When I speak to Blake Resnick, he’s walking around his drone startup's newest office space in Seattle—a cavernous 50,000-square-foot facility that, Resnick estimates, won’t be fully set up until later this year. The big (and for now, largely empty) building offers the promise of a fast-growing company intent on conquering its particular industry.
The industry in question is public safety and the startup is Brinc, which sells drones to police and public agencies across the U.S. The company wants to be the “DJI of the West,” as Resnick has put it—a nod to the Chinese drone manufacturer and a signal that Resnick wants Brinc to become equally synonymous with the tech it sells.
Resnick, a former Thiel Fellow, founded Brinc in 2017 and not long afterward garnered interest from then-OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who ultimately served as one of Brinc’s first seed investors. Since then, Brinc has enjoyed a number of funding rounds and, as of its last, was valued at nearly half a billion dollars.
Brinc launched its newest product on Tuesday, a new public safety drone called Guardian that Resnick says is “the closest thing to a police helicopter replacement that the drone industry has ever produced.” The Guardian can fly at speeds of up to 60 mph and can endure a 62-minute flight time. It comes equipped with thermal imaging cameras, as well as two additional 4K cameras—all of which have zoom capabilities.
The drone’s landing station (which Brinc calls a “charging nest”) offers fully automated battery swapping, and can be stocked with critical safety supplies like defibrillators, flotation devices, and Narcan, all without human intervention. Guardian also comes with a Starlink panel embedded directly into its body, making it the first public safety drone with such a capability.







