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[Photo: Daymon Gardner]
It was September 2022, and Dino Mavrookas was trying to build the future of U.S. naval power atop an $800 dinghy.
A former member of SEAL Team Six turned tech investor, Mavrookas had recently launched the startup Saronic Technologies with a vision for shoring up America’s defenses: cheap, fast autonomous boats that could be commanded in swarms, armed with sensors and weapons, and manufactured at factory scale.
But first, he and his team, veterans of SpaceX and Anduril, needed a prototype. So they bought a raft off Amazon and began rigging it with $30,000 in off-the-shelf cameras, sensors, and motors in their bare-bones Austin warehouse.
A month later, Ukraine used its own makeshift drone boat to strike a multimillion-dollar Russian warship. Soon, lawmakers and naval officials were traveling to Austin to see the prototype. “Everybody was like, ‘Oh, drone boats are massively effective against larger naval vessels,’” Mavrookas says. Just 90 days after launching, Saronic signed its first Navy contract.
Since then, Mavrookas’s vision has become a strategic imperative. For years, the U.S.’s long-term naval strategy has focused on the South China Sea, where Beijing’s potential plans to take Taiwan involve a flotilla of autonomous carriers and stealth unmanned surface vessels (USVs), aka drone boats. But after the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury—and Iran’s cheap aerial drones, kamikaze skiffs and sea mines upended war plans and disrupted the global economy—that calculus is shifting again, and the demand signal, as they call it, is blaring.
“We’re seeing our thesis play out in real time,” Mavrookas says. “We need this as a country.” Indeed, in early June, two U.S. airmen went down with their helicopter near the coast of Oman; roughly two hours later, they were rescued by 5th Fleet’s drone-focused Task Force 59—using one of Saronic’s Corsair USVs. It was a Navy milestone, and possibly a world first.
Mavrookas’s sense of urgency defines Saronic’s rise into a defense-tech powerhouse with 1,400 employees, $500 million in government contracts, $2.6 billion in total funding, and a valuation north of $9 billion. The company is using the cash, from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Joe Lonsdale, to create autonomous boats and larger ships capable of carrying cargo, weapons, or flocks of more drones, along with the software for operating them.
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How newly minted millionaires could reshape San Francisco home design
Cold plunges, circadian lighting, and robot closets aren’t on the typical home renovation checklist. But then again, the once-in-a-generation wealth creation coming from the Bay Area’s new wave of tech companies going public offers a singular shift in San Franciscans’ net worth, and a window into how the tech elite define the dream home.
The explosion of wealth that will follow a handful of history’s biggest initial public offerings is expected to reshape San Francisco and the Bay Area, with massive investments in new ideas, startups, and even philanthropic ventures. Space X’s massive IPO and upcoming IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI could create 12,000 new multimillionaires, with a handful of people netting hundreds of millions, per The Washington Post.
But this peak in the region’s boom-bust cycle of tech wealth generation will also provide a unique look at the interior design trends and housing amenities favored by artificial intelligence aristocrats. Realtors have circled IPO dates on their calendars—as well as the days, months after the post-IPO lockups, when stockholders can sell—as key moments in a busy year to come.
Today, the Bay Area real estate market is in a frenzy. Home prices in San Francisco jumped 18% year over year, according to a report in March from the Compass real estate brokerage, with the average sale price breaking the $2 million barrier.
Michael Williams, a realtor and broker for TurboHome, says that certain desirable zip codes and neighborhoods have seen a nearly 10% price gain in home prices every month. The market is moving so fast, potential buyers and sellers are using pending sales to produce price comps.
“Everything is now very hyperlocal,” Williams says. “And this may be the slow part of the market, since the IPO money hasn’t really hit yet.”
In conversations with real estate agents, home tech firms, decorators and contractors, a picture of the trends and amenities that will reshape the San Francisco housing market has become clear. The focus is on quality and utility, especially in terms of security and wellness. Broadly speaking, this isn’t a Gilded Age—the sense is that new or renovated homes won’t be gaudy and flashy.
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