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We kick things off with Brian Shimp, CEO of ANDERIL, as the first of many conversations. Brian, we're grateful to be here at ANDERILL. There has been a lot of hype around the company, a deep focus on what it is doing, how it is growing, and so as a place to start, which you just bring us up to speed on where ANDERI is today operationally, revenue, the business it is doing with the US government and Western allies.
Absolutely well, thank you for having me on. Really excited to have you here. The Andral has been around about eight years, but we've grown incredibly in that time. I think this year we're going to be over sixty five hundred employees. We've got something like about half of them here in Costa Mesa. We're looking to basically double revenue this year. So we're about a billion last year, we'll go over two billion this year. And we're ramping production
about four hundred percent. So a lot of the mix is switching from one of the earlier stage things we were doing, which were you know, kind of experimental, really learning what the technology could do, how to integrate it with war fighters. This year we're really moving into this mode of really producing.
Brian, forgive me. We've actually got some breaking news that's just crossed the Bloomberg terminal. President Trump is saying that he was due to meet China's President g in two weeks time. He's saying now that he sees no reason to do so. The team are going to put some of the headlines up on the screen. But Caro, a significant piece of news because part of what we wanted to discuss today was China, the President saying that he's calculating increased tariffs on Chinese products.
This is a dining up of GPN attentions.
Brian, bear with us. We are now seeing this quite sharp market reaction. Clearly the S and P five hundred is changed direction here because I think, well, you know, jumping Carra. I think part of the point is that we were headed in a different direction, and.
This brings so many questions around what the TikTok relationship had been, and much of that had been sort of almost this lynchpin in relationships between President She and indeed President Trump, but then been this ongoing narrative about how we could rectify and rehabilitate the relationship there've been calls from China perhaps wanting yet further relief from some of the higher tarists.
That they've been Sorry, I've just pulled up the true social posts, and that's where the President's communicated and he's basically saying that China is becoming very hostile. Let's get back to the conversation.
Well, your take, Brian, because in many ways, andrel and defense tech as a whole is about the story of national security, and it is about US versus China. Is that where you see the key risks.
That is one of the key conflicts. But if you look worldwide, I mean you've got land wars in Europe, You've got you know, the Red Seas still basically denied. Iran doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon. China, beyond just the tensions with US, has been constantly aggravating with the Philippines, you know, constantly fighting over different islands and things like that. So you're in this period of just massive geopolitical instability, and China is obviously the focus.
But I mean they've had a very strategic view to this, right, Like they've blocked so they've pump put a significant export controls on magnets for high end but rare US.
For example, we understand the breaking newser today as well as China's making harder and harder for rare earth to be exploited not just the US.
But to Europe.
Yeah, and I think this is part of a long term strategic plan they have had, right, they have used industrial policy beyond just military power to construct a world where they have a lot of leverage over the US and their allies. They drive dependence on these things and it's a very sophisticated strategy that they're playing. Yes, I think this is something that Trump recognizes. I think he is a very good negotiator. If he's saying these things, he understands what that means and how he is using
that to position for maximum advantage. And so I think it's going to be a long run conflict with China, and that's something we've just got to be prepared for.
Brian, Thank you for rolling with this. The news is breaking as we go to air, the markets reacting. One of the things that we've just shown on the street is the semiconductor index. Yeah. One reason why it's critically important to talk to you and Reill is your efforts to re ensure the manufacturing base in this country in Ohio. But in research for being here today, Caroline and I looked a lot at the supply chain for your industry. Why everything from why Harness through to GPUs that go
on board a lot of the weapons behind us. Could you just expand on that a little bit, you know why arsenal one is so critical in that sense in that context absolutely so.
You know, when you look at defenses one of those areas where national security is paramount, pulling these technologies onto US and ally and manufacturing is absolutely key. And the strategy we've taken with this is there is a lot of industrial capacity in the US. There is the ability to take advantage of largely commercial industry that can manufacture these things. But when you start stepping back, there's things
that defense alone can solve. Right These are things like you know, the rare earth magnets, germanium supply, these are things that China has strategically tried to stranglehold. And this will require beyond just stating as a policy that you have to sources of America. The sources are very very limited. This is areas where I've been really encouraged by what the Trump administration has done around trying to reignite this idea of how do you do smart industrial policy? What
is it going to look like in the US. It's going to look different. It's going to be a combination of tariffs, it's going to be a combination of things they did with like MP materials guaranteed off take. There's just this very different strategy that needs to be taken
to really solve this on a country level scale. And for US, we can be early adopters, right like, we can take advantage of all those things, and we're building out a mass of manufacturing complex in Ohio to be able to take advantage of all of those suppliers in the US and build a lot of things here on shore.
Okay, so the breaking news is that the president has taken true social and he is saying that it looks like he now won't meet with China's she and things are changing. We will discuss that for the next hour while we have you. Anderil has been in the headlines partly because of the insate website of all kinds of investors to be involved. You did a secondary or a tender for your employees would you talk about the focus you have right now in talent and that mechanism to keep people basically.
No, absolutely, So the defense world has shifted a lot, right, Like, a lot of the people in traditional defense industry are amazing at things like aircraft design and hypersonics and things along those lines. But the next generation of this really looks different. It really looks about software. It looks how you adopt commercial manufacturing approaches. It's how you mass manufacture
these capabilities. It's a very different focus. We're moving out of an era where we need to make relatively few, a very very expensive, high end things. We're moving into an era where it's much more about how do we have things at scale that are smarter, that are more autonomous. And so this ability to attract the best talent into this really is coming from tech companies. It's coming from universities. It's people who otherwise would have at you know, kind
of all the tech company brand names. You would know, part of that's compensation and liquidity and all the startup economics, but honestly a lot more of it is just do they get to work on exciting problems with people they like,
on things that really matter? Right, and I think we present this opportunity to be very clear in our purpose and our mission, something that's going to be impactful, and they get to work on just amazing cutting edge things, right like making autonomous fighter jets and you know, these reusable miss There's just an absolutely crazy thing to work on if you're a young engineer. And that's what we've really found is the formula to get the best and brightest.
Here is an exciting opportunity to actually contribute, give back and build something incredible.
Ron What a joy to have you sat with us rolling within Broiking News and be surrounded by all of this gear that you are driving innovation on branch and appreciate your CEO of Andreill