospace Industries is Israel's largest defense company, today, wholly owned by the Israeli government and one of the top 30 defense companies in the world. IAI's backlog is over $30 billion. IAI represents more than 70 years of continuous innovation and operational deployment across more than 50 countries.

Here is a truly important fact about IAI. They did not just enter the loitering munition category. They created it. The term didn't exist before IAI introduced it. More than 40 years ago, their Missile Systems group had the vision to combine a missile with a UAV. For years, people said, "What does that even mean?" But they built it, they proved it, and they demonstrated the power of its capabilities in numerous conflicts over the years. Now the term loitering munitions is on the tip of almost everyone's tongues.

Still, despite the billions of dollars being invested by defense tech start-ups and legacy primes alike, no one has created loitering munitions that match the capabilities of IAI's HAROP, HARPY and Mini HARPY, which are the first systems from IAI we intend to Americanize to meet Department of War requirements. These systems are combat proven across real campaigns for decades, not a start-up with a promising concept, not new weapons with carefully scripted demos that work under ideal conditions.

Down in Texas, where I live, there's a common phrase we use to describe someone who's all show and no go, a lot of talk and hand-waving but short on performance. We say they are all hat and no cattle. That's not IAI for sure. To paraphrase Guy Bar Lev, IAI's Executive Vice President and GM of the Space, Missiles and Systems division from yesterday's release, IAI selected Palladyne for a combination of advanced autonomy, engineering expertise and certified U.S. manufacturing and for our team's ability to move with the urgency the current threat environment demands.

I'll be honest, I do not know that Palladyne on its own without the GuideTech and manufacturing acquisitions could have secured this partnership. While we have been in talks with them for almost a year, the IAI team came to visit us after we closed our transformational acquisitions last fall, met with our people and came away genuinely impressed with our engineering capability, our manufacturing and the way we operate. We have the capabilities of a large defense prime even though we are not the size of one. We are still small, nimble and entrepreneurial. That combination appealed to them, and they chose us as a result.

Getting the right mental model here is really important for understanding the scale of the IAI opportunity. When many people hear about loitering munitions today, most think of Group 1 drones, including FPV drones and other small UAVs with kinetic capabilities. Those are real systems with real utility, but HARPY, HAROP and mini HARPY are in a completely different category. A complete HARPY or HAROP system is not a single UAV. It includes the UAV launchers that resemble 40-foot shipping containers and command and control centers. These are unmanned aircraft with a wingspan of about 10 feet across. HARPYs and HAROPs support diverse missions but can be launched and managed from common infrastructure, creating tremendous flexibility on the battlefield.

A quick Internet search reveals rumored reports of sales of these systems to countries with very small defense budgets relative to the U.S. that show contract ranges in years past in the low to mid-hundreds of millions of dollars. These contracts were reportedly for modest quantities. So when you're talking about the world's largest defense budget and the capability it does not currently have in its arsenal, I believe the potential for these systems could be in the billions of dollars over time.

To give investors a sense of the procurement environments where these systems are relevant, across the U.S. Army and Navy, we see at least 6 military program executive offices and portfolio acquisition executives or PEOs and PAEs with aggregate budgets of close to $200 billion over multiple years that are focused on capabilities and solutions that squarely align with the capabilities of our new loitering munitions portfolio. We're not suggesting that we are competing for all of that, but it gives you a sense of the scale of the procurement apparatus, that will be evaluating this capability.

Our job starting yesterday is to make each of these PEOs and PAEs aware that this is a newly available, uniquely American capability and then to work to determine the U.S. government's actual demand for these systems. What makes these systems so unique? First and foremost, they are designed to cost effectively suppress and destroy enemy air defenses. They are particularly well suited to attack intermittent and mobile air defenses. HARPY is a purpose-built suppression and destruction of enemy air defense loitering munition designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile radar emitters.

With a launch weight of approximately 300 pounds, a range of 200 to 1,000 kilometers and endurance of 6 to 9 hours, HARPY can control large areas of contested airspace while waiting for enemy air defenses to activate. Unlike traditional anti-radiation missiles that are launched against a known threat and immediately extend themselves, HARPY provides a persistent autonomous presence over the battlefield, allowing operators to suppress sophisticated integrated air defense networks at a fraction of the cost of conventional strike packages.

Its proven operational history, mature anti-radiation seeker technology and ability to independently prosecute radar threats make it a highly effective force multiplier for opening access to contested environments. HAROP is a long endurance electro-optically guided loitering strike system that combines ISR, target acquisition and precision attack in a single combat proven platform. With up to 9 hours of endurance, a substantial warhead and the ability to search, identify, track, abort, reattack and strike from multiple attack angles, HAROP gives commanders persistent sensor-to-shooter capability against time-sensitive, relocatable and high-value targets. Unlike HARPY, which is optimized for autonomous anti-radiation missions against radar emitters, HAROP is optimized for human-confirmed EO/IR targeting and flexible precision strikes against both stationary and moving targets.

Mini HARPY delivers advanced suppression and destruction of enemy air defense capabilities together with precision strike capabilities in a smaller, lighter and more easily deployed platform optimized for distributed operations. With a launch weight of approximately 100 pounds, endurance of up to 2 hours and a range of approximately 100 kilometers, Mini HARPY enables tactical units to rapidly locate and engage radar emitters and visually identify targets with a single weapon system. By combining autonomous anti-radiation homing with electro-optical target acquisition, Mini HARPY offers operational flexibility typically unavailable in systems of its size class.

Its compact footprint, rapid deployment capability and multi-mission functionality makes it particularly well suited for expeditionary forces, special operations units and mobile formations operating in highly contested environments. Our partnership with IAI gives us the exclusive rights in the U.S. to Americanize, manufacture, integrate and market this platform family to the U.S. government. We expect to adapt the system to U.S. requirements and serve as a prime contractor to the U.S. government. IAI provides engineering support and supplies certain subsystems and components subject to U.S. government approval and receives a standard industry royalty rate.

To be clear, we paid nothing upfront for this exclusivity. To put that in context, I believe a well-funded defense tech startup trying to develop systems like these from scratch would likely spend years and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars or more and still not have a battle-proven technology at the end. And to my knowledge, no one in the world has yet developed anti-radiation capabilities that match IAI's. Access to IAI's intellectual property to offer these systems to the U.S. government is frankly irreplaceable.

So now let's talk about how the partnership works. Our engineering team will focus on the Americanization process and the integration of SwarmOS software, adapting the platforms to U.S. operational requirements and implementing any modifications that the U.S. government requires. We have the intellectual horsepower to do this. Our manufacturing group will handle certified domestic production and assembly. Worth noting, we already manufacture some components for some of IAI's UAVs in our Michigan production facility.

Palladyne AI handles all aspects of the relationship with the U.S. government. As I said above, job #1 for us now is talking to the people in the Department of War who need to know that there is a clear path to acquire American versions of these highly capable battle-proven loitering munitions. As part of the Americanization process, we expect the Department of War to be interested in putting SwarmOS on these platforms. Autonomy on a single drone already dramatically increases the value proposition beyond human remote control.

But swarming autonomy across multiple platform types, Group 3s in the air for 9 hours, Group 2s for 2 hours, shorter duration strike platforms, all collaborating in real time, leveraging each other's sensor data, doing battle damage assessment that informs the next wave takes the capability to a completely different level and becomes a true force multiplier. When you combine these loitering munitions with SwarmOS, we believe you get a capability set that nobody anywhere in the world has anything close to. The relationship provides us up to 10 years of exclusivity is performance-based and has the potential to expand to other products and systems as we gain traction.

We will be disciplined about capital deployment. We are not standing up high-volume production facilities until we have a clear demand signal from the U.S. government. This is not a build it and we hope they will come scenario. With a blueprint for proven scale manufacturing that has evolved and been perfected by our partners at IAI over decades, we can and will move expeditiously once it becomes clear that the U.S. government is ready to move out with these platforms. Depending on the volumes involved, we think we can have the first units produced in 12 to 18 months from the time the government says go.

To answer the question, can you actually build these things? The answer is yes. We have the team and know-how, and we have a meaningful head start with facilities and equipment. We have over 100,000 square feet of certified precision manufacturing in Oxford and Saginaw, Michigan and available space in Salt Lake City. We are currently making components for the F-35, the F-16, F-22, C-130, Tomahawk, Harpoon, JDAM, Bradley and M1A1 Abrams programs. We have major primes like Lockheed, Boeing and Kratos as a few of the current customers we can name publicly, and we have plenty of capacity to do more.

I personally have been through IAI's factory in Israel. This is not a terribly CapEx-intensive manufacturing endeavor. We will scale what we have. And if demand outstrips our current capabilities, we will expand. Specific decisions about facilities and production capacity will again be made as we get a sense for demand from the U.S. government.

So now let's talk about momentum in our core business. Since the start of Q2, we have accomplished a number of important milestones in addition to securing the IAI partnership. Most importantly, we recently completed a 3-week Department of War exercise running SwarmOS across multiple drones from different manufacturers with a single operator. The feedback was, a, that we exceeded expectations; and b, at least in one senior leader's view, every drone in the arsenal should be equipped with SwarmOS. We agree.

On top of that, we flew IntelliSwarm for the first time in that exercise. We've been invited to participate with SwarmOS in 5 other Department of War exercises over the remainder of this year. On the partnership front, we have multiple new drone OEM integrations in progress. Next, we received a significant order for BRAIN, our advanced flight computer. We'll talk more about that in the future. And finally, we added retired Lieutenant General, Sean Bernabe and retired Brigadier General, Gwyn Armfield to our team. A lot of validation has happened in a short time, and we are just getting started.

So why now? Four things are happening simultaneously that create a specific and time-limited opportunity for a company built exactly the way we have built Palladyne. The Department of War has a clear cost per effect mandate. Priorities are shifting from the biggest and most expensive to the smartest, cheapest and fastest. Everything we are building from Gremlin-X and SwarmStrike to ALRRM to the IAI loaded munitions family is a direct answer to that mandate.

There is an executive mandate for domestic defense production. Reshoring is policy backed by real action, bringing the world's most battle-proven loitering munitions to America and manufacturing them here is exactly what that policy is designed to produce. Autonomous systems are moving from concept to operational deployment right now, not just someday in the future. We are running SwarmOS in live Department of War exercises now. And the threat environment has changed. Intermittent mobile air defenses are increasingly challenging counter -- are increasingly challenging us.

Counter UAS systems often rely on intermittent radars. All of this creates contested airspace. The ability to suppress and destroy enemy air defense is more relevant than ever before. We announced the partnership yesterday, and there is much to do. We will be disciplined on capital [indiscernible] build ahead of demand. But when you look at what we have built, who we are partnered with, what the Department of War needs, and where defense procurement is heading. The fit here is as good as anything I have seen. We are not boys with toys. We are men and women on a mission, and the mission just got an order of magnitude bigger.

With that, we can open the line for questions. Operator?

Our first question comes from the line of Max Michaelis with Lake Street Capital Markets.

You mentioned that you'd be able to stand up sort of a munition system manufacturing process in 12 to 18 months from the time DoD set to go. Do you expect that to come at the end of 2026, where you kind of go through the testing phases and the DoD is kind of ready to go forward with this?

Max, we expect that to begin literally as soon as we see that there is real interest and demand from the government. So it's hard for me to peg a specific timeline on that. It could happen next month. It could happen in 6 months. I think it really depends on the demand signals that we see from the government. But we are gearing up from the standpoint of our team's focus to be able to move out as quickly as the government wants to.

Okay. And then just going back to some of the Q2 updates. When we look at sort of the order activity, I know Q1 was a little bit slower. Q2 is going to pick up in Q3 and Q4 are going to accelerate from the first half of the year. I mean how has order activity trended in Q2 kind of going into Q3?

So I'd say that we are on track with what we had internally anticipated. I'm not going to get into a lot of specifics since we are only partway through Q2, but we are pleased with the momentum that we see in the business.

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

Phenomenal news here. I think this is exciting to watch unfold. I had some questions here. I believe you already are talking to U.S. prospects here on the loitering munitions. I was just wondering what the main agencies are that you're targeting.

So Army and Navy are the 2 organizations that we think have the biggest need and have -- and could represent the largest orders. Long-range precision fires in the Army is one program that I think has some published requirements that our new systems could meet. But when you take a look at things like the Mini HARPY, as I mentioned in my comments, the tactical and operational capabilities that make it maybe right for USSOCOM, Marines, et cetera. So I think we've got opportunities across all of the services with these systems.

And again, as I mentioned, all of them fill unique mission profiles that we really don't have other products in the U.S. arsenal to address today.

Awesome. And a quick follow-on on that. Are the contacts that you're talking to now, are these ones you've had in the past or new ones or maybe a mix?

All of the above. Yes, all of the above. And again, we were cautious about not having a lot of discussions in advance of the news coming out. So yesterday morning marked go time, but we've already had some great inquiries just as a result of the news that came out.

Great. Let's see, one more here. How comfortable are you that a customer will buy these loitering munition systems if you do not have an Americanized version yet? And then maybe is there a need to bring a demo or two online to sell this further?

So we believe that there is a possibility that the U.S. government might want to get started sooner rather than later, in which case we might not need to have fully Americanized versions. It's just -- it's too early to tell what the requirement will be. You see some indication just in recent months of the U.S.'s willingness to get started with systems that are foreign-made systems. I don't have a clear crystal ball on that at this point.

Having said that, the Americanization process is not going to involve reengineering the hardware and propulsion systems, we don't think. We think that to the extent that it has requirements associated with it, it might involve things like some of the software, some of the guidance systems, things like that, things that our team has core competencies in, and we would not expect to take a long time. But so much is going to depend ultimately on just the appetite and how quickly they want to start getting these systems integrated into the overall capability set that the U.S. military has.

Great. And then just one more quick one, if I could. What specific budget line items are you looking at that could cover the loitering munitions?

So there are literally 6 different PAOs and PEOs that have that have budget for this kind of system. And as I mentioned in my comments, we think that, that is hundreds of billions of dollars at this point that will be spent over a period of years. So these are -- there isn't just one line item specifically. There are some very large line items that these systems could very easily fit into.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

Can you lay out the road map and estimated time related to the milestones for getting to production ready?

Again, Brian, it depends so much on what the government wants to see happen in terms of the evolution of these systems. It's one thing to make them as they are currently designed and architected in the U.S. It's another thing to make modifications to them and then go into production. So I think in an ideal case, where what the government really cares about is them being made in America -- by an American company with supply chain that is not concerning to them because it's got foreign sourcing. That is a much easier thing to stand up, and that's where we think we could have first units in 12 to 18 months from the time that the government says go.

But I want to be really clear, that requires the government to say go and then requires us to promptly move out and start that production process. To the extent that the government wants changes to be made, it's unpredictable at that point how long that might take. But our expectation would be to the extent the government wants changes that the government would be funding those changes.

So to be clear, 12 to 18 months, if they are okay with as is, if they need modifications, it's that additional time on top of it?

That's right. And some of that might be able to happen simultaneously. It just depends on what -- it just depends, Brian, on what the extent of the changes are.

And what are the investments the company needs to make to execute the road map, including people over the next 12 to 18 months?

I think we've got all of the people and facilities required to do whatever is necessary from an Americanization process in terms of the assembly process and overall production of the systems. If we get into larger volumes, think anywhere from dozens to hundreds of units a month, we will need more physical space. As I mentioned, though, from my review of the facilities that do comparable work in Israel, this is not a hugely capital-intensive process. It requires space, but it does not require exquisite equipment other than when it comes to testing the products as they come off of the assembly line.

And so there will be some CapEx associated certainly with being able to do all of the testing and vetting and validation required for systems that are 10-foot wingspan systems. But we're not talking about huge dollars here. I want to reserve comment on what that means until I understand what kind of volumes we're really talking about.

Great. And then lastly, I know it's very early. You haven't produced one yet. But what are the economics split between you and IAI on the drones? And what does the margin profile look like long term at scale for this maybe?

So the economic terms with IAI are favorable to us in many respects. It has a single-digit kind of industry standard royalty rate that we will pay them for the sale of each system that we secure to the U.S. government. In addition, we will look to them to provide components and subsystems that they can provide cost effectively to us. So I'm sure they will have some margin on whatever they provide to us as being the prime. But other than that, it's a very straight up deal.

So in terms of the margins that we expect, Brian, so much of that depends on what we are able to ultimately successfully sell these systems to the U.S. government for and what they have an appetite for. So I would say that there's -- you can look at others that are in the business of selling larger Group 2, Group 3, Group 4 UAV platforms to the U.S. government, take a look at what those margin profiles look like, and that is what I would expect us to be achieving as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Suji Desilva with ROTH Capital Partners.

Trevor, congratulations on this exciting announcement. Ben, has the domestic component sourcing effort versus how IAI sources now, has that already begun? Have you been proactive about that? Or is that something you'd have to wait for a government contract to begin? Any color there would be helpful.

So because of our internal component manufacturing capability, we've obviously scoped out what we would want to do on our side through our own manufacturing capabilities. In terms of the rest of the supply chain, that's something that we're really just getting started on now. We got the partnership terms negotiated and inked and now the transfer of information that ranges everything from the facilities requirements to the engineering specs to the BOM and everything in between, that transfer of information starts now. So we're just really just -- we're at the top of the first inning when it comes to that part.

All right. That's helpful, Ben. And then just can you touch again on the competitive selection that IAI went through in selecting you guys, what the key factors were there? I know you covered some of that in the prepared remarks, but any summary or color there would be helpful.

Yes. I mean, obviously, they probably ought to speak and can speak to this better than me. I don't know all that went into their selection process. We do know that because of the capability of these systems and how unique they are, IAI probably could have partnered with anybody they wanted to. And I have some anecdotal information about others that were interested and whether or not they were part of a formal process or not, I can't answer that question.

But what we do know is what they've told us, which is represented in some of the quotes in the press release that we issued yesterday. It is a combination of the way we do business, our proven track record as a leadership team, our autonomy capabilities, our manufacturing capabilities and our engineering capabilities. All of that combined gave them confidence that we were the right partner for them.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. This concludes our question-and-answer session and will conclude our call today. We thank you for your interest and participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Greetings, and welcome to Palladyne AI First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Siegel with Hayden IR. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Palladyne AI's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer.

Earlier this morning, Palladyne issued a press release announcing financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026, along with updated commentary regarding backlog and reiterated its 2026 revenue guidance. A copy of that release, along with the accompanying financial tables, is available on the IR section of Palladyne AI's website.

Today's call will include prepared remarks from Ben and Trevor, followed by a question-and-answer session.

During the call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meanings of the federal securities laws. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Palladyne's 2026 revenue guidance, expected backlog conversion, anticipated quarterly operating cash usage, product development milestones, commercialization timelines, defense program activity, potential customer adoption, market opportunities and future strategic positioning across aerospace, land and maritime domains.

Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, Palladyne AI's ability to execute on development programs, convert backlog into revenue, scale production, manage operating expenses, integrate acquired businesses, secure additional contracts, maintain liquidity and navigate evolving defense and commercial market conditions.

These and other risk factors are described in detail in Palladyne AI's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Palladyne undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

In addition, during this call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. In general, management will adjust for acquisition and other transaction-related expenses, stock-based compensation expense, noncash warrant income or expense that are marked to market quarterly based on changes in the company's stock price, expenses related to the change in contingent consideration liabilities associated with closed acquisitions and any tax impact these items may cause. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in this morning's press release.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I want to cover 3 things this morning. First, I'll walk you through the first quarter's results. Second, I'll discuss what we accomplished operationally across the business in Q1. And third, I'll talk about what's on deck because the opportunity in front of us is larger and more concrete than it has ever been.

Our revenue for the first quarter increased 107% year-over-year to $3.5 million, which was in line with our internal expectations. Having said that, revenue for the quarter could have been even better were it not for the federal government shutdown, which temporarily delayed program activity across several of our defense contracts. That work was not canceled and the contracts remain in place. The work simply shifted in timing, and it remains in backlog. I want to be clear about this because I know it will come up when we get to questions.

The shutdown created a revenue timing issue, but not a demand issue. In short, the business performed as we internally expected. With respect to backlog, we entered Q1 with approximately $13.5 million, recognized $3.5 million in revenue during the quarter and exited with approximately $17 million.

So we added approximately $7 million in new contract awards during the quarter, net of revenue recognized. That is a meaningful bookings number, and it gives you a sense of the activity level that doesn't show up in our reported revenues. That backlog provides us with good visibility into the revenue ramp ahead, and we are reiterating our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million to $27 million, which implies approximately 357% to 415% growth compared to 2025. We expect revenue to grow sequentially each quarter with the growth rate accelerating in the second half of the year as backlog converts and new contracts are awarded.

Our operating cash usage for the quarter came in modestly above our guided range of $8 million to $9 million on average per quarter. This was driven largely by 3 things. First, we began building inventory for BRAIN flight computer production for existing customers. That inventory build is not a cost issue, it is a working capital investment tied to near-term revenue, and we expect it to convert as we fulfill those orders. Second, we accelerated some hiring based on the strength of new opportunities we saw in the first quarter. And finally, we incurred costs in our manufacturing business to develop and produce first articles for some of our more recent contracts, but have not yet transitioned to full rate production in large part due to the government shutdown. Again, this is simply a timing issue.

We expect quarterly cash usage to tend -- to trend toward and remain within the previously guided range as revenue and margins ramp through the remainder of the year. Liquidity as of March 31 was $43.7 million, and we believe we remain well positioned to execute our 2026 plan.

Before I get into the operational highlights, I want to spend a few minutes on a topic that I think provides important context for everything else I'm going to say. There remains a lot of confusion in our industry about what our technology actually does and how it is different from what other companies are offering.

I published 2 white papers with my co-Founder, Denis Garagic, during the quarter, specifically to address that confusion, and I want to walk you through the core ideas. The first paper is about what we call Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy, or DECA for short. The central point of that paper is pretty straightforward. Most software platforms that people associate with modern artificial intelligence lives in massive centralized data centers. They are optimized for thinking, analyzing data, recognizing patterns, generating language, supporting human decision-making, and they are very good at that.

The challenge is that machines operating dynamic real-world physical environments cannot rely on that kind of centralized cloud-based intelligence. A drone can't wait for a round-trip comms link to a data center. A robot on a factory floor needs to react in fractions of a second. A missile system operating in a communications denied environment has to be self-sufficient. Nature actually solved this problem a long time ago. Think about how human intelligence works. At any moment, the human body is generating an enormous amount of sensory data from sight, sound, touch and our other sensors. Almost none of that ever reaches conscious thought. The vast majority of it is filtered, processed and acted upon locally, automatically by fast systems that operate far below the level of conscious reasoning.

You don't think about how to keep your balance when you walk. You do not reason through catching a falling object. Those things happen automatically, locally in real time. And that architecture works because it has to work that way. There is no other way. The physics does not allow for anything else in a world where reaction time and energy efficiency are constrained.

Our technology is modeled on that same biological principle. Intelligence lives on the machine. Perception is filtered locally, not centrally. Decisions are made predictively rather than reactively. Machines collaborate through decentralized interactions rather than waiting for instructions from a centralized controller. That is the essence of DECA, and that is what we have built into our products.

The second paper applied to the SAE automotive autonomy framework developed by the auto industry for self-driving cars and applying that to drone autonomy and swarming. For reasons we did this -- the reasons we did this is that there is enormous confusion in the market about what autonomy and swarming actually mean.

We recognize that all software is not the same. It has different purposes, uses, capabilities and compute requirements. Similarly, not all autonomy is the same and not all swarming is the same, but the same basic words are used to describe a myriad of different capabilities.

We are changing that narrative. The paper walks through a clear taxonomy from basic remote control all the way up to what we call Oracle-Class Wolf Pack Swarming, which is decentralized, predictive, collaborative autonomy where the swarm is not just reacting to what it observes in the moment, but participating -- but anticipating what is likely to happen, positioning assets and allocating sensing resources in advance of events rather than in response to them. As far as I know, we are unique in having developed this capability, and we are actively working to bring it into the commercialized version of SwarmOS.

Our current SwarmOS product already operates at the Wolf Pack Swarming level, which is genuinely different and more capable than what anyone else in this space is offering, regardless of how they describe their systems. Oracle-Class is the next step, and we are further along toward it than any competitor we are aware of. I encourage investors to read both papers. They are on our website. They're not long, and I think they will give you a much clearer framework for understanding what we are building and why we believe it is different and highly valuable.

Now let me walk you through what actually happened in the business during the quarter. The most significant operational milestone of the quarter was a demonstration of true heterogeneous autonomous swarming. We flew Gremlin-X, our reusable mini bomber UAV platform, that was previously known as Project Banshee, running our IntelliSwarm product in a coordinated test swarm alongside multiple Red Cat platforms also running our SwarmOS autonomy software.

I want to explain why this is different from what you typically hear described as drone swarming because the distinction matters a great deal. A lot of what's called swarming in our industry is really preprogrammed flight coordination, where the only function that happens automatically is collision avoidance. This is akin to lane-changing sensors on a modern car. Otherwise, the drone follows a script. If you have seen drone light shows, that is a form of swarming, but every drone knows exactly where it is supposed to be at every moment because someone programmed it that way in advance. If something unexpected happens, the system does not know what to do.

What we demonstrated in Q1 is fundamentally different. Each drone running SwarmOS was perceiving its environment independently, reasoning independently about what to do, acting on its own judgment within the mission parameters and collaborating with other platforms in real time. There was no script, there was no centralized controller calling plays. It is the distributed adaptive intelligence that the Department of War says we need, but many thought was 5 to 10 years away at best. It is resilient in ways that preprogrammed systems simply are not, particularly in contested and communications degraded environments. What makes that kind of distributed autonomous operation deployable at scale is the hardware underneath it.

During the quarter, we progressed the development of our BRAIN flight computer variants, including a scaled-down version of the commercialized X2 variant called FC1. BRAIN is the hardware that when combined with SwarmOS forms IntelliSwarm, a product deployable at scale across autonomous platforms.

We recently received a $500,000 first order from a defense tech company for the BRAIN X2. Next, we expanded the Draganfly partnership during the quarter by conducting a lab simulation of SwarmOS running on Draganfly's commercial defense platform. The next step is to integrate SwarmOS into their drones and run flight tests.

Q1 was also the quarter we established a real presence in the space domain through 2 separate engagements. Through our HANGTIME award with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, or AFRL, we will integrate SwarmOS with a space-based satellite sensor grid, enabling UAVs to develop even better situational awareness. This is the first planned integration of our collaborative autonomy platform with space-based assets, demonstrating that our AI can leverage data from all domains, air, land, sea and space, to improve mission effectiveness.

Separately, we secured a contract with Portal Space Systems to support development of next-generation maneuverable spacecraft platforms, providing navigation, guidance, spacecraft modeling, embedded software and avionics support. Portal is building spacecraft designed to reposition across orbits on compressed timelines with minimal ground intervention, a class of problem well suited to our edge native architecture. Looking ahead, we see opportunities to expand the partnership to include Palladyne's autonomy capabilities.

Through Palladyne Aerospace and Defense, we secured a contract with a major U.S. defense prime contractor to deliver a mission-critical propulsion subsystem for an existing U.S. missile system program, and we expect that contract to contribute nearly $1 million in revenue this year. This is a validation of our precision manufacturing capabilities and continues to expand our footprint in long life cycle defense programs. This contract is an example of the government shutdown impacting our first quarter revenue as we are still waiting for the evaluation of our first article.

On the industrial autonomy side of our business, we are in active deployment with our first IQ 2.0 customer with the initial robot system integration currently underway. This is a non-contact surface treatment application, and it is a use case where IQ's combination of teleoperation and simplified path planning addresses a real industrial problem that no robot manufacturer or AI company currently solves with an off-the-shelf product. The customers' operations offer what I would describe as a potential land-and-expand opportunity. The initial deployment is one robot.

As the customer builds confidence in the system and experiences all that it can do, the natural progression is to add more robots and expand use cases. We think that is going to be the typical adoption pattern for IQ, and is -- it is consistent with how enterprise automation technology tends to scale in industrial environments.

Matt Muta transitioned from the Board to an operating role during this past quarter, joining us as President of Commercial and Industrial. Matt has real experience building and scaling enterprise technology businesses and his focus will be on converting the IT pipeline into customers.

We also received a new patent during the quarter supporting advanced swarming and decentralized autonomy architectures, and we filed 2 new patent applications related to our AI software products and technologies. Our intellectual property portfolio is growing alongside our product portfolio, which is important for the long-term defensibility of what we are building.

Next, I want to spend a few minutes on the broader context because the environment we are operating in has changed significantly, and I think it is worth being explicit about what that means for us. The Department of War is committing an unprecedented amount of resources to autonomous systems, collaborative swarming, counter-UAS, long-range precision fires, hypersonics and missile defense. These are not abstract priorities, they are specific trackable programs and budget lines that we are actively engaged with.

The Defense Innovation Unit has seen its budget grow substantially and its funding programs, specifically around multi-domain collaborative autonomy. PAE Fires, the Army's portfolio acquisition executive responsible for artillery, missile defense and sensor systems, oversees a set of programs spanning long-range precision weapons, hypersonic weapons, integrated air and missile defense and counter UAS, each of which represents a potential opportunity for our product and service lines.

And Golden Dome, the administration's flagship missile defense initiative, is one of the largest single defense investment priorities in a generation. We are pursuing opportunities across these and other programs and budget lines for SwarmOS, BRAIN, IntelliSwarm, Gremlin-X, SwarmStrike and our engineering services and research and development groups, including the Mark XL program.

I want to be honest about this, we are a relatively small company pursuing very large programs, and not every pursuit is going to result in a win, but the alignment between what the Department of War is prioritizing and what we have actually built has never been stronger, and this is the environment in which we are operating.

One of the most meaningful near-term proof points for what I just described is our invitation to participate in Northern Strike 26-2. Northern Strike is a premier Department of War joint exercise hosted August 2 through August 14 at the National All-Domain Warfighting Center at Camp Grayling, Michigan, which was designed as the drone dominance -- which was designated as the drone dominance range in the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act.

It is a joint national training capability accredited exercise involving more than 9,000 participants operating across contested multi-domain environments. It serves as one of the most demanding operational validation environments available to emerging defense technology companies as well as a recognized gateway to operational programs of record.

We will be demonstrating SwarmOS on 4 distinct UAV platforms from 4 different OEMs, including our own Gremlin-X, with each drone collaborating autonomously and managed by a single operator, by a single ATAC interface. The exercise will validate cross-platform swarm collaboration across multiple UAV classes and manufacturers, decentralized decision-making that is resilient to denied or degraded communications, real-time mission adaptation across dynamic conditions and significantly reduced operator burden relative to conventional approaches.

For us, Northern Strike is also a direct engagement with military end users and acquisition stakeholders who influence programs of record, which is exactly where we need to demonstrate this technology.

I also want to highlight something that happened just after quarter end, but that directly reflects the work we did throughout Q1 and before. GuideTech was selected as one of only 14 companies invited to participate in the AFRL Relentless Wolfpack Industry Day hosted by the Air Force in collaboration with the Doolittle Institute on April 28 and 29. We were the only company in that group that most people would describe as a small cap. Our inclusion reflects the maturity of what we have actually built. GuideTech's submission combines SwarmStrike, our internally developed low-cost cruise missile, with SwarmOS to deliver a networked collaborative autonomous weapon solution.

We are targeting a cost of less than $150,000 per swarm strike, which means you can put 10 of them in the air for the price of a single conventional cruise missile and then network them through SwarmOS to combine the effects on targets simultaneously. That cost per effect argument is precisely what the Department of War is focused on right now. SwarmStrike has completed its initial flight test, and we are actively advancing the program through multiple government channels.

Separately, and I want to be clear, this is a distinct development, a different defense prime participating in the same relentless Wolfpack cohort independently chose to incorporate SwarmOS into their own submission. They evaluated the platform on its merits and built it into their own hardware solution. We didn't arrange that. That is the beginning of the platform adoption story we have been working toward where SwarmOS becomes the autonomy layer that other companies build on, not just a product we sell directly.

Taken together, Northern Strike and Relentless Wolfpack are not isolated events. They are evidence of something broader. The strategy is working. The products are being validated in real operational and acquisition context, and the market is beginning to recognize what we have built. That is what I want investors to take away from everything I have described today.

Let me close by putting all of this in context of where we are in the progression. On our Q4 call, I described our strategy as crawl, walk and run progression, not as separate strategies, but as stages of maturation. I want to come back to that framework because I think it is the right lens for understanding Q1 and what comes after it. 2026 is the crawl year, as I said before. Crawl is about proving that the integrated model actually works at scale, converting backlog into revenue, executing live demos and trials and advancing development stage assets towards defined milestones.

Our wins in the first quarter achieved all of these objectives, $7 million in new contract awards, a successful swarm demonstration across multiple platforms from different manufacturers, 2 new space engagements, active deployment of our first Commercial IQ customer, 2 white papers that established our intellectual framework on the public record, a Northern Strike invitation, a key patent issuance and 2 new patent applications. That is a lot of activity that progresses us towards our objectives. In 2027, we will walk. Walk is when proof becomes repeatable.

We expect broader SwarmOS and IntelliSwarm integrations, more IQ wins, more BRAIN wins and expanded defense programs with multiple product-based revenue streams running concurrently. That is when growth starts to become more systemic and less dependent on individual contract timing. And then we run. Run is where the full vision becomes operational across aerospace and eventually land and sea, where IntelliSwarm enables larger and more complex distributed systems, where the autonomy and propulsion architectures we are developing today start to converge and where the revenue is systemic rather than episodic.

In conclusion, we know what we are building. We know why it is different, and we believe the work we are doing in 2026 is laying the foundation for everything that follows.

With that, I will turn it over to Trevor.

Thanks, Ben. I'll focus on our first quarter results, liquidity position and capital outlook. Revenue from the first quarter of 2026 increased 107% to $3.5 million. compared to $1.7 million last year. The increase was due to the inclusion of post-acquisition revenues from the acquired companies. Within that $3.5 million, product revenue, which today is mainly derived from our manufacturing business, was $1.7 million.

Engineering services revenue, which includes GuideTech, was $1.8 million. We did not recognize meaningful product development contract revenue this quarter, but we expect this will pick up beginning in the second quarter as awarded business turns into signed contracts as we execute on recently signed contracts and as our existing contracts get extended through contract options.

This quarter represents the first full quarter of revenue flowing from the businesses acquired in November of 2025. Cost of revenue for the quarter was $2.5 million compared to $0.4 million in the prior year period. Consolidated gross margin for the quarter was approximately 30%, which reflects the current revenue mix. Product margins in our manufacturing business were compressed by low capacity utilization and first article costs. As utilization improves and revenue ramps, we expect manufacturing product margins to improve accordingly.

Our software products, when they begin generating meaningful revenue, are expected to carry the highest margins in the portfolio, in line with typical software margin costs. The 30% consolidated figure is not representative of where we expect to be as revenue ramps and mix evolves. Research and development expense was $3.9 million compared to $2.9 million last year, reflecting continued investment in autonomy software, avionics and product development programs from both Palladyne and the acquired companies.

As we've discussed in prior quarters, we are investing in Gremlin-X and SwarmStrike development, the former of which was a major focus during the quarter. We expect continued investment over the next couple of quarters to bring that platform closer to commercialization.

General and administrative expense was $6.9 million compared to $4.2 million in the prior year period. This increase reflects the incremental scope of G&A and overhead functions from the acquired businesses as well as select hiring to drive and support growth. Sales and marketing expense was $1.9 million compared to $1.2 million last year, reflecting expanded marketing programs and business development efforts. Operating loss for the quarter was $11.9 million compared to $6.9 million in the prior year period.

GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $12.6 million or $0.28 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for the first quarter was $10.2 million or $0.23 per share. The primary differences between GAAP and non-GAAP results were a $1 million noncash loss related to change in fair value of warrant liabilities this quarter, driven largely by the change in the price of our common stock and public warrants.

In the year ago quarter, we saw a $29.2 million noncash gain from warrant liabilities, $1.2 million of stock-based compensation expense and $150,000 loss related to change in our contingent consideration liability. We believe excluding these items provides a clearer view of our underlying operating performance and cash usage.

Turning to liquidity. As of March 31, we had $43.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. During the quarter, we incurred minimal CapEx and used approximately $10.2 million in operating cash, partially offset by $6.5 million in net proceeds from our ATM program. Backlog as of quarter end was $17 million, up from $13.5 million at the end of 2025, reflecting gross additions of $7 million, offset by this quarter's recognized revenue of $3.5 million.

Ben has already announced that we are reiterating our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million to $27 million. This outlook reflects the contribution of the businesses acquired in November, and we continue to expect organic growth across each part of the company on a full year comparable basis. We also continue to expect total CapEx and OpEx cash burn for the year to be in the range of $32 million to $36 million or approximately $8 million to $9 million per quarter on average for the remainder of the year.

The increase from our 2025 run rate reflects ongoing OpEx investments in SwarmOS and IQ, bringing acquired programs to operational readiness and the incremental headcount costs I mentioned earlier. This also includes CapEx for our manufacturing business and the acquisition of several third-party drones to validate SwarmOS's collaborative swarming capabilities on new platforms.

Based on our liquidity position and expected backlog conversion, we believe we are well positioned to execute our 2026 plan.

Operator, we're now ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Michael Latimore of Northland Capital Markets.

Congrats on the start to the year here. So Ben, I think you mentioned -- I just want to clarify that a defense prime is integrated to ROS. I want to just clarify that you said that? And if so, can you elaborate a little bit? Are you exclusive? Is this related to UAVs or is it multi-domain? Any particular end programs you're dealing with?

So they have not actually done the integration yet. What I said was -- and the key takeaway is that on a major defense program where they are trying to become the prime on a contract award, they have included our autonomy software as an important element of that submission. So we would -- if they wind up winning that contract, we would wind up being a subcontractor to that prime. It does relate to machines that are flying as opposed to something that's in space or in -- on the sea or on land. So it is an aeronautical type of application.

Okay. Interesting. Okay. And then maybe talk a little bit about just your manufacturing operations. What is the capacity utilization now? Where might that go by year-end?

So right now, we think that we are roughly stated around 30% of our total utilization capability. So we have a lot of excess capacity that is not going to be able to produce significant more revenues and increase our margins. As Trevor referenced, we don't have to do a lot more in terms of additional investment to be able to drive a lot more revenue through those production facilities.

Great. And then just last on gross margin. It sound -- sort of sounds like you feel like gross margin probably improves by year-end? Or is that the takeaway?

No question. When you have these new start-up defense contracts where we're producing -- expecting to produce large volumes of particular components for aircraft and missile systems, one of the important milestones to unlock go-forward revenue is to produce a first article that gets evaluated for tolerance and precision, et cetera, and we have to get the government to approve that first article so then we can open up the gates on the high-volume manufacturing. That has been delayed on some of our key contracts. So when you look at our margins, as Trevor referenced, we have all of the costs incurred to develop that first article, but none of the revenue that associates with it. So when you look at our overall margins across manufacturing, it looks depressed this quarter because of that investment in getting to first article.

The next question is coming from Greg Konrad of Jefferies.

Maybe just to go back to a couple of things that you talked about. Just on the SwarmOS, I mean, you talked about that being on 4 platforms and kind of laid out the crawl walk scenario for the next 2 years. Can you maybe talk about just kind of next steps? And if you can just remind us on when you think about like autonomy software, like what is the monetization? How do you get paid and how we think about that kind of going forward?

Sure. So we have -- I'm really delighted with the progress that we've had. When you and I have talked before, we've talked about the fact that our primary goal for '26 is to get different customers within the Pentagon to be able to understand that this technology exists that it works, that it's not just on PowerPoint and how differentiated it is from everything else that people talk about in terms of swarming and autonomy.

I think we're hitting all the marks on that. And frankly, we're doing it even earlier in the year than I had expected us to do. So I think we're seeing great traction. We're actually out on an exercise right now, where we are operating in a real battlefield environment. And soldiers are telling us that this should be the standard platform going forward for collaborative autonomy and swarming. So we're getting great feedback. It's going really well.

In terms of what our business model looks like, our expectation and what we've talked with government customers about is that our software will cost the government about 10% of the overall UAV platform cost. So if we're talking about $40,000 drone, our cost will be $4,000. If we're talking about $1 million drone, the cost for our software will be $100,000. And if you're talking about a $4,000 drone, the cost will be $400. That makes sense to the government, and it makes sense to us because when we talk about these larger, more exquisite drones that cost more, they have more sensor capabilities on them. They have longer duration in the air. They are far more capable. And the more capable the platform, the more value and utility our software brings to the battlefield.

So it is really a value pricing proposition. It is a onetime upfront license fee. Most drones aren't expected to survive in the battlefield for longer than 1 year. So this is almost like a razor blade business in that we're continually selling more software on more drones. They get used, they get expended and the government buys more of them.

And then just on the full year guidance, I mean, you called out some of the issues, including the government shutdown in Q1 and kind of how you expect that to ramp through the year. Thinking about like backlog and what's maybe not in backlog with expected awards, I mean, how do you think about visibility into year-end and some of the expected awards? How much is competitive versus just follow-ons and just kind of how you think about visibility for the rest of the year?

So when you take a look at the $7 million of new contracts in the first quarter, obviously, if we just did that every quarter and if all of the revenue was coming in on kind of a very scheduled basis, 4 quarters' time $7 million, you've got $28 million. We believe that every quarter will increase and that -- consistent with our internal plan, we knew first quarter was going to be lower. We expect second quarter to be larger than first and so on and so forth throughout the rest of the year as we continue to build the business. And we executed on

all 3 aspects of the business, the software side, the manufacturing side, the engineering services side and the drone hardware side included in that.

So we believe that with what we have in backlog and with the go-gets that we have that are in the pipeline, we are highly confident at this point with where we -- with being able to hit that $24 million to $27 million guidance.

And then maybe just last one for me. I mean you called out the award with Portal. How are you thinking about the space opportunity in general? I mean, how is that emerging and just kind of how you're thinking about that going forward?

I think volume in space is going to be far more limited than what we look at terrestrially. But there's obviously much larger dollars on individual discrete efforts going into it. And so I think it is a very potentially large opportunity set for us, potentially lucrative. But to be candid, it is an area that we see as kind of a growth opportunity for us, but not something that we're putting anywhere near the kind of investment of effort and resources into the way we are on kind of terrestrial UAV efforts.

So we are taking those opportunity sets and pursuing them on a more discrete basis. I'd say that's more of a rifle-shot approach, whereas what we're doing with trying to get our software anywhere and everywhere that it can be relevant on UAV, that's more of a scatter gun or a shotgun approach.

In both cases, I think we're applying the appropriate amount of resources to realize the opportunity. I think space can be big. I think it will be longer duration to get too big than it is near term the way we are with terrestrial drones.

Our next question is coming from Max Michaelis of Lake Street Capital Partners.

First one, I just want to go back to Draganfly. So you guys finished up a few successful flight simulations in the quarter. I think you mentioned you're going to be moving on to live flight tests. Kind of help us out with sort of a timeline, what it looks like in 2026, when you guys are going to start these flight tests and kind of when this becomes more of a -- I guess, not meaningful partnership, but when does this start to kind of turn into some revenue?

So we're expecting to have some of our demonstrations on the Draganfly platform, I think, starting in this current quarter, in the second quarter. Certainly, I know we've got some plan for the third quarter where we're actually out with the government customers. I mean you know the drill with the defense contract. You have to show them that it works, that it exists. They then decide to go allocate dollars towards it, you negotiate a contract and you get an award.

So I can't give you a prediction on when this becomes -- when that specific partnership results in revenue for us and Draganfly. But what I can tell you is our partnership with them is very important because they are one of the core platforms that we've identified has a unique capability set that with our software on it can show increased value to the government customer. So it's an important partnership for us, and we expect to be getting that integration done in this quarter, the second quarter and doing demonstrations for the government as soon as that integration is done.

Okay. And then last one for me. I don't think anybody has touched on sort of the commercial side of business with the IQ 2.0. I mean you talked about this customer that you're actively deploying with. I mean I'm assuming this initial deployment, you have a few systems in there, but does this customer have sort of the capacity to bring on -- to become a meaningful customer sometime in the future?

So the important thing about this customer is, yes, to answer your question, they have the ability to scale to more machines with our software on it once they become delighted with what they see from the first installation. More importantly is this is the first time that we've had an active partnership with systems integrator, an indirect channel partner, if you will, and I mentioned on our prior call last quarter that one of the things we needed to figure out was how we create an attractive economic value proposition, both for ourselves, for our end customer, but also for the systems integrator because there -- as you know, there are some 1,800 systems integrators and maybe even more at this point across the United States. Getting them to be out selling for us was kind of a holy grail moment for us, and that happened in the first quarter.

So we've got this partnership now with the first systems integrator. We've got several other discussions underway where we've been able to figure out how we talk about this product and the economic opportunity associated with it in a way that works for both the systems integrator and for us and the end customer. So the reason that's important is systems integrators obviously deal with a lot of different customers, and they can be an indirect channel to get our message out there more broadly. So that's what we're really excited about.

Yes, the first deployment is going very well. I mentioned in my prepared remarks that it is about surface preparation. So think about doing things like sand blasting, sanding, grinding, those kinds of applications, even paint application on surfaces. Those are all the kinds of jobs that have historically required a human to do the job because of the variability associated with that kind of task. And we're showing the end user and the systems integrator how it can be done now with a robot on an automated basis using our IQ 2.0 software.

The next question is coming from Brian Kinstlinger of Alliance Global Partners.

Can you quantify how much revenue was delayed due to the government shutdown? How would you characterize the procurement environment now? And then can you quantify TCV or bids outstanding in pipeline?

So, I can't quantify what was the amount associated with the delay because it's frankly difficult, Brian, to know had we gotten first articles approved, how much would have actually been taken based -- in the quarter based on when that approval had happened. So I can't really quantify that.

Again, I'll tell you, reiterate that even with the government shutdown, we actually achieved what our internal projections called for. And so I'd ask you to take that plus the guidance that we've given and assume we're going to ramp over the remaining 3 quarters to achieve what we expect to achieve.

In terms of the pipeline, I can't quantify pipeline. I mean we obviously have internal numbers, but I don't want to throw that out there. The thing that we feel very solid about is backlog, which means it's contractually committed. I don't want to speculate beyond what's contractually committed.

Well, in one of the prior questions, you talked about needing something like $7 million of bookings per quarter. Maybe talk about what the sales cycle generally you're seeing right now? Is it months? Is it things you've been bidding on for a very long time? Just kind of help us understand what that sales cycle looks like?

Yes, sure. So on the software side, we're seeing stuff that we had expected was a 12- to 18-month sales cycle, and we're seeing things now coming in, in less than 6 weeks. That might be an anomaly. It might just be the particular circumstances of those handful of different engagements that we've had. But we've landed some things that frankly surprised us with how quickly they came in.

There are some other opportunities that we've been picking away at for 12 months now, and they still haven't come to fruition. I think the thing that is encouraging to me, though, without kind of changing my own expectations about the sales cycle is that we are definitely, particularly on the defense side, seeing money come in faster than what we -- or at least contracts come in faster than what we would have expected 3, 4 months ago. So I think it's very bullish. It doesn't have to take as long as it has historically taken. And stay tuned. We'll hopefully be announcing some additional contract wins that have come in faster than what we would have expected.

Great. Can you provide an update on the Red Cat partnership testing and integration? I think last quarter, it sounded like you were very close to signing a production agreement, but we didn't hear anything about that this -- on this call? I think I didn't.

So -- Yes. So we have a solid partnership with them. We have -- I think we inked the new expanded partnership agreement, and we are out doing demonstrations with their drones. In some instances, Brian, those demonstrations are being done jointly with the Red Cat team. In other cases, we take their drones out and we are demonstrating our software on their drones and their team isn't necessarily needed to be there.

So -- but the Red Cat drones are kind of a cornerstone of the demonstrations that we're doing for government customers. Sometimes, as I said, it's in collaboration and sometimes it's just we've been invited to something and we go do it.

So just to be clear, the economics are in place and the contracts in place for...

Yes.

That determines your piece of the Red Cat sale and you can go-to-market now?

That's correct.

Okay. Lastly, can you tell us how many shares did you sell in the ATM in the first quarter? It looks like you sold -- you raised $6.5 million. What was the average price of that? Or what were the shares?

Trevor, do you have that information?

Yes. We sold just under 890,000 shares. So if you do the math, it ends up being about $7.35 a share.

[Operator Instructions] We're showing no additional phone questions at this time.

We've got some questions from online. First one, there have been numerous expanded contracts with Air Force and other Department of War initiatives. These have been smaller scale thus far. How is the company positioning at this time to ramp production if a large purchase order is received?

So yes, I think that the correct way to characterize the contracts that we're seeing with DoD both directly and through primes is they start small and then we do everything we can to try and expand them. The key is getting those first contracts inked and demonstrating what we can do and then having it grow from there.

The question about ability to scale, I'll take that in 2 different parts. One is on the software side. Software is easy to scale. We've got the code. The product is locked, and it's just about pushing software onto whatever hardware platform is being used, and we can do that quickly. So there's a lot of opportunity to scale the software side.

Responding to the manufacturing side of the business, I think in response to a question I was asked earlier, we're only at about 30% capacity on our manufacturing facilities. So there's a lot of room to scale there. And we rely on a lot of automation and advanced technologies in that business. So it does not require a lot of ramp-up of human personnel to be able to leverage that capacity that we have, that isn't being used at this moment.

So I think we've got a ton of capacity without additional costs that gets incurred to be able to ramp up revenues significantly. So we feel like we're in very good shape on that front.

Next question for IQ 2.0, can you help us understand what's behind the customer and the land-and-expand opportunity? And then in general, how many qualified opportunities or kind of what does the pipeline sit at today for this product? And how are some of those conversations progressing?

So the -- I think I mentioned before that the surface prepped use case is what this first customer and the systems integrator is focused on. There are -- there is a massive amount of market need for automating that kind of task, whether you're talking about stripping corrosion or paint off of a part, whether you're talking about applying new surface treatment to the part to be ready for delivery to an end customer, whether it's painting or other types of prep.

This is historically an area that has been very labor-intensive. And what we're seeing is that, that is a greenfield opportunity for automation, and just a tremendous amount of interest and therefore, demand in what we're doing. The pipeline, not backlog, but pipeline is filled with dozens of conversations that we are having. But again, we believe that on the IQ side of our house, historically, it has been a 12- to 18-month sales process. If you want to say historically, that's what we've historically thought it would be. The one that we're deploying now, I think, came together in about 8 weeks. So that's on the short side. But if our 12- to 18-month expectation is correct, and we just launched IQ 2.0 at the beginning of this year, we got some ground to cover.

So our expectations are modest for '26. That's part of the crawl, walk, run approach that we've talked about. But we could be pleasantly surprised. I hope we're pleasantly surprised, and we'll see more like this first one that come in, in shorter than the 12- to 18-month time frame.

Next question, and this kind of relates more to some of the things you said in the white papers. Recently, there was a Bloomberg article stating that Google is dropping out of the $100 million Pentagon prize challenge to create tech for voice controlled autonomous drone swarms. The article says OpenAI, Palantir and xAI are still competing. There's no mention of Palladyne for SwarmOS. Does this mean others have equally as good swarming technology and don't have to use Palladyne? Or should we be expecting some future growth as those companies need our SwarmOS?

Yes, I think it's the latter. So let's break this down. The ability to give voice commands to a drone, while that certainly is easier than using joysticks, it is still a one soldier to one drone operating environment, and there's nothing collaborative about it between drones and there's nothing swarming about it. It certainly makes giving direction and manually managing multiple drones easier if you can just have a soldier say, do X, Y or Z without having to have your fingers and thumbs on joysticks and controllers. But that is -- that's like a Band-Aid on the problem.

And so the great part about that program is the Pentagon is saying, "Hey, we want to put money and resources into trying to make this ease of operation a real focus of ours." They want to lighten the cognitive load on the operator. That's all great tailwinds for us because we have the ultimate solution to that. It's not about -- I mean, whether you're typing in a command or giving a verbal command, there's certainly some efficiency there. But that's just like the -- that's step one. We're at step 5 or 10 already where we are able to very, very easily with a very small amount of input, get a whole swarm of drones working collaboratively to achieve an objective or a mission.

So I think back to the question, we are the endpoint that, that program ultimately wants to get to, and they're kind of looking at stop-gap measures. So that's very exciting to us.

So that concludes the question-and-answer session from online. Operator, we can close out.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of today's teleconference. We would like to thank you for your participation and interest in Palladyne AI. You may disconnect your lines or log off the webcast at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Greetings, and welcome to the Palladyne AI Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Brian Siegel, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to Palladyne AI's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Ben Wolff, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Trevor Thatcher, Chief Financial Officer.

Earlier this morning, Palladyne AI issued a press release announcing its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025, along with updated commentary regarding backlog and it's reiterated 2026 revenue guidance. A copy of that release, along with the accompanying financial tables is available on the Investor Relations section of Palladyne's website.

Today's call will include prepared remarks from Ben and Trevor, followed by a question-and-answer session. During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Palladyne's 2026 revenue guidance, expected backlog conversion, anticipated quarterly operating cash usage, product development milestones, commercialization time lines, defense program activity, potential customer adoption, market opportunities and future strategic positioning across air, space, land and maritime domains.

Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions and beliefs involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risks and uncertainties include, among others, Palladyne's ability to execute on development programs, convert backlog into revenue, scale production, manage operating expenses, integrate acquired businesses, secure additional contracts, maintain liquidity and navigate evolving defense and commercial market conditions. These and other risk factors are described in detail in Palladyne's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Palladyne undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

In addition, during this call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which adjust for acquisition-related expenses, stock compensation, noncash warrant income or expense that are mark-to-market quarterly based on changes in the company's stock price and a tax benefit related to acquisitions. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in this morning's press release.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. This is our first earnings call since I returned to the company 2 years ago and only our second press earnings release. In mid-January, we provided formal revenue guidance for the first time. Today, we are reiterating 2026 revenue guidance of $24 million to $27 million. That is roughly 4 to 5x our 2025 revenue. Additionally, backlog has already increased from approximately $13.5 million at the end of 2025 to nearly $18 million midway through the first quarter.

We believe 2026 will be the first full year, where the structural transformation we completed in November, translates into measurable revenue growth. To understand why it helps to step back and look at what we built in 2025.

We think about 2025 in 2 phases. The first phase was validation. In the first 3 quarters, we were upgrading Palladyne IQ. We integrated feedback from the U.S. Air Force, potential Fortune 100 customers and others who are using and gaining experience with our first IQ release. That work clarified where our commercial product needed improvement and a directly shaped IQ 2.0, which we completed and started showing to customers at the beginning of January. That resulted in our first signed commercial IQ customer contract a couple of weeks ago.

At the same time, we advanced our collaborative autonomous drone product, Palladyne Pilot, and created a swarming variant branded, SwarmOS for Defense and National Security. We signed MOUs with Red Cat and Draganfly and expanded capabilities through military development contracts. We also strengthened the balance sheet, added senior military leadership to our Board and expanded our AI-related patent portfolio.

Then in November, the second phase began, transformation. We acquired GuideTech, Warnke Precision Machining and MKR Fabricators. We launched Palladyne Defense. We added avionics design and engineering, proprietary UAV and missile systems, precision components, certified U.S.-based manufacturing and backlog.

We moved from being primarily a development-stage AI company to a vertically integrated embodied AI-centric industrial and defense platform company generating meaningful revenues. In short, we exited 2025 fundamentally different. 2026 will be the first full year of operations as a vertically integrated embodied AI-centric industrial and defense company.

Now before I talk about execution, I want to address something that underpins everything we are doing. How our AI is fundamentally different. This week, my co-founder, Dr. Garagic and I published a white paper that makes a simple point about our biologically inspired AI architecture. Most AI platforms live in massive, centralized data centers, taking up enormous real estate and consuming tremendous amounts of power. They are in a nutshell built to think. They analyze. They recommend. They identify patterns and connect dots that we humans could never do on our own.

These AI platforms are basically Google search on steroids. But machines, think of robots and drones, operating in dynamic real-world environments, can't rely on centralized intelligence that lives in the cloud for a minute-by-minute instruction. Machines in the real world need to react instantly often in a split second, the way we humans do. They can't deal with communications latency or worse communication gaps or failures nor is it economical to have machines continuously connected to the cloud. So the answer is to put the intelligence on the machine itself, enabling these machines to function more similarly to the way we humans do.

Nature got it right. The human nervous system does not ask permission for every movement. It reacts at the edge. It coordinates locally. It adapts in real time. It keeps functioning when communication is degraded. That biological model is the inspiration for the architecture we have built into our AI software products. Our autonomy lives at the edge. It operates on the machine. It collaborates across machines. It does not depend on instructions from a centralized set of algorithms that live in the cloud. Our white paper is now available on our website and on LinkedIn. I encourage you to spend a few minutes reading it, and feel free to drop me a note if you would like to discuss it further.

SwarmOS enables decentralized edge-based distributed collaboration. IntelliSwarm combines SwarmOS with our BRAIN avionics platform to deliver a fully integrated hardware and software collaborative AI stack for drones and missiles. This is not simply cloud-based AI layered onto hardware. In particular, for defense applications, that distinction is a critical differentiator in contested environments and multi-domain operations. And this capability is the reason we were able to execute across air today and soon space as well.

Since closing the acquisitions, we have moved with focus. On the commercial side, Matt Muta joined us from our Board of Directors to lead our commercial and industrial business. We released IQ 2.0 and signed our first customer through a systems integration partner deploying IQ for robotic surface preparation. While this deal is not financially material, it is strategically important.

On the defense side, we introduced IntelliSwarm integrating SwarmOS into BRAIN X2. We also branded Project Banshee as Gremlin-X and advanced the development of this mini-bomber drone concept. We successfully demonstrated a cross-platform coordinated swarm using IntelliSwarm on Gremlin-X and SwarmOS on Red Cat drones. This isn't the kind of preprogrammed drone swarms everyone else talks about, rather, this is true autonomous swarming, where each drone perceives, reasons and acts and most importantly, collaborates.

I'm often asked about the distinction between automation and autonomy, since many people think these words are interchangeable, they are not. Automation is preprogrammed routinized action. With automation, all of the decisions were made in advance by the humans who programmed the machine. In the machine -- if machine comes across something it wasn't programmed for, it is stuck, dead in the water until a human gets it back on track. With autonomy, the machine makes decisions. Yes, humans can still make decisions too, but that's not the definition of autonomy. What we do is autonomy, not automation.

There are similar confusion about use of the word swarm or swarming in the context of drones. Just like there are many different levels of autonomy for self-driving cars, the same is true for drones. Those cool drone light shows with thousands of drones creating pretty images in the sky are a form of swarming, but they are preprogrammed automated swarms with no need or ability to deviate from the choreographed plan.

Then there is the limited autonomy that many UAV companies tout today, which enables drones to automatically prevent collisions with one another when flying in close proximity. That is an important, albeit rudimentary form of autonomy.

Next, there is full autonomous swarming, which the U.S. military refers to as wolf pack swarming. Wolf pack swarming takes the capability up a notch. This is where an advanced collaborative and hierarchical swarm of drones operates as a cohesive unit with specialized distributed roles, mimicking the behavior of wolfs to hunt, detect and destroy targets while at the same time, avoiding each other and obstacles.

Finally, there is SwarmOS from Palladyne. SwarmOS delivers wolf pack swarming, but significantly upgraded with the closest thing there is to artificial instinct and intuition. It adds game theory optimization to predict intent and adapt to friendly and hostile moves, maximizing target coverage for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and mission effectiveness when action is required. These are significant nontrivial distinctions.

As you've probably noticed, there was a ton of confusion among OEMs, customers and investors on this very important point. Not all swarming is the same. Not all AI is the same. Not all software is the same. Some is more capable than others. We believe SwarmOS is truly unique and exactly what the Department of War needs.

My life would be a lot easier if people in our industry would simply get the words right. So my goal today is to make sure the investment community can sift through the noise and truly understand the difference. As a company, our broader mission is to ensure that our differentiated capabilities are known and understood throughout the U.S. government and the military as well as with partners and defense contractors.

We are also extending the same distributed autonomy model into the space domain. Through development work with the Air Force Research Lab, we are expanding SwarmOS to incorporate satellites as another source of sensor data, another node on our distributed information network, if you will, that can add to the knowledge used by our embodied AI to enhance mission effectiveness.

Separately, we expanded our relationship with Portal Space Systems, advancing navigation, guidance, spacecraft modeling, embedded software and avionics support for its next-generation space logistics platforms. Our expanded relationship with Portal strengthens our propulsion presence in space today. Over time, propulsion and autonomy architectures naturally intersect, which provides additional future opportunities. Together, these efforts position us across air and space with long-term potential into land and sea-based unmanned systems as well.

On the manufacturing side, we recently secured a contract for a missile propulsion subsystem from a major defense prime customer. That contract is another validation of our propulsion, engineering and manufacturing capabilities and expands our footprint in advanced defense programs that will generate revenue this year.

We also progressed development across Gremlin-X and new BRAIN variants. And we strengthened our intellectual property portfolio with a new patent issuance supporting decentralized swarming architectures while also submitting applications for 4 new patents related to our AI products and technologies.

Let me frame the road map simply. We use the analogy of crawl, walk and run, not a separate strategies, but as stages of maturation. In 2025, we built the path. In 2026, we crawl. Crawl is about proving that the integrated model works at scale, converting backlog into revenue, monetizing development programs, generating product revenue from acquired businesses, executing live demos and trials for SwarmOS, IntelliSwarm and IQ 2.0 and advancing Gremlin-X, SwarmStrike and BRAIN variants toward defined milestones.

Then we walk in 2027. Walk is where we expect proof to become repeatability. We expect broader SwarmOS and IntelliSwarm integrations, repeat IQ 2.0 wins, increasing brain deployments, expanding programs and multiple product-based revenue streams. At that point, growth becomes more systematic and less episodic.

And then we run. Run is where decentralized embodied collaborative autonomy operates seamlessly across air, space and eventually land and sea, where IntelliSwarm enables larger and more complex distributed systems, where autonomy and propulsion architectures converge, where UAV, missile and avionics revenue scales across multiple defense programs. This is when today's emerging and development-stage products become a scaled portfolio of core products driving meaningful revenue and bottom line growth.

2026 is the first full year where our structural transformation is reflected in operations. We transformed the structure of this company in November. Now we are executing against a defined progression with intention and precision. And we believe 2026 marks the beginning of measurable translation of that transformation into growth.

With that, I will turn the call over to Trevor.

Thanks, Ben. I'll focus on the fourth quarter results, liquidity position and capital outlook. Before reviewing the numbers, I want to note that the 2025 fourth quarter and full year results we reported this morning included approximately 6 weeks of contribution from the businesses acquired in mid-November.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased 118% to $1.7 million compared to $0.8 million last year. The increase was due to the inclusion of post-acquisition revenues from the acquired companies. Cost of revenue for the quarter was $1.4 million compared to $0.6 million in the prior year period.

Research and development expense was $3.8 million compared to $2.6 million last year reflecting continued investment in autonomy software, avionics and product development programs from both Palladyne and the acquired companies.

General and administrative expense was $4.7 million compared to $3.5 million in the prior year period. The increase reflects acquisition-related transaction costs, the incremental scope of G&A functions from the acquired businesses and the normalization of compensation for certain employees of the acquired companies, who are not previously receiving market-based salaries.

Sales and marketing expense was $1 million compared to $0.6 million last year, reflecting expanded marketing programs and business development efforts. Operating loss for the quarter was $9.3 million compared to $6.5 million in the prior year period.

GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter was $1.5 million or $0.04 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for the fourth quarter was $6.9 million or $0.16 per share. The primary differences between GAAP and non-GAAP results were as follows: a $4.6 million noncash gain related to the change in fair value of warrant liabilities, driven largely by the change in the price of our common stock and public warrants, $1.1 million of stock-based compensation expense, $0.6 million of acquisition-related transaction expenses and a $2.5 million income tax benefit linked to one of the November acquisitions related to the recognition of deferred tax liabilities associated with acquired intangible assets that were offset against fully valued deferred tax assets, creating a current noncash tax benefit. We believe excluding these items provides a clearer view of our underlying operating performance and cash usage.

Turning to liquidity, as of December 31, 2025, we had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of approximately $47 million. Our fourth quarter net cash burn rate was approximately $10 million, which included $8.5 million in cash used in operations, $5.3 million in cash used for acquisitions, $3.7 million to pay down real estate acquired -- real estate debt acquired from the acquisitions offset by proceeds from ATM sales of approximately $7.3 million net of commissions.

Backlog as of year-end was $13.5 million. As Ben mentioned earlier, backlog increased to nearly $18 million midway through the first quarter. That increase reflects new contract wins and is net of normal invoicing activity during current year-to-date period.

Looking ahead to 2026, Ben has already announced that we are reiterating the guidance we issued on January 30, 2026, for revenue of $24 million to $27 million. Our 2026 outlook reflects the contribution of the businesses acquired in November, and we expect organic growth across each part of the company on a full year-over-year basis.

We currently expect 2026 consolidated quarterly operating cash usage of approximately $8 million to $9 million. The increase from our 2025 run rate reflects ongoing investment in SwarmOS and IQ, incremental investments to bring acquired programs to operational readiness and incremental headcount costs from building out the new defense and commercial team structures.

As you recall in our previous commentary, we said that we plan to invest $5 million in Gremlin-X and SwarmStrike alone over the next 12 to 18 months. We selectively added headcount to drive growth on the defense and commercial sides of the business and to bolster support services, consistent with our strategy to translate structural repositioning into operational execution. Based on our liquidity position and expected backlog conversion, we believe we are well positioned to execute our 2026 plan.

Operator, we're now ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Greg Konrad with Jefferies.

Appreciated all the color and the differentiation and kind of road map going forward. But just thinking about 2026, I think you mentioned you expect organic growth along with M&A contribution. Can you maybe just parse out expectations of some of the growth drivers in the M&A along with kind of Palladyne IQ and Palladyne Pilot?

So we're not breaking out the kind of the categories of revenue from the $24 million to $27 million guidance. I think Trevor mentioned that we're expecting to see growth in all of those areas. And that's just through new customer relationships, new contracts, et cetera, across all 3 parts of the business: manufacturing, the UAV side of the business and then the AI side of the business. So we're expecting growth in all 3 of those areas, but we're not giving any specific guidance on the specific growth in those 3 categories.

And then you also kind of laid out a 2026 and some of the key items for 2027. How do you think about growth going forward? What are the big drivers and just how you're thinking about maybe some decisions or key contracts that we should expect to be watching for in 2026 for that transition?

So on the defense side, which obviously is where there's an awful lot of action for a lot of reasons, we are aggressively pursuing participation in a number of different programs, both as a prime and as a sub. One of the great benefits that we have with the way we've structured the business following the acquisitions is we have, as we think about it, multiple shots on goal in the ability to both be a prime and also to be a sub, and we've got contracts that are today representative of that. We expect to get more of those. There are an awful lot of opportunities when you start talking about collaborative swarming, collaborative autonomy at the Pentagon. And so we're aggressively engaged in that.

And similarly, on the hardware, both manufacturing side and the subsystem side and complete systems as it relates to UAVs. So expect to see us aggressively pursue those opportunities. As you know, Greg, those programs can take a long time. Fortunately, we've got an administration today that has accelerated that path, but it still can be a time-consuming process with a number of steps between kind of first RFI to the point that you actually have money coming in the door. Our team understands that process extremely well. We've got a number of folks on the team that are experienced with securing those kinds of contracts. So we're very optimistic about where that's going to head over the next 12, 18, 24 months. I think we have a lot of tailwinds for us on that side of the business.

I specifically just mentioned the AI side, but also on the IQ side of our AI business, we continue to have great traction with the Air Force on the trials that they've been doing with IQ in the aircraft repair and maintenance venue. And we are hopeful that we'll see some expansion in that. So don't just think about our work with the Pentagon as just on the swarming side, it's also on the industrial robotics AI side.

In terms of the commercial side, we mentioned that we've got our first IQ customer, which happened, frankly, in a relatively short time frame compared to some of the other engagements that we've had. I think that's a testament to the maturity level and the development efforts that we put into IQ 2.0. So we expect to see some real growth on the commercial side. One of the things I should point out is that our acquired businesses have both defense and commercial businesses. So the manufacturing side, we do manufacturing for the commercial sector on our UAV and aeronautical business, obviously, we do some stuff in space that we've talked about. We do some stuff that is not directly Pentagon focused. So we're excited about the fact that we've got this dual path, dual approach of both defense and commercial activities. I think that will pay benefits, big dividends over the years as we see demand from both sides ebb and flow. So I think we've hedged our bets pretty well.

And if you don't mind, I'm just going to ask a couple more. I hope that's okay.

Sure, please do.

So you brought up a missile contract, which has obviously been -- and I think you're also doing some stuff around loitering munitions and missiles and production ramps have been a big focus of the administration. Can you maybe just talk a little bit more about what you're doing on the missile side, how much visibility you have into that contract and ramp and maybe where you see some other future opportunities?

So we've got the benefit, Greg, of being involved in both new missile efforts, new program efforts as well as being a supplier into existing long-standing large missile programs. So we're seeing a lot of that whole landscape. There is a lot of interest in developing higher quantities of lower cost, higher precision missiles of all different sizes and capabilities, and we are playing in that space. The great thing about the way we've designed the business now is we can soup to nuts be participating in that missile process, everything from initiating design of a brand-new concept all the way through manufacturing of a complete system or subsystems. So we're very active in that space. We like that space because it is an opportunity for a lot of innovation, coupled with our AI to make a huge difference. And it's not, frankly, a space that is quite as crowded as some of the other drone and UAV marketplaces are.

And then just a clarification question. You said quarterly $8 million to $9 million usage, was that free cash flow or cash flow from ops?

Trevor, do you want to take that one?

Yes. That's our expected cash used in operations. So there could be other cash flows coming in, whether those are from ATM sales or those are not considered in that number.

Is that $8 million to $9 million cash flow from ops, I mean historically, the business has been really CapEx-light? Just thinking about the manufacturing element, and you mentioned some investments. How are you thinking about CapEx going forward?

Yes, we do have CapEx assumptions baked into that. There are some needs across the business. I wouldn't say they're significant right now. And as things progress within the development of our products, we'll reevaluate that and make the investments where we need to. But as of right now, we don't see any real significant CapEx needs.

And then maybe last one for me. I mean, the business has evolved a lot. I think in the past, you talked about, you have the target business model from a profitability standpoint. Can you maybe talk a little bit with the new mix, how you're thinking about gross margins? Is there a particular revenue level for profitability, just some of the changes that we should accept with the new business from a profitability standpoint?

Do you want to take that one, Trevor?

Yes, we're -- yes. So we're not -- we've given guidance on revenue. We're not at a point where we're going to be giving guidance on anything below that. It's still early on with these new acquired businesses. And we expect that as things develop as we see progress made both on the customer front and on our product development milestones that we'll start sharing more guidance around things below revenue line, the revenue line. But right now, we're just going to stick to that revenue guidance that we've given.

I'll give a little more color beyond that. There's no reason that we see that the margins that we've talked about historically for our AI business will be materially different than what we've talked about. We're still bullish on that in terms of software-like margins. And we -- I think we have talked about the fact that on the hardware side, we're focused on higher-margin opportunities. We don't want to get into really low-margin businesses. And so far, I think we're doing a good job at that. So while Trevor is absolutely correct that we don't want to give a specific number at this point, we're focusing on those higher margin opportunities so that we keep our margins across the entire enterprise relatively robust.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

As it relates to your partnerships with Red Cat and Draganfly, what are the obstacles or tasks that remain to get the system into production and/or the OEMs given them the ability to bid on procurement with your technology? Any updates would be great.

Sure. I'll take them one at a time, Brian. On Red Cat, we have been doing extensive testing with them over the last X number of months. That has been going very well. We're going through the certification process that they have established for their vendors. Our system is a little more complex and capable than many other software platforms that are out there for drones. And so it has been a lengthier process, making sure that we can actually deliver on all of the things that our specifications say we can. I think we're at the end of that process now. So we expect to be certified on Red Cat drones virtually any time. And that has culminated in us then negotiating a broader, more in-depth and detailed partnership agreement with them, a real implementation agreement, and we expect that to be signed. I think it may be signed even today or certainly within the next few days.

So that is the next step in getting to the point then that they can actually start offering our system to the government. We've been doing joint demonstrations for the government so far, and all of those have gone well. On Draganfly, we're still in the process of implementing and porting our code onto their platforms. So that has not yet been completed. No real roadblocks other than everybody is busy, and we've got a lot of -- all of us have a lot of things on our plate, but I expect that to happen this quarter. And so we're making progress on that one also, and we've got a number of other discussions with other OEMs going. So I'm very bullish about where we are with drone OEMs.

Great. And then you mentioned your first commercial IQ contract. Can you talk about the timing of expectations for both IQ and Pilot for first production units?

Well, I mean, the first sale of IQ 2.0 is a production deployment. And so that's going to happen in -- I think, in the coming weeks. The contract has been signed, and we're ready to start implementation on that. So that's up and ready to go. And I think at this point, we've talked before that it's generally, in our view, a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. This one happened to come together much more quickly than that. So it is possible for it to come together more quickly. But we're in the process now of exposing customers of all different shapes and sizes in terms of size and number of locations and all that kind of stuff to the new highly capable 2.0 version, and we'll see how quickly we can make some sales come together. So we're firing on all the cylinders on IQ 2.0.

On the drone swarming capability, that really is not a onesie-twosie kind of sale, as you can imagine. That is larger contracts, larger volumes and those, by definition, take longer to come together. We have a task in front of us to get the customer base out there to understand that this is an incredibly capable and unique type of swarming autonomy that doesn't exist. When other -- as I mentioned in my comments, when other people talk about swarming, it's not this kind of swarming, just like there are different layers of autonomy in self-driving cars, there are different layers of autonomy in things that fly, and we are at the most advanced edge of that. So our biggest mission, Brian, right now is to get the marketplace to understand that the capability exists, that it's not science fiction. It doesn't have to be on the road map for 2032. It could be on the road map for 2026. And so that's our mission in front of us.

I guess my follow-up to that would be, how are you educating the end customer, which, to me, at least given war would be the federal government, of course, how are you educating them and how educated are they right now?

So we're just at the beginning stages of the education process and education involves a lot of meetings, followed by demonstrations. So you start with PowerPoint presentations, which, of course, people are tired of seeing PowerPoint presentations. So you do the PowerPoint presentation to many, many different people as many shots on goal as you can get and then you promptly follow that up by say -- by saying, but it's not just PowerPoint, come out to the field, we'll do a demonstration for you tomorrow if you're ready.

Great. And then obviously, it's only been a week with the war, if you call it in Iran. Two things. First of all, is that leading to delays in conversations because everyone now is focused on that? Is it leading to more urgency and more rapid conversations? Maybe talk about, if at all, in one week, it's changed the procurement process?

So I haven't seen any change other than additional inquiries and interest levels. Fortunately for us, the folks that are involved in defining requirements, learning about new technologies, figuring out how to integrate those new technologies into the battlefield, they're not out in the field, they're very much focused on trying to get our country prepared for what happens tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week, next year and for the years to come. So we haven't seen any impact in a negative sense, but certainly a lot more awareness of what modern warfare looks like, and that creates significant tailwinds for us.

Great. My last question is, you talked a lot of about R&D, but maybe you could just rank your top R&D priorities for 2026.

At the top of our list is getting material advancement on our 2 UAV platforms, the Gremlin-X and the SwarmStrike. That's a significant part of our R&D effort. Continuing to evolve and enhance the capabilities of both SwarmOS and IQ, I think those are the 4 R&D priorities. And fortunately, for us, all of the contracts that we have that are development contracts with the U.S. government and the Department of War, they are all in line one way or another, with the advancement of those capabilities and technologies. We are, from time to time, given the opportunity to participate in things that are outside of that kind of main swim lane and we declined to pursue those because we are very focused on those 4 primary objectives for 2026.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

I guess just on the backlog topic, maybe can you talk a little bit about which orders or types of products led to the increase in backlog from 10 to 18 as a big change this quarter already. And then as you look to the -- sort of for the go-gets for the rest of the year, what are some of your better prospects in terms of the types of agencies or products that you might be selling to kind of get the rest of the backlog in here?

We're not going to get into a detailed breakdown of the backlog at this point, Mike. But I will tell you that as I think both Trevor and I alluded to, we see significant opportunities across all 3 business units that we have. It's too early for me to predict kind of which ones are going to come out on top. But there is just a tremendous amount of momentum that we're seeing in the business. And so we have a lot of confidence in being able to give you the guidance that we have and to watch that backlog continue to grow meaningfully over the course of the year.

Great. And then as you go out and sell to new prospects, can you talk a little bit about the value of having these 3 segments? Like how is your sales include all 3? How do you make the pitch that these 3 bring in a significant advantage to a prospect?

Yes. Let me give you kind of a generic example, but it is based, in fact, on one project that we're currently trying to secure. This is a new development program for a weapon system, and we were able to present the ability to go from white paper concept all the way through to both component manufacturing and complete assembly and include our intelligence to deliver a holistic platform system that achieves all of the stated objectives.

And that soup-to-nuts approach had all -- had engineers and business people involved from all 3 divisions collaborating. I got to tell you, this is -- just backing up for a second. This is one of the better integration efforts from an M&A effort that I've ever seen. The teams are working together as if they've been working together for years and years, seamless. So that's an example of being able to go attack a response to a government inquiry about a new weapon system where before, we would have been a minor player or just one part of a bigger team, we were able to present a complete unified proposal. And that's exciting. So I think there's going to be a lot more of that in the future.

The other thing that the acquisitions do for us kind of outside of just a single programmer project is we wind up with a much broader set of relationships across the whole defense sector that allows us to go to the customers of one of those business units and present the opportunities that we have through our other 2 business units. And that has already paid dividends. So we're excited. I think the analogy of 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals a lot more than 3 has so far proven to be very much true.

Okay. Great. And then just on the SwarmOS, can you talk a little bit about how you're going to price that? Is there a way to kind of think about a license per, I don't know, 10 drones or something? Or just a little bit more clarity on how you price this?

Yes. So our focus is licensing it on a per drone basis. And we've said historically -- in the past, we've said that we expect it to be priced somewhere between 5% and 10% of the total drone system cost. And so far, the engagement that we're having with customers is kind of right in line with that. So bigger, more expensive, more capable, more sensor laden UAV platforms, the cost will be higher, smaller, lower cost, less capable drone systems, more single-purpose type things, things like that will be lower cost. But so far, we're not getting any pushback on that general approach to pricing. Having said that, I'll remind you that we still have to land our first major customer.

Yes. Would the prospects for SwarmOS be more likely to be with smaller, say, short-range drones or bigger long-range drones? Or is it too early to say?

I think it's everything in between. I mean our ultimate vision is you've got some larger, longer duration fixed wings that have our software on them from one OEM, able to communicate and engage in swarming capability with shorter duration, lower cost, more tactical drones. You can imagine scenarios where a loitering ISR platform is in the air for 5, 10 hours. You've got different sorties of quadcopters that come in to theater to perform a specific mission set. Maybe they have not accomplished all of that mission. A second sorting comes in and instantaneously is downloaded with what the latest and greatest information from the fixed wing oversight loitering ISR platform has. That kind of a cohesive real-time autonomous swarming capability can expand across all of the different drone or UAV sizes and that's where the real value comes in.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session and will conclude our call today. We thank you for your interest and participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good day, and welcome to Palladyne AI's Strategic Update Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Siegel, Senior Managing Director of Hayden Investor Relations.

Thank you, operator. Today, I'm joined by Ben Wolff, Palladyne's AI's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Trevor Thatcher, Palladyne's Chief Financial Officer. On this call, Ben will discuss the details of the strategic transformation announced in this morning's press release, followed by a Q&A. Any forward-looking statements made during today's prepared remarks or in the question-and-answer session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results in the future to differ materially from those discussed on today's call. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties disclosed in Palladyne AI's periodic SEC filings.

The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that are discussed on today's call. Please note that today's press release and this presentation will be available on the Investor Relations page of Palladyne AI's website. They have also been filed on Form 8-K with the SEC. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Ben to discuss this morning's exciting news in more detail.

Thank you, Brian. Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Today is a defining moment for Palladyne AI, an American company where artificial intelligence meets the physical world. We build embodied AI, systems that don't just analyze data, but sense, decide and act at the edge in real time. Our mission is to be America's first multiplier, whether for the Department of War or industrial customers. Today, I'll cover how the GuideTech and the Crucis companies acquisitions, which for the latter, I'll refer to as Crucis in today's presentation and the launch of Palladyne Defense transform us into a fully integrated AI and defense technology company.

Before we begin, a brief reminder. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings. With that said, let's begin the strategic review. Most people think of AI as something that happens in a data center, algorithms that analyze information and deliver insights. Embodied AI is different. It's intelligence that lives in the real world. Again, we enable physical systems that can sense, decide and act at the edge in real time. That difference between intelligence that analyzes and intelligence that acts is where the next generation of capability will come from. The Department of War has made it clear, the future advantage lies not in analytics alone, but in autonomous systems capable of executing missions in complex contested environments.

That is the world Palladyne is building for. Before this transformation, Palladyne AI was a pure-play embodied AI company, developing software that brings autonomy to the physical world. Our 2 core products, Palladyne IQ and Palladyne Pilot form the foundation of that capability. Palladyne IQ powers robotics automation, enabling intelligent, adaptive operation for commercial and industrial robots. Pilot provides advanced autonomous cooperation for unmanned systems, currently aerial and in the future, unmanned ground, space and maritime systems and will continue as one of our core commercial offerings. For defense and public safety, though, we've rebranded the pilot variant as SwarmOS, a specialized version designed for collaborative multi-agent missions and swarming behaviors.

Together, IQ and Pilot extend our commercial reach, while SwarmOS positions Palladyne to lead in national security, one connected embodied AI ecosystem serving both domains. Palladyne's evolution has been defined by 4 major inflection points, each one building on the lessons of the past. We began with robotics, designing and building sophisticated machines. Then we moved into robotics plus software, embedding decision-making directly into those systems. In the third phase, we paused building hardware to focus exclusively on software, building the intelligence layer that could power any platform. Today, we enter our fourth inflection, one that unites artificial intelligence, aerospace design and American manufacturing into a single vertically integrated defense business. This is where Palladyne becomes more than just an AI company. We're redefining what it means to be a mid-tier defense technology company.

With the closing of these acquisitions, we have formally launched Palladyne Defense, a new business focused on embodied AI for national security, including both defense and public safety missions. Palladyne Defense combines ethical autonomy, cost-effective mission capability and precision-driven design, all produced in the United States. Every system we build follows one rule, human oversight by design while reducing human cognitive load and letting humans and machines each do what they do best. This is intelligence that protects autonomy that serves national interest with control, precision and accountability. With the acquisitions of GuideTech and Crucis, we've evolved from a pure software innovator into a purpose-built vertically integrated defense technology business that is fully aligned with the priorities set by the White House and the Department of War over the past 6 months.

We now bring AI intelligence, aerospace design and U.S. manufacturing together under one umbrella. For the Department of War, it means a partner that can design, prototype and produce not just code. GuideTech contributes deep engineering talent and rapid iteration of an optimal aerospace platform design. Crucis adds certified expandable manufacturing, capacity -- manufacturing capacity supporting flagship programs like the F-35 and the Tomahawk. Together with SwarmOS, they formed Palladyne Defense, a new American force built on speed, intelligence and sovereignty. We're not just making moves in a vacuum.

The world has fundamentally changed, and the Department of War is reshaping its priorities around 3 forces that directly align with what we build and that are driving demand for what we build. First, the Department of War's focus on cost per effect. It's no longer about the largest platform or the most complex platform. It's about maximum operational impact per dollar. Second, reshoring and sovereignty. The National Defense Industrial strategy calls for rebuilding American production and supply chain resilience. Crucis is part of that national resurgence, a certified U.S. manufacturer already supporting legacy and next-generation programs. Third, AI and mission systems. AI is moving out of data centers and into real mission hardware into systems that think, coordinate and act at the edge. Autonomy is no longer theoretical. It is becoming a core operational requirement. These forces define the new rules of readiness, and they create the exact demand environment Palladyne Defense is built for.

So why does Palladyne Defense exist? Because the market has a structural gap that neither start-ups nor large primes are designed to fill. Start-ups innovate quickly, but they're too small often to scale production, certify systems or deliver sustained readiness. Large primes, on the other hand, can scale but they sometimes move too slowly to keep pace with emerging threats and rapid iteration requirements. The Department of War is asking for something new with its replicator initiative, an agile, vertically integrated American defense company that can design, build and deliver advanced autonomous capabilities at speed and at scale. That's the gap Palladyne Defense is built to fill. We're the bridge between fast and small and big and bureaucratic.

In short, we are the new mid-tier prime engineered for this era of embodied AI, rapid capability delivery and American production. Palladyne Defense is built around 3 core capabilities. First is SwarmOS, our embodied AI and autonomy core for defense and public safety missions. It brings the decision-making intelligence that autonomously coordinates unmanned systems in the field. Second is GuideTech, our aerospace design, avionics and precision low-cost attritable systems group. These are former prime contractor engineers who can take a new concept from digital model to working flight prototype in less than 6 months, a fraction of traditional time lines.

Third is Crucis, a certified U.S. manufacturer with the ability to scale rapidly that is already supplying major defense programs like the F-16, the F-35, the Tomahawk, Harpoon and the Bradley Tank. Individually, each is already assisting large primes and defense tech start-ups in meeting the evolving demands of the Department of War. Together, we believe 1 plus 1 plus 1 has the potential to equal 10 as they will get Palladyne Defense one integrated stack, AI, engineering, components and American production, which is exactly the structure the Department of War has been asking for. GuideTech is the aerospace engineering nucleus of Palladyne Defense. As I just mentioned, the company is composed of former prime contractor engineers, veterans of missile, space and unmanned programs who know how to design and iterate at speed.

GuideTech is already supplying avionics and design support to multiple defense contractors, proving its value in the field today. GuideTech is already supplying avionics and design support to multiple defense contractors proving its value in the field today. For the Department of War, that speed and responsiveness align perfectly with modernization directives calling for faster prototyping and deployment across unmanned and autonomous systems. GuideTech isn't just fast. It's built around a continuous design process from concept to field. Designs move from simulation to prototype to flight test and into initial production, all within the same integrated team. That's how you close the gap between an idea on a whiteboard and a system on station.

This process is critical to the Department of War's modernization initiatives, including the push for accelerated capability delivery under the replicator program and related autonomy efforts. Palladyne Defense now has the structure to answer that call with the AI BRAIN, the engineering muscle and the manufacturing backbone to move faster than most others. Let's start with BRAIN, our mission-grade avionics architecture. It delivers the performance of legacy flight computers at roughly 1/10 of the cost, which is ideal for attritable and autonomous systems. BRAIN isn't just a concept. It's already being built into a tradable systems. The system is modular, programmable and capable of full integration with SwarmOS so that the same AI decision-making driving our autonomy can also run natively inside the airframe.

In short, BRAIN gives us the intelligence hardware that connects our AI to the real world. Next is Banshee, a low-cost reusable precision loitering munition that demonstrates how embodied AI can transform mission economics. Banshee isn't a hobby drone or a repurposed quadcopter. It's a purpose-built system engineered for tactical and strategic operations with the ability to deliver multiple effects similar to much larger platforms, but a fraction -- at a fraction of their cost. Our plan is to integrate SwarmOS and BRAIN into Banshee, enabling coordinated swarming, target sharing and precision execution. The Department of War's modernization priorities, including cost per effect and scalable autonomous systems are directly addressed by this design. Banshee represents the shift from one-to-one weapon systems to one-to-many intelligent effects. Here is a quick video of a Banshee test where it is dropping ordinance within a designated target area.

I think that's the wrong video. [Audio Gap]

All right. So that gives you a good idea of what the Banshee platform is about. Now next, we will talk about the SwarmStrike platform. SwarmStrike takes that same philosophy to a higher tier of mission capability. It's a long-range intelligent loitering munition that delivers cruise missile reach at dramatically lower cost. SwarmStrike is designed to work individually or in teams with onboard autonomy that enables self-coordination and adaptive targeting. It's an example of how our embodied AI and avionics technology scales upward from tactical systems to strategic assets while keeping cost and complexity down.

This is the future the Department of War is calling for, intelligent, adaptive systems that deliver operational effects affordably and at speed. Here is a quick video of SwarmStrike's first flight test. So you can see this is something tangible, not just a concept or something in a PowerPoint. [Audio Gap] And SwarmStrike isn't the only cruise scale loitering munition we're working on. GuideTech is already down the path of developing a near hypersonic long-range affordable mass strike vehicle for the U.S. Navy. GuideTech is far more than an acquisition. It's the core engineering and avionics BRAIN trust behind our defense components. It also provides the foundation for IntelliSwarm, the next-generation embodiment of our autonomy architecture. Here's how it evolves. SwarmOS, the defense and public safety variant of pilot that integrates unique capabilities specifically required for national security applications.

And when you combine SwarmOS with BRAIN, you get IntelliSwarm, a unified intelligent autonomy system that merges AI, sensors and avionics into one cohesive operating layer. IntelliSwarm will be the connective tissue across our entire defense product line, the same AI that thinks, flies and fights. Pilot, our commercial autonomy product, continues to serve applications and use cases that don't need the full capabilities of SwarmOS. The second pillar of Palladyne Defense is Crucis, our new manufacturing and fabrication business. Crucis is a certified U.S.-based manufacturer supplying major defense programs, including the F-16, F-35, Tomahawk, Harpoon and Bradley. Among its customers are Lockheed, the Boeing Kratos teaming effort and more.

It has a growing 18-month backlog exceeding $10 million and is expanding capacity to support both Palladyne Defense programs and external defense primes. Crucis is AS91000 -- 9100 certified and built for precision. For the Department of War, this acquisition aligns perfectly with the broader national strategy, reshoring production, securing supply chains and ensuring that critical components are built in America. What makes Crucis so compelling isn't just what it builds today, it's what it can build tomorrow. The companies have the physical space, the workforce and the tooling to expand rapidly from precision machining to full system integration.

Together with the R&D and production space we have at Palladyne, we now have more than 100,000 square feet of production capacity. That means Palladyne will be able to take a concept from design to prototype to flight test to production and do it all in-house. It also means we can serve as a surge capacity provider for the Department of War, supporting modernization, readiness and reshoring initiatives that demand flexible American-made manufacturing. In every sense, Crucis gives Palladyne the backbone to scale. Crucis is the piece that completes our loop, AI, engineering and U.S. manufacturing under one umbrella. With Crucis, we have certified American production tied to programs like the F-35, F-16, Tomahawk and Bradley, work that's already flowing through its facilities today. We'll also look at how we implement Palladyne IQ on the shop floor to drive higher throughput and quality so the factory becomes smarter as we scale.

Strategically, this aligns directly with the Department of War's industrial base modernization efforts, reshoring capacity, building resilience and reducing lead times with American suppliers. We're not waiting for others to build the future. We're building it here. This is the all-up picture. All the pieces you've just seen, SwarmOS, GuideTech and Crucis will now operate as one Palladyne Defense business. In practice, that means we are a partner and supplier to large primes, not a challenger to their core franchises. We provide software, avionics, components, complete systems and design capacity, which gives us multiple shots on goal across the value chain, and we only build proprietary systems when there is a clear capability gap.

That model lines up directly with the Department of War's priorities, cost-effective autonomous capability that can be fielded quickly backed by an American industrial base. Financially, these transactions are disciplined, high leverage accretive transactions. For 2026, the combined acquisitions are expected to push consolidated Palladyne AI revenue to more than triple our 2024 revenue of about $8 million, with positive adjusted EBITDA contributions from the 2 acquisitions. Importantly, we are entering the next phase with a growing 18-month backlog of more than $10 million, including ongoing development contracts with U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

Total consideration paid in these 2 transactions is approximately $31 million, consisting of stock, cash and assumed equipment and real estate debt, plus an earn-out over the next 5 years of up to an additional $25 million once revenues relating to GuideTech's products exceed $71 million. Assuming this hurdle is achieved, the payout will be more than worth it for Palladyne and our shareholders. In addition, we plan to invest $5 million over the next 12 to 18 months to take Banshee and SwarmStrike from TRL-6 to TRL-9. That investment is aimed at unlocking a much larger revenue opportunity while keeping our capital structure highly efficient. We've talked about the assets. Now let's talk about how the business will run.

Coming out of these acquisitions, Palladyne AI now operates through 2 focused businesses that share one autonomy core. Palladyne Defense integrates SwarmOS, GuideTech and the Crucis companies, giving us mission autonomy, aerospace design, new products and U.S. manufacturing in a single stack. That lets us move from concept to prototype to production on time lines the Department of War is demanding. Palladyne Commercial continues to scale IQ and Pilot across manufacturing, logistics and aerospace. It remains a core business opportunity for us. The headline is simple. Defense is an expansion of our platform, not a substitution for our commercial business. 2 focused businesses, both strategically important, both powered by the same autonomy engine. Here's how the structure looks formally.

Palladyne AI manages strategy, capital and our shared autonomy platform. Palladyne Defense combines SwarmOS, GuideTech and Crucis to serve government, defense and public safety customers. Palladyne Commercial scales IQ and Pilot across industrial automation and logistics. One platform, 2 focused businesses, each with distinct customers and strengths. Before we wrap up, I want to come back to where I believe a lot of our long-term upside sits, which is in Palladyne IQ. IQ is our original AI platform and the foundation of our embodied AI ecosystem. It was built to orchestrate complex multi-robot environments. And from that work, we drive pilot for unmanned systems.

IQ delivers the intelligence layer for industrial and operational efficiency. Its focus is simple, enable robots and automated systems already working in manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure to perceive, reason and adapt instead of just repeating fixed preprogrammed motions. IQ is hardware-agnostic and enterprise-wide, so customers can standardize on one intelligence layer across many facilities and robot types. The business model is attractive, software licensing and services that can scale as customers add robots and lines. Before we talk about the road ahead, I want to anchor us in the fundamentals. We are executing from a strong financial foundation. For the quarter ended September 30, we closed with $57.1 million cash -- $57.1 million in cash and equivalents and used about $6.3 million in operating cash.

That discipline gives us the runway to integrate GuideTech and Crucis and advance our autonomy products. We also announced a new U.S. patent covering key elements of our embodied AI and autonomous coordination capabilities. This IP directly supports SwarmOS and reinforces our role in edge autonomy. In parallel, we are advancing existing programs and pursuing new development work. For example, we think we are well positioned for an upcoming Department of War contract award. In addition to our relationship with Red Cat, we also launched a collaboration with Draganfly that reflects the type of ecosystem engagement we expect to grow.

Finally, we further strengthened our leadership bench, specifically for defense and national security priorities with the additions of retired Lieutenant General Twitty who during his career, led roughly half of the U.S. Army to our Board; and Doug Dynes as President of Palladyne Defense, a former Presidential appointee and National Security Adviser to Senator Hatch and retired Major General Lee Levy, former Commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, who will serve as Vice Chairman of Palladyne Defense.

All 3 of these men complement existing Board member, retired Admiral Olson, the first Navy Seal to attain a 3-star Admiral rank and among his other distinguished roles was Head of SOCOM. Overall, we remain on track for 2026 that we expect will see a significant uptick in customer engagement across our portfolio. Stepping back, our investment thesis rests on 5 pillars: technology leadership, a proven autonomy architecture built for embodied AI at operational scale.

Vertical integration, AI software, avionics, systems engineering and U.S. manufacturing in one stack. 2 growth engines, IQ in the commercial and industrial sectors and our vertically integrated defense-focused businesses. Financial strength with roughly $50 million in cash post acquisitions, we have the runway to execute. And finally, strategic timing.

Our structure and technology align directly with Department of Water priorities for rapidly fielded cost-effective autonomous capability as evidenced by our ongoing contracts with the Air Force and the Navy. This slide pulls the structure together visually. On the left, Palladyne Defense, SwarmOS, BRAIN Avionics, Banshee, SwarmStrike and the IntelliSwarm architecture powering AI-enabled mission systems. On the right, Palladyne Commercial, IQ and Pilot, delivering industrial autonomy for manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure. Both businesses share the same AI core. So innovation on one side accelerates the other. That's the advantage of a single autonomy platform supporting 2 complementary markets.

So before I close, I'm going to show you a short video that helps realize -- helps you visualize our vision.

[Presentation]

In summary, I hope you come away from today's call with the understanding that Palladyne AI is now a fully integrated autonomy company serving national security customers through Palladyne Defense and industrial customers through Palladyne Commercial, all powered by embodied AI.

Our technology is advanced. Our structure is aligned with the national security priorities, and our financial position gives us the runway to execute on near-term deployments.

We're building an American company designed for this moment, 1 platform, 2 businesses and a significant opportunity ahead of us.

Palladyne AI, America's cross-domain force multiplier. Thank you. Operator, we can open the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners.

Congrats on your transactions. In terms of BRAIN hardware from GuideTech, how much of that revenue is commercial versus government? Do they go-to-market as a prime generally or a subcontractor? And then maybe can you quantify the sales cycle, including the design win phase?

Thank you for your question, Brian. So their customers are all in the defense sector. At least today, they are defense sector. They have also done some things in the space arena, and I think there's a lot of opportunity in space, not necessarily tied directly to Department of War.

But the BRAIN sales today are focused on them being a supplier to other primes who are building the BRAIN into their aviation platforms or aerospace platforms. It is part -- to be able to win that business, it has to be part of a design win that ultimately the entire system gets sold to a defense customer, Department of War, one of the services, et cetera.

So that is what they've been working on for the last couple of years, and they have got some great traction in that regard.

Great. And then prior to the GuideTech acquisition, did your drone partners have another third party they use for edge compute system. And so now the value is the drone manufacturer can come to you with one solution as opposed to using a variety of suppliers?

So it is very common in the smaller drone space to have either NVIDIA or Qualcomm boards that are being used on those platforms. And today, our SwarmOS software is being implemented on both NVIDIA and Qualcomm boards.

Depending on the size of the platform of the aviation or, I should say, aerospace platform, depending on what the mission capabilities are that are required, you might see the BRAIN being a supplement to an NVIDIA or Qualcomm board or in lieu of an NVIDIA or Qualcomm board. It just depends on what the mission requirements are.

But yes, you can think of us as being a vendor now for that avionics or guidance a navigation system that gets put onto a new type of weapon system.

Great. And then is there anything you can share in terms of either installed base, the number of partners GuideTech has? Just any kind of information to help understand average deal size, how to think about their customer base?

I hope to be able to give you more details after the first quarter. We're not at a point today that we're prepared to start talking about all of those details, Brian. But I think after the first quarter, we'll have some more information for you.

Two more. In terms of Crucis, first, address how this -- well, maybe how this addresses manufacturing concerns that prospective customers might have had about your ability to scale large programs.

And then talk about the type of components they're manufacturing today and who their primary customers have been? I think you said [ F-15 ] and some vehicles, sorry.

Yes, no problem. So whenever you talk about producing systems at scale, one of the concerns that potential customers have is, okay, great, you've got a good concept.

Now can you actually execute on it? Can you produce it at scale because we're going to be a big customer.

We want to buy a lot of these. We don't want to just buy a few. And that has always been a challenge for start-ups is to figure out how do you go from not just prototype and into first commercial article, but how do you scale it to volume, which is the kind of volume that the Department of War is going to look for.

We decided to not try and reinvent the wheel, not try and go through all the aches and pains of scaling up manufacturing on our own, but to acquire 2 companies that were trusted and well proven, have been around for a long time, had adopted new innovative technologies to be able to have higher margins than the industry average and that could produce some of the most complex challenging parts and components that were needed by the aerospace industry. That is one of the things that I think startups and younger companies get criticized for is how are you really going to produce at scale. And so we decided to nip that in the bud in one fell swoop and be able to provide this consolidated vertically integrated package to our customers.

My last question is, can you talk about how opportunities with your 2 drone partners, Red Cat and Draganfly are tracking? I'm sure the government shutdown isn't helping, but maybe from a high level, talk about the procurement and the opportunities.

I think both companies are doing some great things with opportunities with Department of War and the various services. We are engaged with -- we've been obviously engaged with Red Cat longer than Draganfly. Draganfly is a relatively recent announcement. They have airframes that have different mission sets than what Red Cat has.

We get very excited about the idea of having our software that allows collaboration among different manufacturers platforms to be able to communicate and provide the war fighter with more information in the field.

That's capability that the Department of War continues to talk about. So we're just getting going on our engagement with Draganfly. We just announced it a few weeks ago. So that's relatively early.

But we expect to do the same thing with them that they've done -- that we've done with Red Cat, where we go out and jointly meet with customers, talk about what the basic air platform is capable of, why it's the best-in-class for a particular mission set and then educate the Department of War customer on what is the art of the possible when you start adding in collaborative autonomy that our SwarmOS platform provides. So it is more than just having to get a design win. You get a design win with a customer like Red Cat or Draganfly, but then you have to go convince the Department of War that it's worth spending the extra money for the additional capability set.

Fortunately, for us, almost every time Pete Hegseth wants to talk about drones, he's talking about swarming and collaborative autonomy capabilities. So it is -- I think we're in front of the duck. We're in a good spot with this right now.

Our next question comes from Michael Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

Congrats on the transactions here. Did you say that the -- a couple of the main customers for your acquisitions were the Air Force and Navy or those the 2 main sort of end customers? I know you sell the primes, but do they end up in those 2 categories?

So we actually have direct contracts with the Air Force and with the Navy, where they are funding the development of capabilities that they want to deploy. So those are direct contracts. That's not where we're acting as a sub to somebody else.

Interesting. And then as you think about the kind of revenue composition here, are we going to see sort of one revenue line? Or are you going to have hardware, software services? Just trying to think about how that will look.

Yes, I expect we will -- we're still sorting through that, Michael, but I expect that we will be able to clearly articulate what's component sales, what services, what software sales.

And how quickly can you get SwarmOS kind of embedded into the GuideTech development cycle and product lines there?

Well, it can't happen fast enough. But since we just closed the deal today, I can tell you it's not today, but I expect -- if you look at what we did in terms of getting it on to the NVIDIA board and on to Qualcomm, it was a matter in those cases of a couple of weeks.

So one of the things that our engineering team started talking about today was exactly what the path is to make that happen. I have not gotten an update on that conversation, but it's something that I do not think is going to be terribly cumbersome or time consuming.

And then I think at the end there, you mentioned you're potentially expecting a Department of War contract award. I guess just what product category is that in? Or any more detail there?

That will still relate to the SwarmOS capabilities. I don't want to say more about it than that because it's premature.

But bottom line is we've got some good momentum with the Department of War following on the backside of some of the existing contracts that we have.

And just last one. It seems like GuideTech is able to produce key systems in much more cost effectively. Can you just provide a little more detail on how they do that? Why are they so much more cost effective?

Yes. One of the things that they did when they first started the company, which I think was 10 or 12 years ago now, and the founders came out of Raytheon Missile Systems, they put a fair bit of capital into developing their own internal software systems that they use as tools to what I think that is revolutionizing the way aerospace design and engineering occurs.

They can go from concept to working prototype in less than 6 months. In the case of SwarmStrike, I believe that they had their first flight within 4.5 months after the original concept was conceived of. And that is in large part credited to their internal software tools that they have created.

And I think that is one of the -- when I look at the crown jewels of GuideTech, it is the people first and it is the internal software systems that they've created as tools that allow them to conceive and validate designs far more quickly than I think occurs anywhere else in the industry.

And that is why they have been very successful at having customers across the defense prime space.

Our next question comes from James Kisner with Water Tower.

This is James. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you. Thank you, James.

Congrats on the transaction. I just wanted to double-click a little bit on the vertical integration and sort of the benefits of that and sort of the why behind the transaction.

I think you said that it helps your scaling, but are there other benefits here like time-to-market or integration technology or maybe even some margin stacking that's eliminated that also are rationales for these ready transactions?

Here's the way I think about it. The ability to control your destiny on both the hardware and software side to evolve them in tandem so that you can optimize both is something that you don't get the benefit of if you're just providing hardware or just providing software.

You can think of a couple of great examples that I use as an analogy here. If you thought about Steve Jobs trying to come up with the iPhone and all, he was going to produce the hardware, not the software, it wouldn't be the hit product that it became.

Vice versa, if he was only focused on software, not hardware, it may not have become the hit product it was.

Take it into something that's a little more current. Think of the Tesla cars. If Elon had said, I'm going to build the frame and the physical instantiation of the vehicle, but I'm going to farm out the AI and the software to somebody else, it would not have been an optimized car that attracted the millions of customers that they have today.

What we see in our opportunity set going forward is in those cases where there are gaps of capability that we think the Department of War wants, we now are bringing together our software and the hardware and the avionics and the components altogether vertically integrated, so that we can go faster in a way that demonstrates enhanced capabilities so that we can beat our near peer competitors worldwide to the punch.

Very helpful. Just one other follow-up. I mean the shutdown, obviously just ended and you're kind of early commercialization, but have you seen any change in the tender conversations in the last couple of days, anything to report there? That's all I have.

I will tell you this, I've been pleasantly surprised that there isn't any slowness in getting people reengaged now that they're back at work. We've been -- frankly, I've been a little surprised at it's like the spigot turned on and they are -- at least the people that we're dealing with and the narrow areas that we're focused on, I can't speak for the whole Department of War or the whole government, but I've been very pleasantly surprised at seeing almost instantaneous reengagement picking up right where we had left off.

Our next question comes from Brian Kinstlinger once again with Alliance Global Partners.

Just a quick modeling question. Is there any seasonality that you see in the 2 acquiring -- businesses you're acquiring? I know often there's some seasonality in defense, at least with awards, but I'm not sure if there is on the revenue generation from your business.

We have not seen seasonality that I'm aware of. I think that as you get towards the new budget cycle, that can always impact things when you're talking about the U.S. government as a customer.

But I do not believe that either of these businesses have seen significant issues as a result of that. The slowdown resulting from the shutdown of the government definitely impacted the ability, for example, when you're asking a government customer to approve a first design or a first product and they're no longer in the seat to approve it.

That created a delay, and you saw that across the sector. But just in terms of normal seasonality, I don't see anything there, Brian.

[Operator Instructions]

I will now turn the floor back over to Brian Siegel for any questions from our webcast audience.

Thanks, Juan. I got a couple here. The first one is earlier this year, you described a roughly 12- to 18-month sales cycle and suggested you'd have more visibility in the back half of the year.

I'm wondering whether the acquisitions along with the creation of Palladyne Defense have improved that visibility. Are you seeing any signs that these moves could shorten the sales cycle?

So the 12- to 18-month sales cycle was primarily focused on the commercial side of our IQ sales. And I don't see any change there. And certainly, these 2 acquisitions don't really impact that.

I do think what these acquisitions do is they give us more avenues to monetize our SwarmOS swarming software, a lot more customers that we can now tap into relationships that we can build and expand on.

And so it's too early for me to say whether I think the sales cycle for that product on the defense side will be shorter, but I do know it increases significantly our shots on goal.

One other question is, will you need to expand sales staff as you grow, let's say, over the next 6 to 12 months?

We expect to do that. That's something that we budgeted for already, and that was true notwithstanding whether we did these acquisitions or not.

One of the great things about these acquisitions, though, is that they have their own business development efforts. We will supplement that and fortify that. As I mentioned before in my prepared comments, Doug Dynes, comes over to us.

He will be leading our defense business with a primary focus on generating revenues for the defense side of the house.

And he has incredible relationships, and we've got -- we'll be building a team to support him. So bottom line is, as with -- when I've been asked that question in the past, as we understand more about what gets a customer to say yes, then we will put more resources into getting more customers to say yes.

But we're not going to just start throwing a bunch of money at marketing and sales until we know what works until we've cracked that code.

One last question. It's about the commercial business. When will the next version of IQ become available? And is it being tested currently at customer or potential customer facilities?

We are testing the V2 of IQ in our own facilities now. As soon as we believe we've got it debugged and completely ready to go, then we will start placing it with customers. So we're not quite there yet. A lot of that, as I mentioned in my prior comments in past quarters or in our press releases, was focused on improving the user interface.

User interface is never as easy as just putting a wrapper on the piece of candy. It actually requires integration with the way the software works, but we've never had an issue with the functionality of V1.

What we had was an issue with the ease of use and making it so that we truly can have folks that are not software engineers able to interact with it and train robots the way very expensive computer programmers and software engineers typically do.

So remember, our whole focus with IQ is to democratize the ability to program and manage industrial robots and to allow people that may only have a high school education to be able to do the kind of job that historically has taken people that are $225,000 or $250,000 a year graduate students that are able to do.

So I think that we're close, and we're going through all the testing internally right now internally to make sure that it will be satisfactory for our customers when we release it out into the wild.

Great. That's all the questions from the webcast. Juan, you can close out the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this now concludes our question-and-answer session and does conclude today's teleconference as well. We thank you for your participation. Please disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.