Building cheaper, faster ships requires bending the economic cost curve through first-principles design that fundamentally uses less steel and fewer labor hours, since the US can't out-buy China on either steel or labor cost.
Dino Mavrookas argues that since the US can't win on cheaper steel or labor rates than China, shipbuilders must redesign vessels from first principles for software autonomy and digitization to use less material and labor. ✦ AI generated
Dino Mavrookas · a16z Podcast · 2026-05-19 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 1:46
“How have you translated this alignment between Saronic's autonomy and the Navy's no man left behind ethos into contracts? And how does how do autonomy breakthroughs actually allow you to build more faster products for the Navy?”
You have to bend the economic cost curve. You have to build ships cheaper. You have to build ships faster. The only two levers you have to pull are material costs and labor costs. We're not going to buy steel cheaper than they're buying it in China. So, you have to take a first principles design to the ship and just fundamentally use less steel.
verbatim transcript · starts at 1:46
1:46cheaper. I mean, he should just politely ask me to leave. You have to bend the economic cost curve. You have to build ships cheaper. You have to build ships faster. The only two levers you have to pull are material costs and labor costs. We're not going to buy steel cheaper than they're buying it in China. So, you have to take a first principles design to the ship and
2:10just fundamentally use less steel. How do you do that? You build for software autonomy and digitization. Same thing on labor hours. We're not going to acquire a per hour labor rate cheaper than they're paying in China. So, let's build ships much faster. For example, Marada's using is about a 50,000 labor hour on our first ship. Just for order of magnitude, put it in frame of reference. Apples and oranges comparison here. I'm
2:40going to acknowledge that up front. But a destroyer is 7 to 9 million >> Wow. >> labor hours. So, that's the scale and speed that autonomy unlocks because you can redesign the whole platform and make it much simpler to build. And then you build the Then you have the capability at the scale that you need to keep as many people as possible out of combat scenarios. >> You
3:06You mentioned the sort of factories and bringing bringing autonomy into the actual manufacturing processes. You've put real money behind rebuilding the American industrial base, most notably a major expansion of your Louisiana shipyard, as well as getting prepared to launch Port Arthur where we're excited We're excited for news there at some point soon. How are you thinking about Saronic investing in some of these forgotten areas forgotten demographics
3:34as you build out manufacturing across the US? And has How is scaling been similar different complimentary for the different customer bases that you're targeting? >> I mean, the workforce is critical, right? And Circa and I were talking about the workforce earlier. We have to rebuild the workforce to support the maritime industrial base, right? You can't create people with 15 years of experience overnight. So, it goes back
- ·US cannot out-buy China on steel or labor
- ·Only two levers: material cost and labor cost
- ·Cheaper inputs are off the table — innovation must compensate
- ·First-principles redesign to use fundamentally less steel
- ·Software autonomy and digitization reduce labor hours
- ·Bend the economic curve through design, not procurement