The Dan Show

Inside Arrive AI’s Leap: New HQ, Hiring, And A Double Flywheel Strategy

Dan O'Toole Season 1 Episode 15

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0:00 | 20:34

We share how the new HQ accelerates engineering, why transparency matters even pre-revenue, and how a double flywheel between robots, drones, and arrive points can unlock a universal last-yard standard. We also talk Russell index adds, institutional holders, capital discipline, and a 2026 NASDAQ bell.

• rapid move into new building and open house
• expanded hiring across AI, robotics, software, product, and sales
• why on-site teams speed prototypes and learning
• request for M&A ideas and warm sales introductions
• Russell 2000/3000 additions and 13F validation
• earnings calls for transparency during early deployments
• learning-first approach to short use cases and field data
• ecosystem strategy linking robots, drones, and arrive points
• market size, subscription model, and network effects
• patents and the push for a universal delivery standard
• capital structure focus and long-term investors
• 2026 NASDAQ closing bell event planning
• swag raffles tied to investor stories

“Just make sure you follow us on social media because that’s where all of that content will go on a more regular basis than here on the Dan Show”
“Lock in your space, but only do it if you know you can come”
“Share your story of why you invested in Arrive AI to be included in future raffles”

New Building And Open House Highlights

SPEAKER_01

Does it look different in here?

SPEAKER_00

It is different.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Dan Show, our first one in Dan's New Digs.

SPEAKER_00

What day is it?

SPEAKER_01

Today is Thursday.

SPEAKER_00

Thursday. Okay. Let's let's quit that theme.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I feel like entitled to use it every Friday. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. That's why we're not doing it on Friday.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, today is Thursday. Um, and we are in our new building. We are we moved in quick.

SPEAKER_00

We did. We didn't have a lot to move though, which was good, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's true. It was a smaller office that we'd been working out of for a while.

SPEAKER_00

It was. And we didn't we moved in and we had all the furniture there. So we didn't have to take anything with us.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

So we just came in and guess what? We had all the furniture here. We got a great deal.

SPEAKER_01

We did. That was really cool. We can talk about that. Dan found this crazy inventory for basically.

SPEAKER_00

We're set up to bring 200 people into this new building. That's amazing, right? Yeah. A lot of growth.

SPEAKER_01

For pennies on the dollar, there was a a clearance of a shutdown company and you found the actually free. Yeah. But we had to move it. That was it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we did, but it was worth it, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Free stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's great stuff too, right? The place looks great. We had an open house. We did.

SPEAKER_01

No, that's perfect. See, you're learning how to segue. It's great.

SPEAKER_00

Every once in a while.

SPEAKER_01

We did celebrate uh moving into the new building and it was really fun.

SPEAKER_00

And you were all invited.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If you're an investor and with us, uh you got the invites and we wish you would have all come, but we had a great turnout.

SPEAKER_01

We did. I'd say we had about 150. 150-ish.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So you know, I wanted to talk to everybody. And I'd see somebody across the room and and somebody'd be talking, and I'd run over there and they were gone. But they even called a few people and say, Where are you? And they go, we left. Yeah. I want to say hi to everybody. So next time when you guys come, don't leave without coming and saying hi to me, at least if I don't get to you first.

SPEAKER_01

It's hard. You did a good job, though. There was a lot of mixing. But we had tours every hour, we had three different tours, went around all of the different departments to meet all of the new team and to show what they're working on. Some um are mostly just digital and they're coding and they're just all this code running on their computers all the time. It's pretty neat. Um, but that leads to why we really needed a new building was to bring on all of these just giant brains that are.

SPEAKER_00

We're doing all this work in the right in the same place. Everybody's on site, it's not remote. This building is worthy of a NASDAQ company headquarters, right? Yeah. It's it's beautiful. I'm so happy about it. It's right where we wanted to be uh location wise, couldn't couldn't have found a better place. It's amazing that it was available, right?

SPEAKER_01

And so we've really built out our um product engineering team. So we've got AI, robotics, software engineers, mechanical engineers, um, product managers. It's just project managers, more marketing, sales, sales. It's been incredible to watch, and everybody is just jumping on board. We've got whiteboards everywhere with configurations and ideations. It's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00

We're doing what you're supposed to do. We may not be doing anything, but you walk in here, it looks like we're doing what we're supposed to do, right?

SPEAKER_01

And that's what a lot of people from the open

Why The HQ Matters For Engineering

SPEAKER_01

house said. Um, I talked to a lot of people too, and when they got off the tour, they were like, this all makes sense. This was the coolest thing. We have 3D printers going in the back. Um, we've got uh some of the engineer team doing prototyping with styrofoam to see what's working, doing research analysis. It's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00

It is, it's coming together. So we're hiring more people, just got out of an interview with an AI specialist just now. So uh it's never ending. Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and so we wouldn't be here without um without you, without the pre-public investors and getting us across that milestone um with many more milestones to come, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's right. What's our next topic?

SPEAKER_01

So we're talking about really maybe you have some suggestions or recommendations because as always, Dan and us and the rest of the team, we want everybody to feel and because you are part owners in this company, right? Yep, that's right. And that means we are looking toward um possibly with you know mergers and acquisitions and figuring out what companies we can align with.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna jump in ahead of her. I know you're sick of hearing her. This is the Dan show. Now, MA mergers and acquisitions, we wanna be aware if there's some company out there that we're not aware of, and you guys think it would be a great alignment with what we're doing, share it with us. If you have some sales opportunity where we can be rolling out arrive points, or maybe you have an inn with a big company that you know we would like to deal with, share it with us. Help us out. Uh we'd really appreciate that. Um, that's gonna help everybody. So um this is the we the people story, right? Let's all unite and come up with opportunities. One thing that we were finding through the Hancock opportunity is um quarterbacking our own ecosystem right now with such new technology, a lot of people don't even know it's available or know that they need it. So when we're able to marry up, you know, uh robots and arrive points and maybe drones and arrive points and show that uh as a use case, I mean it opens a lot of eyes. So that's what we're starting to do as quarterback these, we're creating these opportunities uh and we're showcasing it, and it's really getting a lot of traction. You know, um every robotic customer is is actually could be a arrive point customer. Every arrive point customer can be a robotic uh customer in in drones and so forth. So help us uplift this whole uh paradigm, and I think it's gonna be huge.

SPEAKER_01

The value is there and it's being noticed too. I think we mentioned this in the last intro, I can't remember, but being added to the Russell 3000 was a huge deal.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we we did, we got it um added to the Russell 2000 and 3000, uh, and that's big. It puts us on the map. It's not the Fortune 500 yet, but you got to do the Russell before you do the Fortune. I don't think you jump usually, right? Even though we might. So that's exciting and it kind of along those lines. You know, every quarter the companies have to institutions have to do what's called 13F filings, and that's a disclosure of stakes in the you know in in public companies. And the cool thing for us, the 13Fs just came out. And you know, we've got probably a dozen or twenty uh institutions in our company now that we never had before. And I'm talking some big names, Fidelity,

Community Help On Deals And Partnerships

SPEAKER_00

um BlackRock, uh the New York Pension Fund, uh, you know, others big in if you want to go check it out, edgar.gov, that's the SEC site, you can check it out yourself. But really cool, uh it's validation, uh, and and it's really exciting to see these big companies um seeing our vision and and wanting to be a part of it, right?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

So um, yeah, I wanted to share that with you guys. I just came out, we just got that this week, and I wanted to share that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and obviously on the heels of our earnings call. Um and you know, I think that one thing that we really want to communicate regarding the earnings call is the main reason Dan wanted to start doing them is for full transparency. We're a publicly traded company, and you said despite us basically being pre-revenue, we still want to do these to let people know our milestones that we're hitting, what we're working toward.

SPEAKER_00

Yep, you know, our philosophy, if you're gonna hear it, you're gonna hear it first here, right? Good, bad, ugly. There's never gonna be bad or ugly. We all know that. But uh really that we own it, you know, and uh even though a lot of companies at early stages like we are at don't don't go through the process of an audience call, it's it we we're we're a real company, we're in the NASDAQ. We want to do that. So while there's not a lot revenue-wise to report, and and frankly, um by design to a certain extent, you know, right now we're putting out short case, short use cases, deployments. Uh we want to get the learnings. For us, the return on investment, the ROI, is the learnings. We know that every box that we put out right now is essentially obsolete going out the door. It's not the production model that's gonna have the you know the long life cycle uh and all the functionality that we ultimately are gonna have. But we need to learn uh ergonomically, intuitively, how people are working with our box, how we can make the reliability the best it can be, uh, all the interactions with the delivery nodes. These are all things we're doing right now. We're very early. Uh, and the you know, the market in the US alone is 170 million addresses. So if you think about you know, zero where we are now to 170 million or somewhere in between, that's a huge opportunity. You have just 1% of that market translates to $3.5 billion in revenue for Arrive AI. You know, uh it's a subscription model, as you guys know. You don't have to buy the unit, you just subscribe to it. Amazon Prime has a 55% uh market share. You know, with 1%, we're $3.5 billion. If we could get to 55%, you know, we're the largest company in the world. So it's not unattainable, right? It's right in front of us. Um, you know, one of the things we're doing is we're quarterbacking ecosystems. Uh we love the fact that uh we brought the robot in to Hancock. Um, you know, what we've found is every robotic customer can be an arrive point customer, every arrive point customer can be a robot customer, every drone customer can be an arrive point and vice person, and it just carries on. And when you hold that whole uh ecosystem up and show it to the flywheel? It is a flywheel. Is Mark here or is it? Okay, no, they're right. We've got a double flywheel.

SPEAKER_01

We do have a double flywheel.

Index Additions And Institutional Validation

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, so we're getting some flywheels going. Don't throw any wrenches into the flywheels.

SPEAKER_01

No, no wrenches.

SPEAKER_00

No wrenches. So hey, it's exciting. We're we're killing it. Uh everything we're doing here is amazing. The you know, if you look at the evolution of this company, um, three-tenths of one percent of crowdfunded companies ever go public. We're we're one of those three tenths of one percent. That's rare, right? The promise of liquidity when you invest in a company, you want to be able to trade those shares if you want to, buy more, sell whatever you need to do. We got you there. I'm so proud of that. But we're just getting started, right? Um look at the short tenure of where we've been and where we're going. You know, May 15th, we rang the bell. We didn't ring the bell May 15th. We started trading on the NASDAQ. July 3rd, we rang the bell. Um, we've hired 40 people in the last few months, 40 new people. We've moved to a new facility. You know, we have a $40 million uh capitalization of the company uh on the books. So we're well funded into 2027, uh, you know, and we're executing on new patents that we're getting every day. So there's so much happening here. You know, I think the patent count worldwide and the including the US, uh, either 94 patents either filed for or already awarded. This is the most comprehensive, robust patent portfolio in this space out there, and we own it. We're so proud of it, and we're executing on it. We see this as a winner-take-all market. Uh it's gonna go the way of the test wild charging standard, right? Um, you know, everybody was trying to do their own end-to-end solutions in the charging space, didn't work out. You're not gonna have three arrive points in front of a home or business, you're gonna have one, and it needs to be universal and work with every shipper and deliverer. It's a shipping store at your door, it's a Rive AI, ticker ARAI.

SPEAKER_01

You're pulling it all out today.

SPEAKER_00

I'm pulling it out. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01

Don't get me fired up. You are on fire, as I was about to say. Um that was great. Anything else? I'm gonna stop there. Um yeah, I think it's just been so fun. I I think that's the first realization. You know, we went public May 15th. That is six months ago. A lot has happened. I feel like it's been, I mean, it's really been nonstop. It is.

SPEAKER_00

I I look at what we've done in that short period of time. We are extracted. It's incredible. We're we're not talking about things we're doing. If you came to our open house, and I know most of you didn't, if you had seen what what the ones that did come have seen, you you wouldn't believe it really. I can't believe it. Yeah. Look where we are today, you know, doing this show right now.

SPEAKER_01

And one of the things we're working on in the marketing uh area, just so you're aware for those who aren't able to physically see our building, is we're going around, we're gonna introduce you the team to the different departments, show you kind of what they're working on,

Earnings Philosophy And Learning Deployments

SPEAKER_01

what they do. So that'll be peppered out. Just make sure you follow us on social media because that's where all of that content will go on a more regular basis than here on the Dan Show.

SPEAKER_00

What else? What else is on this list? I I want to keep this moving.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, do you want to talk about um just company capital structure, things of that nature?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, thanks for bringing that up. You know, we do have a capitalization in place, $40 million, as you as you guys know. But we're always looking to upgrade that, uh, put long-term investors on the cap table uh and replace any kind of headwinds that we might have uh through the the capitalization that we have now. Uh I don't have any specifics to talk about, but just know that you know, every day I come to work, you know, I want to keep the company well funded, I want to support the share price, and I want to oversee the direction and mission of the company. And those are things that I'm really tasked and uh really heads down on. So um there's a lot of strategy behind the scenes here and uh got a lot of great ideas I can't wait to implement and see how they manifest in our share price. Yeah, hopefully, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, that would be that would be the goal, one of one of the many goals. Um share spend each dollar like it's your last, right?

SPEAKER_00

That's what we do, that's right. It's all linear. Every dime that comes in is linear to development, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't even turn in an expensive report. So let's let's go, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and then you got a cool package in the mail. Did it come yesterday?

SPEAKER_00

It did, it did, but I just got I just got to it a minute a few minutes ago, actually. In fact, we have a video of the unveiling, but I'm gonna show the the unveiled product.

SPEAKER_01

You're gonna unveil it right now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, this is this is it accepting on behalf. Check this out, guys. Can you see this? This is a deal toy. Uh when a company goes public, that's a huge milestone. And to commemorate that, the investment banker uh historically provides what's called a deal toy. It's kind of a little tchotch key that uh memorializes and honors. That's really cool. So yeah, this says Arrive AI, direct listing, NASDAQ AR AI ticker symbol, up to a $40 million pipe, which is a private investment in public equity. That's what that stands for. Um, exclusive financial advisor and sole placement agent, Maxim Group, May of 2025. You can read it for yourself. It's got a little drone on top there. It's got the arrived green and the white. And uh this is I'm I'm really proud to have this. I never thought I was gonna see it. We went public six months ago, and that's the speed that Maxim works at. Uh not too fast. Just kidding, guys. But uh I'm really glad. Glad I got it today. Uh excited. It's fun. Um, I'm gonna be presenting those to uh our you know, the guys that helped me take this company public that have been here with me since day one. They were Maxim gave me a couple of them, so it's gonna be fun. Yeah, but yeah, I'm I'm really excited about that. Um what else?

SPEAKER_01

So we're not gonna go much longer here. We just have one quick little last announcement.

SPEAKER_00

Um so in order are you gonna take no?

SPEAKER_01

I'm just gonna tee you up. I'm gonna give you a softball and then you can knock it out of the park, okay?

SPEAKER_00

I had to make sure because she has a knack for I love I love stealing a stunder.

SPEAKER_01

What I live for. Um but in order, you know, one of the cool things you get to do as a publicly traded company is sometimes you get to go and ring an opening bell, which we did in July, right?

SPEAKER_00

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01

Do you think we'll ever get to do that again?

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. Do you know something I don't? No, don't. I don't know anything. If you do, I'm not gonna say it. Yeah, July 13th, 2026, we're doing a closing bell. We got to do the opening bell. Now we're doing a closing bell. We got the date cemented. I'm I'm on record NASDAQ, so if you see this, thanks Ahmad. No changing. So, you know, we had so

Ecosystem Flywheel Across Robots And Drones

SPEAKER_00

much fun, 400 people out there. And everyone that came and loved it. If you weren't able to come, I hope you'll join us for this. If you were there, you know how much fun it is. I know that you're gonna come back. Uh so put that on the calendar.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it will be it will be a closing bell. So a little bit different than the opening bell. So it'll obviously be to mark the market close of the day.

SPEAKER_00

You have to close what you open.

SPEAKER_01

You do, right? Or it's just always open.

SPEAKER_00

And then you open what you close to. So maybe next time it'll be an opening, right?

SPEAKER_01

I'll just flip back and forth.

SPEAKER_00

Um, what day of the week is that?

SPEAKER_01

It is a Monday.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, it's a Monday, so that's awesome. You do a three-day weekend, right? You're gonna come out Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

SPEAKER_01

We did that for the ballot read. Our family went out there. We have the best time.

SPEAKER_00

Come on out, we're gonna coordinate this. This is gonna be limited to the first 400 people.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, if not, if it might be even more limited to 300, that's how many people can fit in that on that floor.

SPEAKER_00

We have 400. If we had 401 last time, I think people would have been standing outside. And I was gonna give up my spot because I didn't think that was right. Yeah, it was really tough. We we put a big uh uh weight on NASDAQ. We almost broke NASDAQ, right? They're not used to this passion that we have around the Rive AI. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_01

But we have that floor again, and for those of you who are able to be there, you know how um how cool it was, how special that's so how are we gonna do this?

SPEAKER_00

Are we gonna put a some kind of an RSVP thing out? What are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_01

We will. Um, and it's gonna be a first come, first serve type of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Um, there'll be more communications as we get a little bit closer.

SPEAKER_00

But so if you if lock in your space, but only do it if you know you can come. Because it's probably gonna be oversubscribed, right? So um, and we don't want to turn anybody down, so that's why we're making sure you know it's first come, first serve, and it's gonna be limited. So um hopefully we'll have a big turnout again, that'd be awesome, right? Yeah. One other thing that's been bothering me, we were we're giving swag away. And we never we did the first swag thing. I'll put her on the spot right here. She has no clue. Look at this. And I'm like, I don't like to start things we don't finish, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, we were doing we can do blogs. We do do blogs.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, okay. So so what are we gonna do on a swag thing?

SPEAKER_01

Um whenever you want to, Dan.

SPEAKER_00

So if they RSVP or something, I mean it when what can we do to get people, how do they get included, how is their name gonna be included to be drawn?

SPEAKER_01

Um well, we still have all of the past, you know, past names that would still continue to be eligible for future raffles because they um submitted stories and kind of why they're an investor.

SPEAKER_00

Can we send that story thing out again? Which one? One where you you know share your story of why you invested in arrive AI and kind of re-up, maybe give an opportunity for people that if you've already entered, you're in, right? If you resubmit or an a new thing here, yeah, you're gonna be included as well.

SPEAKER_01

So we'll we can get a a date for this drought drawing and I'll send out another one.

SPEAKER_00

I think we're gonna do how many did we do last time?

SPEAKER_01

How many drawings?

Milestones Since Going Public

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, how many things did we give? It wasn't very many. Two. We we didn't because there were there was let's do like we haven't done this in a while. Let's do like a dozen. Can we do that?

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So even if you're not the greatest story, just kidding. We're gonna draw you, right? Okay. So let's let's get a dozen. I know we just ordered some swag.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

Let's add an extra dozen to that and let's uh let's do this. Uh if we're gonna start something, we've got to finish it. I know people are out there, they watch this just to see if they won swag, and we never address it. Getting all kinds of cards anyway. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, you never told me that.

SPEAKER_00

I'm kidding. But anyway, so I just thought of that. Let's do it. Um we might even have a deal toy, an extra one that we maybe can make available. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

It's promising a lot right now.

SPEAKER_00

I know. Well, we'll see. Don't crown on that, but I gotta see. I haven't even got to.

SPEAKER_01

I need to we need to go.

SPEAKER_00

Right in the end. Okay. Okay. Hey guys, thanks for being there. Arrive AI. Love the company. We're going, we're going where we're going. And I wouldn't be here without you. And thank you, Kai.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_00

See y'all later. Bye, guys.