It's not easy to test experimental drones in downtown Austin. That's why Capital Factory and Guinn Partners on March 13 launched a new hub for startups to develop drones and autonomous vehicles next to a wide open swath of land just southwest of the Pennybacker Bridge in West Austin.
The Center for Autonomous Robotics is spread across 10,000 square feet on the third floor of the Plaza on the Lake building. It has about 60 desks, including several with expansive views of Lake Austin, as well as two specially ventilated and equipped labs for 3D printing and robotics work.
But the real draw is the big backyard. It's the size of several football fields, and provides plenty of space above ground and the adjacent Colorado River, aka Lake Austin, to test vehicles of all kinds — land, air and water.
"If you're building stuff, you want to be able to go fly something, crash it, bring it back in, fix it, try something else and bring it back out," Capital Factory founder and CEO Joshua Baer said.
Typically, a startup might have to drive a half hour or more to find the appropriate space to test, particularly for companies with larger drones, which slows the whole process down.
The new Center for Autonomous Robotics
The Center for Autonomous Robotics, or CAR, is already almost fully booked with startups, roughly 30 of them, which will be moving in shortly, Baer said. CAR was initially announced before the pandemic in 2020, but the partners hit pause given the new nature of work with a virus spreading.
Aside from the open space to test vehicles, Capital Factory also expects it to be a powerful networking space with corporate, military and venture capital leaders visiting regularly, and startups sharing insights and connections to potential customers.
"If you believe that the United States should be leading in technology, then we've really got to get after it," said Col. Martin Salinas, Austin-based chief operating officer at AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation unit. "Again, we've got our traditional partners. But I think really the key to that capability, to advancing our leadership, is here in this room with the small startup companies out there in Austin. And I think there's some great opportunity to bring them all together here. Put all of the right people in the same room and find out what is that next great thing."
Capital Factory has been helping connect startups with the defense sector since around 2016, when the Department of Defense announced it would launch its Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, or DIUx, alongside the Austin startup accelerator. Those connections have multiplied greatly over the years, bolstered by the addition of Army Futures Command in Austin, as well as hubs for several other branches and programs.
Meanwhile, defense contractors are right there alongside them in downtown Austin. It's a dynamic that has worked well for startups like Lift Aircraft, which over the weekend demonstrated its one-seater Hexa ultralight aircraft in front of a large crowd of excited onlookers.
Lift has been been flight testing its aircraft for about three and a half years, and is getting close to launching its customer flights, founder Matt Chasen said.
The startup has raised about $13 million in funding so far, and will likely have a new round in the near future. But one of its biggest breaks came from connecting with the military.
"We've already benefited from the serendipitous connections we've made through Capital Factory," he said. "When I founded the business, I had no intention or thought to get in the military world. But because Capital Factory has a lot of military [connections] ... I was introduced to colleagues at the Air Force, and that turned into contracts for us. So that's been wonderful. That's just going to continue and get even better at this new facility."
