Inside Neros’ Factory Built to Make 1 Million Drones a Year

Summary

Podcast Summary: Sourcery with Molly O'Shea

Episode: Inside Neros’ Factory Built to Make 1 Million Drones a Year

Release Date: August 12, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, the Sourcery team is given an in-depth tour of Neros’ new Millennium One factory, guided by Soren, a leader at Neros. The facility is purpose-built for manufacturing up to one million drones per year, marking a significant scale-up from their previous space. The tour showcases the company's approach to vertical integration, rapid iteration, and an engineering-first culture. Along the way, Soren provides candid insights into the challenges of mass production, the realities of defense tech, and the company culture driving innovation at Neros.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Millennium One Facility: Scaling for Mass Production

• Facility Size & Ambition:
  The new factory is 250,000 sq ft and aims to enable production of up to a million drones annually—an upgrade from their old 15,000 sq ft facility.

  • Quote:
    “We sized this building to be big enough to do a million drones per year.” – Soren [00:00]

• Vertical Integration Goal:
  The expanded space lets Neros keep engineering, production, and even new product introduction (NPI) lines under one roof. Soren emphasizes how this setup fosters collaboration and rapid iteration.

  • Quote:
    “...all the teams for the full lifecycle of the product, not just design... if you don't have this really close collaboration, things tend to get left and just thrown over the fence.” – Soren [05:23]

2. Factory Tour Highlights

a) Engineering & Rapid Iteration

• Flight Testing & Development:
  Teams are out in the desert daily to aggressively test and stress drones.

  • Quote:
    “We have a team of 10 people right now that is constantly out in the desert... trying to push everything to its limit and see where it breaks.” – Soren [01:21]
  • Testing sites are about two hours from the facility, with two teams out at different locations each day. [02:22]

• Material Choices & Manufacturing Process:
  Neros uses carbon plates and aluminum in drone construction, focusing on lightweight strength and cooling efficiency.

  • Quote:
    “Our airframes right now are mostly made out of carbon plates... But the bottom plate is an aluminum plate... acts as a big heat sink.” – Soren [03:57]

b) Production Line Operations

• Manual vs. Automation:
  Current production is mostly manual due to the need for rapid iteration, but there's an intent to automate as products stabilize.

  • Quote:
    “To get to an automated line, it takes a pretty significant redesign... it actually makes a ton of sense to have manually operated stations [for now].” – Soren [10:26]
  • Real-time manufacturing software tracks serial numbers, production rates, and bottlenecks.
  • Production is currently over 250 drones per day. [10:59]

• Quality Control & Testing:
  Every drone is flight tested after an automated test station, but they aim to eventually shift to statistical sampling as they gather more data.

  • Quote:
    “What they're doing is putting a payload on the drone and then... just trying to stress the drone as much as they can in a relatively short flight.” – Soren [11:48]
  • “...trying to get to a point where we don't have to flight test all of our drones... we're probably still a little ways away from that.” [12:29]

c) New Product Introduction (NPI)

• Dedicated Space for Innovation:
  The NPI line allows teams to develop processes for new products before moving them to main production, enabled by the new facility’s scale.
  • Quote:
    “This is what we’re doing right now with the Archer AI product before it goes into main production later this year.” – Soren [15:31]

3. Strategy & Industry Perspective

• Centralized Mass Manufacturing vs. Battlefield 3D Printing:
  Soren pushes back on the idea of 3D printing drones in the field, pointing out that large, centralized factories are far more efficient for scale and that most critical components can’t be 3D printed at the point of use.

  • Quote:
    “It does not solve the supply chain problem in the ways that maybe are claimed in some of the posts today.” – Soren [03:39]

• Why Not a Wind Tunnel?
  Neros relies on real-world, harsh-condition testing rather than wind tunnels—deeming them more relevant for fixed-wing drones.

  • Quote:
    “...these quadcopters, they're much less affected by wind than a fixed wing drone. We do a ton of testing in very windy conditions, but we’ve never needed to specifically put something in a wind tunnel.” – Soren [13:09]

• Expansion and Hiring:
  Neros is hiring across all departments, especially for full-system responsible hardware engineers.

  • Quote:
    “We're hiring for pretty much every department... but especially hardware engineers... who can take on just a ton of accountability.” – Soren [17:09]

4. Company Culture & Secrets

• Workplace Vibe:
  The factory features wide open spaces, employees using scooters and skateboards, and a dedicated gym with a powerlifting focus (“You guys have your own Equinox?” – Interviewer [18:30]).
• Playful Secrecy:
  Teases about the meaning of ‘Neros’ and a “super secret facility” with blackout curtains and hidden areas.
  • Quote:
    “Hold a mirror up to the logo, see what you can find.” – Interviewer [17:47]

5. Notable Quotes & "Hot Takes"

• On Defense Tech:
  Soren offers a blunt assessment of the sector:
  • Quote:
    “Maybe my hottest take is that a lot of the defense tech, maybe the majority of defense tech products that are being put out right now by startups are not very effective and maybe even like completely useless.” – Soren [19:03]
  • Interviewer’s reply: “They're fake.” – Interviewer [19:39]
  • Soren: “They're fake.” [19:40]

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Noteworthy Moments & Timestamps

• Tour begins: Millennium One facility described [00:00–01:20]
• Flight test team & testing philosophy [01:21–02:30]
• Discussion of 3D printing vs. factory production [02:41–03:39]
• Material and construction choices for drones [03:53–04:40]
• Advantages of integrated, cross-functional teams [05:21–06:02]
• Reveal of new Bandit Interceptor version [06:09–06:47]
• Speed ambitions and technical challenges [06:49–07:13]
• Inside the production line: manual vs. automation [08:54–10:52]
• Flight testing every drone & path to automation [11:44–12:57]
• Real-world testing vs. wind tunnel use [13:09–13:34]
• New product introduction line explained [15:31–16:36]
• Discussion of company growth and current job openings [17:01–17:31]
• Behind-the-scenes look at relaxed company culture [18:05–18:55]
• Soren’s bold "hottest take" on defense tech [19:03–19:41]

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Memorable Quotes

• “We sized this building to be big enough to do a million drones per year.” – Soren [00:00]
• “What they're doing is putting a payload on the drone and then basically just trying to stress the drone as much as they can in a relatively short flight. Just a mass simulation.” – Soren [11:48]
• “It does not solve the supply chain problem in the ways that maybe are claimed in some of the posts today.” – Soren [03:39]
• “Maybe my hottest take is that a lot of the defense tech, maybe the majority of defense tech products that are being put out right now by startups are not very effective and maybe even like completely useless.” – Soren [19:03]
• “Hold a mirror up to the logo, see what you can find.” – Interviewer [17:47]
• “No, no, this is. This is normal rate. We're doing a little over 250 drones a day right now.” – Soren [10:55–10:59]

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Conclusion

This fast-paced episode offers an authentic and granular look at the engineering, manufacturing, and company culture inside Neros’ ambitious new factory. Soren's candid, sometimes provocative insights make clear the hurdles of scaling defense tech for real-world impact, the practical realities behind mass manufacturing, and the scrappy spirit animating Neros’ explosive growth. The episode will be of interest to anyone fascinated by hardware startups, robotics, and the future of defense technology.

Transcript

[Soren]

This is our Millennium One facility. This is the factory that we moved into a few months ago. We sized this building to be big enough to do a million drones per year. In our previous facility, we had 100 people and manufacturing in 15,000 square feet. We were just fighting to even get drones out the door. The newest version of the Bandit Interceptor, still a pretty rough prototype, honestly, but this one goes about 40 kilometers an hour faster. We're doing about 300 kilometers an hour with this drone right here. We wanted with this facility to not have to. To have multiple sites, not have to move. We've got all the space we need to actually vertically integrate everything and then get to that million per year target.

[Interviewer]

Amazing. We're here at Neros and we're going to do a little factory tour with Soren. Soren, thanks for having us.

[Soren]

Absolutely. Let's do it.

[Interviewer]

What are we going to see today?

[Soren]

Okay, so this is our Millennium One facility. This is the factory that moved into a few months ago. We sized this building to be big enough to do a million drones per year. And so we're going to see a lot of stuff from engineering to production, and then also empty space that is waiting to get filled. So a lot of fun stuff. We'll try to check out the engineering labs first.

[Interviewer]

What are we going to be looking at over here?

[Soren]

Okay, so we are coming up on the flight test teams area here. So we have a team of 10 people right now that is constantly out in the desert every single day testing our products. So you can see there's a bunch of drones on these racks that are at some point in the testing process for engineering development. So we'll see flight tests, our end of line flight test later on, which is for production. This is all for development purposes, but one of the things you can check out here is one of the interceptor prototypes. So this is the V1 of the bandit Interceptor that we've been flying out in the desert. We have a newer version of this now that hopefully we'll get to look at too. One of the other things here is the Archer AI drone. So all of this stuff has been just getting beat to hell out in the hot desert and surviving. So that's the goal, but really we're just trying to push everything to its limit and see where it breaks.

[Interviewer]

How far in the desert do you go?

[Soren]

We're like two hours away from here.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Soren]

Yeah. And we usually have two teams out every day, so in two different locations.

[Interviewer]

Cool. Okay. So one of your friends thought it would be good for me to Ask you why you don't 3D print these in the battlefield.

[Soren]

Oh, I see. I think I can guess which friend. Yeah. So really we are focused on mass production. 3D printing is generally good for making a few of a thing, making lots of different things. We are mostly focused on making a lot of one thing or a really consistent process. So there's an idea that you can go and 3D print drones in the battlefield. Generally, factories are really efficient when they are large and centralized. And 3D printers can be very useful for adapting drones to various mission sets. But you'd only be 3D printing like the airframe or a payload adapter. What we're trying to solve for is the really, like, core components and manufacturing process. So you're not going to be 3D printing your circuit boards, your motors, your radios, any of that stuff out on the battlefield. So it does not solve the supply chain problem in the ways that maybe are claimed in some of the posts today.

[Interviewer]

We were at Anduril and we went into their R D building. It's huge.

[Soren]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And macrim showed us the castings that they have for their drone bodies, which seem a lot heavier.

[Soren]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

So what's the main difference between using something like that versus what you're using?

[Soren]

So our airframes right now are mostly made out of carbon plates. So carbon is really light and really strong, but it doesn't have some of the advantages of what they were doing with those metal bodies is that you get to use it as a heat sink. So we actually do this on our drone now, where the bottom plate is an aluminum plate and we contact the motherboard and the radios with thermal interface material when we close out the drone with that bottom plate. And so that acts as a big heat sink. But we're still using. It's just a flat plate that's cut into a shape in 2D versus having to be cast or CNC'd, which is just a lot cheaper for mass manufacturing.

[Interviewer]

Got it. Okay, what are we doing now?

[Soren]

Okay, so we're walking past the engineering labs or engineering spaces. So everyone, as you can see, has a lot of stuff at their desks. They have hardware, they have test equipment. It's really just whatever they need to be most effective at their workstation. And then right next to them, they have a bigger lab area. So as an example here, this is our electronics lab. So this is where we're doing bring up on new boards, doing testing of various things. And really what we want to be able to have for each engineering team is just the ability to iterate extremely quickly and do as much of this in house as possible.

[Interviewer]

It's so cool you have all of this under one roof.

[Soren]

Yeah. I mean, this is like the advantage of having a facility this size is that the engineers here are sitting right next to production and the teams that are sitting close to production are the ones who are most impactful to production. So we have the mechanical engineering team, the manufacturing engineers, the supply chain team. They are sitting close to the line and also sitting interspersed with each other. So there's really good communication between the full, you know, all the teams for the full lifecycle of the product, not just design, which is where a lot of things tend to get left and just thrown over the fence if you don't have this really close collaboration

[Interviewer]

following along with you here. So this is a 250,000 square foot facility, if we didn't mention that already. It's pretty big.

[Soren]

Yep. So this is the mechanical engineering department here. There's a couple fun things that we can. We can look at running away. Yeah, it's okay. So this is actually the newest version of the Bandit Interceptor. You can see it's a lot more sleek than the previous prototype. Still a pretty rough prototype, honestly. But this one goes about 40 kilometers an hour faster. So we're doing about 300 kilometers an hour with this drone right here.

[Interviewer]

Oh my God.

[Soren]

And this is just a couple months of development so far. So really excited about where this is going.

[Interviewer]

How fast do you want them to get?

[Soren]

So 300 is actually a pretty good spot for taking out like typical Shawhead drones. To go after jet powered Shawhead drones, we need to be closer to like 400 miles, 400 kilometers an hour. So that would be kind of the ideal end state.

[Interviewer]

How do you make it faster?

[Soren]

Bigger motors, bigger battery, more aerodynamic. This one got a lot more aerodynamic, but there's still a lot of places that we can improve on that.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Molly]

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[Soren]

R Y All right, let's keep. Let's keep trucking.

[Interviewer]

By the way, we didn't mention this in the beginning, but this is a super fast tour for a reason. So. So we're just going to keep on going fast between different places. I made sure to wear my sneakers.

[Soren]

So right now we are in the in between engineering to production. So you can see this is all boxes of drones that are getting shipped out. And then we have the line here. So on the left side is the drone assembly line, on the right side is the ground station assembly line. What you'll see is that a lot of the stations are manually operated, but there's a lot of work to be done to make it easier for the operator. So, like as an example, you see all the parts are preloaded into these bins and then fed in from the back. And so then they're perfectly accessible for the operator. There's a lot of tooling, there's a lot of drivers with preset torques, things like this, that should make it relatively easy to operate each station. We also have manufacturing software deployed across the line that does a few different things. One is we're tracking the serial numbers of all the critical components as they go into airframes. We're also keeping track of the station time and we're able to see across stations, like, where are we losing time? What is the bottleneck? And then that tells our team where to go and focus.

[Interviewer]

How are you tracking time?

[Soren]

So if you see over here, the tablets on the stations, every time they complete a drone, they're just tapping it and then that resets it and that data then goes back to our database.

[Interviewer]

How hard is it to automate some of these tasks?

[Soren]

Right now this would be pretty difficult to automate because this version of the drone was not designed around automation. Really to get to an automated line, it takes a, a pretty significant redesign of the product itself. So that's Something that we will be going towards with the ground up redesign. But for the rate at which we are iterating, it actually makes a ton of sense to have manually operated stations.

[Interviewer]

Is this how fast they actually produce this, or do they know that we're here?

[Soren]

No, no, this is. This is normal rate.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God.

[Soren]

We're doing a little over 250 drones a day right now.

[Interviewer]

That's crazy. So when do you outgrow this space?

[Soren]

We don't know, which is a good thing. If we knew when we were outgrowing, then we. We'd be sad because we really tried to get a big enough facility to not have to move for a long time.

[Interviewer]

You'd have to get a bigger American flag.

[Soren]

Yeah. This one, I think is 30 by 60, which is, as far as I know, the largest in the South Bay. That was really important to us, but yeah, next facility needs to have higher ceilings so we can go even bigger.

[Interviewer]

Do you have the largest flag in South Bay?

[Soren]

That is, as far as I know. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

As far as you know.

[Soren]

As far as I know. All right, let's keep going. You can come on into our testing room.

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[Soren]

So right now we are flight testing every single drone that we make. So before this station, there is an automated test station, and that screens for a lot of the issues that previously we would catch at flight test, but today we're still doing 100% flight test. And so what they're doing is putting a payload on the drone and then basically just trying to stress the drone as much as they can in a relatively short flight. Just a mass simulation. So you can see they really, really whip the drone back and forth.

[Interviewer]

Wow. And that's all manual?

[Soren]

That's all manual.

[Interviewer]

When are you going to automate that?

[Soren]

It's really a process of collecting a ton of data here and collecting a ton of data at the previous test station and then trying to get to a point where we don't have to flight test all of our drones because we know typically there'd be such a high rate of catching any issues at the test station that we'd just be sample testing. So we're probably still a little ways away from, from that. But it is what we were trying to get to in the future, and we're collecting all the data to get there.

[Interviewer]

Now, we've been to a couple different drone companies. Most of them are commercial, more consumer use, not defense based, but they all have wind tunnels. Why don't you have one?

[Soren]

You know, we do so for our types of drones. You know these quadcopters, they're much less affected by wind than a fixed wing drone. We've never really we do a ton of testing in very windy conditions, but we've never needed to specifically put something in a wind tunnel and simulate like an exact wind profile. We just do a lot of real world testing and get our information that way.

[Interviewer]

Do you see yourself going into fixed wing drones?

[Soren]

It's possible. It's not something that we are working on today, but it is an area where I think a lot of the same stuff that's been figured out in fpv. Like we can make lower cost systems that are really effective. Like that applies in fixed wing too. And that is what Neuros wants to build. So at some point okay, all right.

[Molly]

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[Interviewer]

do you fly them over here too? What's the is this just more like scale out space?

[Soren]

So the I guess the last thing we'll walk through here first is the new product introduction line. So we looked at the main production line. This is where we develop process for new products. So before anything goes to the main line, it has to go through an extensive NPI process and we figure out how to build it. So this is what we're doing right now with the Archer AI product before it goes into main production later this year. So one of the things that this

[Interviewer]

has never been seen before is that

[Soren]

what you're saying, never been seen before. And it's one of the things that we have been able enabled to do by having this new space where in our previous facility we had 100 people and manufacturing in 15,000 square feet. So we were just fighting to even get drones out the door. Now we are able to do things like having an entire production like this is bigger than our old production line, just dedicated to new products. So it's a big upgrade and then. But what you can see beyond this is massive open space.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Soren]

So our plan and what we're starting to do this year is do component manufacturing in house that then feeds into our systems. So we wanted with this facility to not have to have multiple sites, not have to move. And so we've got all the space we need to actually vertically integrate everything and then get to that million per year target.

[Interviewer]

And so you guys are scaling rapidly. You're hiring new roles. We mentioned this in our longer form interview, but what are you hiring for?

[Soren]

Yeah, I mean we're hiring for every engineering discipline. We're hiring for. Supply chain. We're hiring for. I mean we're hiring for pretty much every department at the company, but especially hardware engineers and engineers who are really capable of being like full system responsible engineers and really can take on just a ton of accountability.

[Interviewer]

So the name Neros is an old wives tale, isn't it? Where does that come from, the name Neros?

[Soren]

Yeah, I don't think it's an old wives tale. I don't know. I say it's up to the, up to the viewer to figure it out.

[Interviewer]

You should all figure it out. Hold a mirror up to the logo, see what you can find. So now we're going to the super secret facility that has blackout curtains all around it.

[Soren]

Yeah, yeah. This is surprisingly the most secretive part of the nearest facility by the way.

[Interviewer]

You don't see this, but there's people scootering and skateboarding in the background.

[Soren]

Well, you got to be able to get around this place.

[Interviewer]

This looks pretty intense. Oh my God.

[Soren]

So you know this is one of our employee benefits.

[Interviewer]

You guys have your own Equinox?

[Soren]

Yeah, right. It's a little more powerlifting, focused, but

[Interviewer]

it's a lot of powerlifting.

[Soren]

It's a nice thing to have.

[Interviewer]

This is awesome. Do you guys do group workout classes here?

[Soren]

We don't do classes. Maybe we should start. You should, but usually in the morning there's like three to five people in here, like jamming out to music, lifting. So it's pretty cool.

[Interviewer]

Not much cardio.

[Soren]

Hey, there's a bike.

[Interviewer]

Oh my God. Okay, so as we close out, Soren, I have to ask you, what is your hottest take right now?

[Soren]

My hottest take right now? This is a hard one. I think the one that maybe upset a lot of people is what we talked about in the long form interview. But I would say, yeah, maybe my hottest take is that a lot of the defense tech, maybe the majority of defense tech products that are being put out right now by startups are not very effective and maybe even like completely useless.

[Interviewer]

They're fake.

[Soren]

They're fake.

[Interviewer]

Damn. Thank you very much.

[Soren]

You're welcome.

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[Molly]

Hey, it's Molly.

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[Interviewer]

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