When I spoke with Blake Resnick, he was walking around his drone startup’s state-of-the-art office space in Seattle. The cavernous 50,000-square-foot facility, Resnick says, won’t be fully ready until later this year, possibly in November. Still, this large (and so far mostly empty) building holds potential for a fast-growing company looking to conquer a specific industry.
The industry in question is public safety, and the startup is Blink, which sells drones to police departments and public agencies across the country. The company wants to become, as Resnick puts it, “the DJI of the West.” It’s a tribute to Chinese drone makers and a sign that Resnick hopes Blink will become synonymous with the technology it sells.
Resnick, a former Thiel Fellow (a prestigious program that provides funding to young entrepreneurs to take a break or defer college), founded Blink in 2017 and shortly thereafter attracted the interest of then-OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who eventually became one of Blink’s first seed investors. Since then, Brinc has enjoyed numerous funding rounds, most recently valued at nearly $500 million, Resnick said.
Blink on Tuesday launched its latest product, a new public safety drone called Guardian. Resnick said this is “the closest thing the drone industry has ever produced to a police helicopter replacement.” Blink claims this is the world’s “most capable 9/11-ready drone ever.”
Guardian certainly has formidable specs and features. The drone’s creator says it can fly at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour and last for 62 minutes. It is also equipped with a thermal imaging camera and two additional 4K cameras, all with zoom capabilities. “Police were able to read the license plate details and so on, even from a considerable altitude,” Resnick told me. Additionally, there are spotlights and speakers that are louder than a police siren.
The drone’s landing station, which Brink calls a “charging nest,” can provide fully automated battery swapping and replenish essential safety supplies like defibrillators, flotation devices, and Narcan, all without human intervention.
The Guardian also has a Starlink panel embedded directly into its body, making it the first public safety drone with such a feature, according to Blink. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, enables drone connectivity anywhere in the world. “Starlink has never been integrated into a commercially produced quadcopter before. [it] This aircraft gives you unlimited range anywhere in the world,” Resnick told me.
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Resnick clearly sees public safety as a big opportunity. “There are approximately 20,000 police departments, 30,000 fire stations, and 80,000 police and fire departments in America, and in the future, the top half of that market will have 911-enabled drones in rooftop charging nests,” he said. “It certainly looks like we’re looking at a $6 billion to $8 billion market opportunity,” he said, assessing the U.S. and other markets.
In that regard, Blink recently partnered with the National League of Cities on a program to expand the “Drones as First Responders” program in communities across the country. This move will definitely help foster the relationship between the startup and the community that could eventually become its customers.
Additionally, Resnick feels that recent geopolitical developments are working in his company’s favor. Until recently, DJI enjoyed an unofficial monopoly on the global drone market, including in the United States, where safety authorities have long relied on the Chinese company’s products. However, the Trump administration recently banned foreign drone models from entering the country, opening up a huge potential market.
“There’s a huge need for a DJI in the West, or a leading drone manufacturer in the free world, and ultimately that’s what we want to be,” Resnick said.
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