Founders Panel 

Brandon Tseng

Shield AI  |  Co-Founder & President

Brandon Tseng is Shield AI’s President & Cofounder. Previously, Brandon proudly served in the Navy for seven years as a SEAL and Surface Warfare Officer aboard USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52). He founded Shield AI – with the mission to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems – driven by firsthand experiences during deployments to Afghanistan (x2), the Pacific Theater, and the Arabian Gulf. At Shield AI, Brandon leads all aspects of growth – business development, corporate development, strategy, marketing, and government relations – to help Shield AI achieve its mission at a global scale. Brandon earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Nini Hamrick

Vannevar Labs  |  Co-Founder & President

Nini Hamrick is the Cofounder & President of Vannevar Labs. She leads Vannevar’s mission teams that launch and grow its technology deployments with the national security community. Vannevar’s products are deployed on over 20 US military bases, and the company has raised $91M in venture capital and achieved profitability since its launch in 2019. Nini is a former US intelligence officer who spent seven years working with counterterrorism mission groups, including embedding with the US military overseas. Nini also served as chief of staff to the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Nini holds a BA from Harvard College, where she studied Middle Eastern History and Arabic, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Cam McCord

Nominal  |  Co-Founder & CEO

Cameron is the CEO and Co-founder of Nominal, a dual-use software company building tools and data infrastructure for hardware development and testing. Previously, he was Head of Defense at Saildrone, leading product, business development, and strategy for defense and IC customers. Cameron also worked as an investor at Lux Capital, advising on national security tech and strategy. He served as a Congressional Liaison for the Navy, contributed to the 2020 Future of Defense Task Force report, and was a fast attack submarine officer. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and degrees in Physics and Nuclear Engineering from MIT.

Billy Thalheimer

REGENT  |  Co-Founder & CEO

Billy is the co-founder and CEO of REGENT.  Since co-founding REGENT in late 2020, Billy has overseen growth of the company to over 100 employees, accumulated a commercial backlog of seaglider orders worth more than $9 billion, and raised over $90M from world-class investors like Founders Fund, Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, Japan Airlines, and Lockheed Martin. Billy honed his skills in human-crewed electric aircraft development at Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, where he was responsible for aircraft design, program management, and business generation for Boeing's portfolio of future air mobility solutions. Billy holds a B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and is a licensed aerobatic pilot.

Austin Gray

[ Moderator ]

Blue Water Autonomy  |  Chief Strategy Officer

Austin Gray is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Blue Water Autonomy, a defense-first technology company building autonomous ships. He is obsessed with listening to his customers and curating a mission-oriented builder culture. Previously, Gray embedded with the Kyiv Engineering Corps, where he helped develop several UxS products. Gray served in the US Navy as an Intelligence Officer, where he completed combat deployments to multiple theaters on the aircraft carriers. Gray also led a team of DC-based sailors, civilians, and contractors modernizing the Navy’s top secret information technology. Gray writes frequently about the intersection of geopolitics and emerging technology, and holds an MBA from MIT and an MPA from Harvard.