Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines, joined our host to discuss U.S. drone manufacturing, supply chain shifts away from China, tariffs, and the future growth of American-made drone components.
Questions asked in this interview
11
0:00He's the CEO of Unusual Machines. Stock symbol is?
0:07He's back with us here on The Big Biz Show. Alan, how are you, sir?
0:26Are you now to the point where you're anticipating volatility in your business?
3:39Is that the reason for the growth here, or do you think it's the other side of it?
4:39Alan, when you're putting those together, I know you're not sitting there physically arming them with ordnance, but do you have to ship them off ready to be, I guess, for lack of a better term, wired to go?
5:22Does it change specs though for a drone if you know it's going to go to a defense-minded entity?
5:59Do you guys just stay the course or do you have to be a little bit nimble because of what's going on in the global events?
You know, it's just your demeanor right now as if you didn't just get off the golf course to do this interview. Um is what makes me happy about...
Hey, buddy, couple of things because we have a week or so, but you guys are moving at the speed of light. It's funny how these world events and you and I talk off air quite a bit. And it's like, oh well, you know what? Didn't see that coming. And then every single time it's worked out in your favor as a company. And again, as I mentioned earlier in the program, if you didn't think we were in a global economy, to look no further than what's happened with world events that have happened that have affected stocks in US companies. Are you now to the point where you're anticipating volatility in your business? And I'm not just talking about share price. I'm talking about volatility in start and stop type stuff with orders and stuff because of world events going on, because it's been happening for about a year now and you guys have come out smelling like a rose every time.
No, there's no stop. So, like the share price can go all over as people do predictions, but what we've said is it looks like for us because we're small and growing as fast as we can, demand is infinity. It's just how fast can we grow internally. So, there's so much interest in everything we're doing. We're scaling as fast as possible, adding shifts, adding people, adding material, ordering in stuff and we still can't keep anything on the shelves.
Yeah. So, all of this just drives more orders. So, I've said before, if you're a retail company selling, let's say, board shorts, and you started up and now you got some fire and you've hit $10 million in sales, you're in trouble because you don't have enough money to manufacture all the orders that are coming in. And that's almost with every single business that's going. Now, obviously, different industry and you guys are much larger than that, but you have had to accelerate your motor factory output at the Orlando campus because of the same thing. Supply—and I think it's only because you guys have such a clear balance sheet and you've been so good at shepherding capital that another company couldn't have done this because of what's going on in advance. You guys front-loaded dry powder early. Was that the reason? Did you see it in advance?
Yeah, and we recently raised another $150 million because it's going faster than we thought, even faster than when we loaded it in advance. And it's not just motors, it's cameras, it's batteries, it's electronics. We're working right now on setting up what'll be like probably $70 million worth of parts orders because we have to place orders for raw material at least 6 months in advance. And so all that turns into revenue, but when we were looking at demand and everything, we're like, well, I guess we need more working capital. It doesn't mean the money goes out the door, but if it doesn't sit in the bank account, nobody gives you credit terms.
Alan Evans is the CEO, Unusual Machines is the company. UMAC is the ticker symbol. Hey, Alan, you were just talking about the different parts, the lens and this and that. And I believe you told me before, but I need you to tell me again. How many parts are there that make up the drone? Because it's not just four or five, right?
Depends—do you go down to screws and everything else, but there's maybe like eight to 10 primary parts of a drone and then a whole bunch of other stuff that lets you put it together. So, yeah, somewhere between eight and 10 depending on what you're doing with the drone.
13 more exchanges in this transcript
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Evans, A. (2026, April 14). Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines | The Big Biz Show [Interview transcript]. LOFT100 Studios. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1170841/
MLA
Allan Evans. "Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines | The Big Biz Show." LOFT100 Studios, 14 Apr. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1170841/.
BibTeX
@misc{evans2026_1170841,
author = {Allan Evans},
title = {Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines | The Big Biz Show},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, LOFT100 Studios. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {apr},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1170841/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
