Adam Bray, CEO of Skydio, tackled the comments about Skydio's lobbying spend on drones head on in his address at the Skydio Ascend 2024 keynote today, but what he had to say won't calm DJI users.
Essentially Bray waited to the end before diving hard into politics, and with just a few slides – and a very few words.
One slide highlighted a number of organizations that had expressed concern about Chinese drones in the USA, making clear Bray and Skydio are taking a nationalist protectionist stance – which is inherently opposed to the choice to buy all drones.
Bray made this clear by saying drones were now a part of infrastructure with the potential for many to be controlled by one person, and that the USA was right to want to develop its own tech.
Bray highlighted the fact internet commentators had expressed concern about Skydio's lobbying – seemingly keen to have the debate. He even had a slide prepared to say (as has been said before) that DJI spends more on lobbying, and that Skydio's spend is "mostly" on gaining customers (he was clear not to say exclusively, suggesting that at least some of the money is anti-competitive).
In other words, Bray did not specifically deny that his company is lobbying to eliminate DJI (and indeed cited the company specifically immediately after using the word China).
He was also suggesting that no one should "bet against the US in aviation" – clearly evoking a bit of patriotism with a picture of the Wright Brothers Kitty Hawk. (Of course, you might say that this remark effectively acknowledges that his company wouldn't yet be the natural choice of customers in an open market!)
That was the context. The meat of the warning was in Bray's words: "It doesn't mean it is not painful... our focus is on the future... there's people out there that have built businesses on [DJI drones]"
So, both in context and, presumably, Skydio's CEO seems to support an anti-DJI stance and be prepared to lobby for it.
By acknowledging the pain caused by moving from a brand, he is also essentially warning DJI customers that they will have to pay for change to a US alternative at some point.
The other part of that statement, curiously in the middle, was the phrase "Our focus is on the future," which felt as much targeted on Skydio customers with a less multi-drone focus than the company as it is on businesses who Skydio, presumably, feels need to move to their future.
None of this will help photographers and video makers, of course, who haven't actually been offered a new product since the Skydio X2+ an event focussed essentially on law enforcement and military deployment.
Given people selling to the government are often inclined to put prices up, it'll be interesting to see if Skydio have any hope of appearing on our best camera drones list, one criterion of which is still value for money!
