Kevin A. Damoa, Glīd: Building autonomous road-to-rail logistics solutions and dual-use technology

Welcome to another Founderism podcast. We have Kevin A Adamoah with us today. He's a founder at the Glide. Glide's a very interesting company. Like I told Kev, I reached out to him about a year ago. Kev's going to explain in a moment what they do, but yeah, it's pretty fascinating. Kev's a next SpaceXer. They got tons of press in the last couple of years and yeah, he's building something fascinating.

Looks like a Cybertruck. It basically carries container and I think it's self-driving. So, I really love the concept. So, Kev, a quick intro about yourself and Glide. >> Charles, nice to meet you rather Carlos. >> [laughter] >> In Mexico. Kevin Adamoah, founder CEO of Glide. We're the world's first autonomous road-to-rail solution and what we want to do is make rail more accessible.

We corridor balance. You know, a lot of freight is stuck on the road, 73% to be exact and rail is severely underutilized cuz inaccessible. It takes a bunch of different pieces of equipment, cranes, forklifts, dray trucks, hostile trucks, train train carts, a bunch of touches and an army of people in order to move like one container or one trailer from road to rail.

We want to solve it by having all of those, you know, components from road and rail into one core technology that's fully autonomous, right? With human in the loop so that we don't put people out of a job. We actually you know, add jobs. You know, it's next generational jobs within a logistical market. So, that's exactly what we do as a Glide. So, happy to be here.

>> And the on-rail move, right? Isn't that move intriguing? Why did you choose to go on rail? Does it still make logistical sense to use railroads? >> Yeah, absolutely. Railroads are the most underutilized resource that we have here in the United States. Um, back in 1916, we had about 250,000 miles of rail. Today, that number sits around 140,000. And we we only use, you know, maybe 47% or less of our rail throughout the United States.

Everything else is transported via road. You know, on road we share the road with like passenger vehicles and semi-trailers, which makes things extremely dangerous. You know, we lose over 5,000 people a year to semi-trailer you know, accidents. And you know, plus the cost of transporting on road is going way up while rail kind of remains the same. You know, once you remove that that in between touch of material conveyance, the the units of economics makes a lot of sense.

You know, it's faster, it's safer. You have you know, jobs that you can start creating in these marginalized communities. And you know, you can use the American infrastructure for what it's actually used for. So, I I think it makes sense. >> And is this one platform? How many products am I seeing here? There's like the lift, there's the rail ones. Like or is it one thing?

Tell me a bit more about that. >> Yeah, of course. So so we actually have three products. So Raiden is what you see on the screen now. It's the world's first autonomous road to rail solution. The the Cybertruck twin. >> [laughter] >> Didn't want it to be that way, but I guess that's starting to unfold. But and then you have the Gladly Rem that you see here.

And Gladly Rem was our first entrance into the market. If you think about the the flywheel motion of moving things from road to rail, you know, at at first glance it seems like crazy and scary. So how do you make folks feel like safe in that environment? You put a human in a truck so you can look over and say, "Okay, it's safe. There's a person up there." while we make that transition.

So the Gladly Rem is essentially our transload at a in a box able to pick up a fully loaded 20-ft container, put it on the back of itself, drive it over to the railroad tracks, get on the tracks. It's fully certified right off the line uh when when when we ship it out. And that's the in order to make folks feel safe with that and and actually get them used to seeing things transition from road to rail.

In parallel, we have Raiden. Uh that's our autonomous vehicle that will run on, you know, contested logistics um as well as you know, industrial parks as we we build um you know, our chops around uh certification and homologation. Uh and then you'll see Glider Train and Raiden working in in in tandem with each other. Raiden will go 24 hours. Glider Train will will work a regular truck uh shift um and we will serve the world.

We say, "Don't ship it, just glide it." We see ourselves as the another new way uh to ship goods. You can go road, rail, air, ocean, or the glide way. Right? In order to actually ship products. So, that's that's the vision. >> That is just fascinating. What about Azra? Like what what is that one about? >> Yeah, Azra 1.6 is our AI orchestration tool.

What it does is it pairs static infrastructure of roads and rails uh with dynamic nodes. So, think about vehicle speeds, telemetry, weather patterns, road congestion, uh rail allocation, uh and as well as uh the commodities that we actually ship. So, we move anything that moves on road. Think about containers to, you know, to aggregate to agriculture uh to defense uh commodities to, you know, defense vehicles eventually.

Um you know, Azra 1.6 monitors all that and controls um the heartbeat of all the vehicles and it provides our customers with what we call ITV, in-transit visibility. So, essentially, you know, transportation at the fingertips but within a digital twin environment. >> Why does that look like Palantir? Like and know, I just named the Cybertruck and then it's Frontier.

You're building like stuff that is so sexy. >> Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean my whole goal is to make a logistics sexy again. I I've been in logistics my whole life. So I'm a little biased, but I think it's one of the most sexiest things out there, you know, we move people, goods. We don't move without logistics. Nothing moves without logistics, right?

So yeah. >> Yeah, maybe you should have started with that. Like what's your background? You were in the military. You seem like a pretty chill dude as well like most veterans that I talked to have witnessed like pretty heavy [ __ ] stuff and they're serious, right? Like you have a flag behind you. Is this Is this Trinidad Tobago or >> It's Panama. >> Panama?

Oh, you So you're Panamanian, right? Panamanian origin? Nice. Tell me a bit more about your your background and your story. >> Yeah, so I'm Panamanian. And then I I obviously the flag. But I joined the army at 17. I did two tours in Iraq. I was a cab scout, gold braid rifles, 30 ACR. And I was a logistician as well where I did rail head operations where I moved our commodities from road to rail, our tanks, our Bradleys, our all of our material.

And that's when I came in contact with this problem. And then I went over to the Air Force National Guard where I served as a logistician and firefighter um here in California for for almost 13 years. And then you know, worked at SpaceX, you know, I was I invented their flight module logistics organization. So it was an organization that was purposely built to transport the rocket from site to site.

So I'm the first first person in the world to commercially launch, ship, and then eventually recover, you know, a rocket. I did that for almost 4 years. Was at Northrop Grumman as a weapon bay door engineer and program manager at Northrop Grumman on the F-35 fighter jet. And then I worked in startups for a while, man. Romeo Power, XOS Trucks, Canoo.

You know, helped them all go public uh SPAC as well. Um and then my last uh gig before Glide was at um Harley-Davidson's offshoot Serial 1 uh where I helped uh with uh building e-bikes and distributed them distributed them uh sorry, distributing them uh throughout the entire world. So, that's that's a bit about my background. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. The the I don't know the the sound went out.

>> Oh [ __ ] sorry. I'm muted. Um >> No worries. >> You had various you [laughter] you you had various trials by fire, I was saying. Um the army's definitely one. Uh [clears throat and snorts] but the most impressive one in my opinion or the one that's relevant to what you're currently doing is SpaceX, right? And surviving under Elon for 4 years is no easy feat.

So, how did you make it that long one and what did you learn uh from your time there? >> Yeah. Um so, at SpaceX, what I learned, you know, especially coming from the military is uh you know, surrendering. Uh surrendering to the mission, surrendering to the the the purpose in which you're there for, right? I mean, a lot of folks go into you know, operations or jobs and they're like, "I'm the best at what I do.

I've been doing this for a long time." and you know, "Screw this boss or screw this big guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about." But when you you remove ego and you surrender to the mission, you actually propel through it. So, what I learned was uh you know, first, you know, lead with grace and be a servant leader. Um the the the next was uh to engineer with excellence, you know, anything is possible.

Um you don't you don't you don't pull yourself back from doing the impossible. Um and to uh be be mission-focused, you know, all the way. And you know, I learned all that, you know, working underneath Elon. I think he's really brilliant and he sacrifices himself for the greater good of our community. You know, regardless of what folks you know, think about him, what he's provided us as a human race is you know, excellent.

You know, he's made us a interplanetary species and you know, thought about you know, electrification in ways that other folks didn't at the time and brought about a new age of you know, how to move folks forward. You know, everything that he does is logistics. So you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a big fan. So you know. >> And one thing about Clyde's the sexiness factor, which is also synonymous with simplicity and making someone understand something complex incredibly quickly.

Did you learn that at SpaceX? Cuz SpaceX also have these gifts on their website that makes everything so easily understandable in like seconds, which is in my opinion magnifies like the attention and the success of a brand so quickly cuz there's there's a lot of folks like in your industry doing complex stuff and they can't really explain it succinctly to their clients, right?

So are you the guy responsible behind that? Like who's uh who's responsible behind like showing so quickly what you guys do and so in such a sexy manner? >> Yeah, and I appreciate it that you know, bringing sexy back to logistics. But yeah, I'm the the brains behind it all. You know, the the color, the graphic, the name, you know, the logos. Um >> The black and white.

I love black and >> Yes. Yeah, a little green, little pops of green. It's it's all important, man. And it really tell the story where folks really resonate with it. I mean, you know, I don't kid anybody. What we're doing is is a is really hard for one. For two, it's it's been around for a long time. Roads and rails have always been around for the most part from the transcontinental railroad until the time that I was like you know when road really like made its chops when we started to build highways.

You know it's a really old unsexy industry. You know how do you bring you know legacy with like emergent technology together in a way that everybody understand it and is excited about it, right? I want to you know take these this this silver age of logistics you know where folks are not coming to work to move around boxes or to drive trucks or to be a railroad engineer and then have the next generation of folks saying, you know what this is a really cool job.

I want to do this. I don't have to like launch rockets or do AI. I I can just like drive a glider, right? I can like operate logistical things in order to move forward and support everybody in between it. So yeah. >> Tell us about the importance of logistics in winning wars. Like historically pretty much all wars have been won because of logistics, right?

>> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah it's General Eisenhower said it best you know all wars are are won or lost on the backbone of logistics, right? If you can't feed the war fighter, if you can't arm the war fighter, if you can't preposition, if you can't identify where you know your combatants are you're going to lose, right? You're going to starve out, you're going to you know not you're going to run out of supplies or you're going to position in the wrong wrong places.

And it's critical you know to understand how you preposition and garrison, you know how you move the thing from a motor pool or a depot to where you're training to you know getting them overseas and preposition them so they can actually launch. Those are the most critical pieces of of winning. If you think about a a fight, you know on the battlefield it doesn't last that long, right?

It's you know it's it's hours and you know, a couple days at at most. You know, you don't hear about week-long battles, but you know, the build-up to it call you know, it takes years and months in order to you know, build up to preposition to get there and it's all done by logistics. So, yeah. >> Couple of examples that popped to my mind. You've probably studied these guys, but the Blitzkrieg uh is like I mean Yeah, of course, we're not on the German side, but it was so beautifully executed and was like perfect example of how to win a war quickly.

Um then I would say yeah, the allies winning over Germany at the end of the war the the squeeze in the Russia front. Obviously, Germany had nowhere to take their their supplies from. Or Napoleon's that the last war that he lost. Um Yeah, he was stuck right that all of his carriages were were stuck. He couldn't get the supply in. His men were dying from cold.

All right, like no no coats literally or tents like to tell themselves, right? What what battles do you like studying or that you you like thinking about and how can Clyde help not reproduce or reproduce the outcomes of these battles? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I fought in Iraq, right? So, Iraq was a a war that was you know, a lot lot of logistics.

You know, Iraq is a really big big country. Um Uh so, you know, preposition material was was was really important for that war. Afghanistan is the same same way, you know, you're fighting you know, in mountainous terrain. Uh so, getting you know, your goods out to these austere and disparate locations was was really really important um to you know, be able to fight in that war.

You know, >> right? >> Yeah, with donkeys, exactly. >> Donkeys are probably the number one way to get your stuff in the mountain. >> Yeah, absolutely. Donkeys and and and air air strat, right? You know, and you're dropping a lot of, you know, palletized goods there, but you know, if you think about that process, right? The chain associated with like getting a good to that donkey, right?

[laughter] It It There's a lot of lot of steps, a lot of touches, you know, from the time that person that puts that stuff in that box, that wraps it up, puts it onto the pallet, wraps the pallet up, loads it onto the plane, plane drive, you know, flies over, gets refueled, and then position to go into battle, and then drops onto the field, and that's unwrapped,

and then put on the top of the donkey, and we're riding donkeys. That's a complicated process that a lot of folks make easy, but a lot of hours goes into it. So, you know, big shout-out to every logistician in the world. Keep striving and gliding. >> [laughter] >> And yeah, I guess Iraq and Afghanistan was air, right? Like that was a main main team.

A lot of air strike, helicopter support, chopper support. Nowadays, if there's we check like Ukraine, Russia, it's a lot of drone strike, unmanned drone strikes, right? Like where is warfare going, and how is Glide going to introduce itself in into this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, warfare is going fully autonomous, you know, removing the warfighter off of the battlefield.

I mean, I think that's that's really important, right? I mean, all of our lives really matter. And you know, when you're fighting a combatant that uses utilizes mostly autonomous systems, you have to meet them where they are. So, you know, big shout-out to the Department of War and the different services for starting to, you know, look at that so that United States again has an unfair advantage on the battlefield.

But, you know, how Glide fits into it is first in garrison, you know, taking goods from depot, whether it's munitions or fuel or water, or tanks, or positioning people eventually, from road to rail, you know, in the silent of the night, or whatever it may be, where it's safe, to the to preposition to go overseas, and then on the battlefield, you know, we're looking at ways to

take containerized systems, you know, to to the warfighter, you know, or to support with drone systems there, or be a carrier, the cas evac, or to do some reconnaissance systems, or deliver, you know, larger goods, you know, out to other drones, or human beings, you know, being that that shuttle, you know, in in ways that that that the warfighters never seen before.

If you look at infrastructure like in Ukraine right now, they have rails, but they don't use any of the rails as a part of the the war. And that's because the trains are loud, and it takes a lot to hook up, you know, the train carts and pull them. Now, imagine a glider like like going from road across, you know, the sands directly onto a unused rail line, going silent down the rail rail line, and then jumping onto a forestry area, and then deploying drones out from a container.

Right? Behind enemy lines, whatever it may be. So, you know, it's it's an advantage that the warfighter hasn't seen yet, and I feel we can we can provide that to them. >> Cuz that was my next question, what if they bombed the railways, but you glide can just go out of the railways, and then go in with pretty effing genius, but um can it be undetectable as well?

Like can it Yes, silent of course, but like if there's a drone watching it, can it be can it glide undetected uh from visual standpoint? >> Yeah, for a visual, not yet. I mean, I I guess you can put bushes around it, right? That's what the folks are doing now, putting like trees and and cages around the plants. >> jammers, I guess. Image jammers, right?

Like >> Yeah, that's That'd be cool, man, to have a cloaking device on a glider. Come on Come on, Carlos. You know, we're we're building some real stuff real time here, man. >> I've got ideas for you. >> [laughter] >> Um no, it's just fascinating like what you're building. Uh since TechCrunch in 2025, you won the competition which which is what caught my attention.

Uh what has happened? Did you guys get massive funding? What have you produced since then? Tell me about uh what happened timeline-wise. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, since TechCrunch has been It's been crazy, but it's been such a blessing. And I say crazy in the in the in the best way possible. Uh we've onboarded great talent. Uh we're we're continuing to build out um product and um as well as onboard great customers.

We've uh stepped directly into uh the dual-use uh market, you know, with heavy conversations with uh defense folks from the Army to the Air Force uh to the Navy as well. Um so, we can help out the warfighter where they are. Um we've uh started a lot of conversations and uh with railroad operators as well as uh ports. Uh we have signed agreements with folks out in Texas, California, um and then now Indiana.

Um and now we're looking to go into different states as well. So, uh from a fundraising perspective, uh we raised additional funds. We have over $5 million uh that we've raised to date. And uh we're about to go back out to the market to raise a bigger round so that uh we can build a lot of rate-in vehicles uh to serve the warfighter um in the rest of the world.

So, yeah, TechCrunch >> you with that. Uh for good fundraising, that that's what I do professionally. Um >> Love it. >> Have you caught the attention of Palantir, Anduril, and Elon yet? >> Uh not yet. Not yet. Uh but but shout out Palantir, Anduril, and Elon. Let's Let's glide together. >> I'm pretty sure you caught their attention. They haven't reached out yet, but that's it's pretty cool what you guys are doing.

You You have such a fascinating background. Tell me about your co-founder and uh how you guys complement each other. >> Yeah, so Matt Mueller he he was at SpaceX as well. So he read led you know manufacturing and production there. He was at Hadrian as well as Honeywell. So big quality guy loves operational excellence really brilliant. So you know we work together there and and then met up later on in life through mutual contact which is an investor friend.

They they run generational partners and it was like love at second sight. And you know we we work together to you know build out you know what you see today and we've been glad ever since. He's now a board member and advisor. So it's it's really cool. >> What's your take on veterans? Guessing you hired a bunch. As you know when we started being the military is really [ __ ] hard on the psyche.

You see like stuff that you can't forget, right? Then there's two I mean there's more types of people but mostly two, right? Some of them get traumatized by what they saw and some of them overcome and become savages and beasts like you, right? From what I know about you, right? How do you recruit veterans and do you feel that these guys have a moat in in the workplace?

>> Yeah, absolutely. So how we recruit recruit veterans a lot of the time is through our network. So we're at Capital Factory in Austin, Texas and you know it's a great hub for you know veterans to come there. And then I'm a part of the 30 ACR ecosystem Brave Rifles to all the 30 ACR folks out there. And then from you know social media you know we I speak to veterans you know directly through through my social social media.

I'm a I'm a proud veteran. And the remote that uh is encompassed by veterans to me is just the hard work and determination that like no nonsense. I'm here to like serve. I don't care about like ego or or >> of it, right? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's a little taboo, but you know, you get you meet a lot of smart people on this journey, whether it's SpaceX or Romeo Power or or Northrop Grumman, whatever it may be.

And folks that that haven't served, but they served in in in certain ways. Um but what I've seen is there's some entitlement, right? With veterans, what I see is like they're really smart, they're really robust, but they don't feel entitled. They're like, I I I have to be on this mission. I have to solve this problem. And I don't care about anything else, right?

I I care about the people that I'm going to save on the other side of this. You know, if if I have a really really hard day and I feel lonely, I'm going to lean into the mission. I'm going to lean into my team. Um and that's that's what we look for um here at Glide cuz we have a lot of hard days. >> Well, for better or worse, let's put it that way, right?

Like you guys have been put to life-threatening missions. >> Mhm. >> Uh and so anything after that is sort of easier, right? Like you're working in a cubicle, well, not in a cubicle, but like in a protected space. You're not getting shot at, >> Yes. >> right? It's like, okay, that's easier, but you still have the sense of mission, the discipline is gigantic in the the military.

Nothing happens without discipline. Uh talking about that, what does a day in your life look like nowadays? >> Yeah, a day in my life. Uh so, I always start my day up with affirmations. I'm a big prayer as well as meditator. So, I get up, meditate, pray, uh and then uh journal uh for my day. I work out. Love to stay physically fit. And I jump right into work.

Um so, uh you know, checking out my emails and uh getting in with my teams. I do one-on-ones uh you know, every week with with my team as well, and then project planning to just see you know, how how we're executing the things. A lot of customer interactions these days, a lot of investor interactions and traveling around and spending time with the customer at their at their place to see some of their pain points to make sure that we're not hallucinating our solution to make sure that we're you know, building you know, the the right thing for the right time for the right folks.

So that that's my day and then you know, I'm a father as well. So being able to spend time you know, with my kids a lot of times now at the end of the day from from the work day. And then like taking it off to reboot and do it again. So yeah. >> Playing music I see guitar behind you. Were you always that chill or >> No man, I I I've been this chill over the past like I don't know man, like decade.

You know, a lot of counseling you know, the military does this number. >> did work on yourself, right? That was my next question. What do you what do you think about the power of psychedelics for PTSD? >> Yeah, it's amazing. So I invested in this great company called Ayahuasca and their their founder Victor Acosta Acosta. And I I feel it's it's really helpful for it.

I've never done it myself. You know, I I use you know, meditation and prayer is is is my my drugs of choice these days and I'm deep into it. My turmeric shots has shout out to all my team. But I think that the that you know, especially folks that experience you know, combat you know, psilocybin is is the way to go for them. Especially ones that that is directed directly to you know, their specific source of of pain.

So that's exactly what I would as I'm doing a plug and shout out to that amazing company because it's going to change the world. So yeah. >> Yeah, I'm shout out to Brian Johnson as well which has experimented a lot with psilocybin as of late and shared his finding. Kevin, thanks for being on today. It's amazing guy you are and the company. I'm very bullish on you guys.

Where can people find out more about you? >> Yeah, [snorts] absolutely. You can check me out on LinkedIn or you can find us at Glyd Tech dot US. GLID, there's no like weird macron on that but GLID Tech dot US and yeah, reach out. You know, we love to you know, talk with folks here about you know, how they see the world of logistics and and where it's going.

But yeah, thanks so much for this opportunity to to hang out Carlos. >> [laughter]