Orchestrating the Robot Battlefield | Josh Giegel & Ben Richardson, Gambit AI

Josh Giegel is the Founder and CEO of Gambit AI, an autonomous systems software company building technology to coordinate teams of robots.

Before founding Gambit, Josh worked at SpaceX on the Merlin 1D engine and co-founded Hyperloop Technologies, later Virgin Hyperloop.

Ben Richardson, Gambit’s Chief Commercial Officer, brings a military and defense innovation background to the company.

Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-giegel/

Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-richardson-92029b5/

Gambit: https://www.gambit.us/

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In this episode of The Drone Ultimatum, Josh and Ben explain why the growing number of autonomous platforms creates a new problem: coordinating them. Rather than building another drone, Gambit is developing the orchestration layer that allows different autonomous systems, payloads, and platforms to work together toward a common objective.

The conversation covers one-to-many control, AI-enabled electronic warfare, autonomous kill-chain workflows, ISR optimization, drone motherships, and the integration of aerial, ground, and maritime autonomous systems.

Josh and Ben also discuss why future battlefields could increasingly become “robot engagement zones” where autonomous systems operate in areas too dangerous for humans.

They also get into the business of building a defense startup: selling pure software to the government, working with traditional primes instead of treating them as competitors, surviving long procurement cycles, managing burn, and turning demonstrations into actual contracts.

Josh also reflects on his path from SpaceX to Virgin Hyperloop to Gambit, what he learned scaling a company to hundreds of employees, and why building a software-focused defense company is a very different proposition from developing capital-intensive hardware.