There are many standard indicators that sign {that a} product is popping heads: Weekly lively person figures begin to soar, merchandise fly off the cabinets, there’s unsolicited reward.
However for San Diego-based Defend AI, validation has seemed a bit totally different. In April of this 12 months, Russian armed forces fired two HESA Shahed 136 missiles right into a hangar in Kyiv, the place a staff of 30 Defend AI staff had been doing analysis and improvement simply two weeks earlier. The missiles turned the ability right into a skeleton of twisted steel and rubble, in line with a photograph and video footage reviewed by Fortune.
Extremely, nobody was harmed. James Lythgoe, a former U.Okay. Royal Marine who’s now Defend AI’s managing director of Ukrainian operations, had moved the Defend AI staff to a brand new website, as he had been involved in regards to the newfound consideration that its sprawling nine-foot-tall surveillance drone, the V-BAT, was selecting up. “We were advised that the Russians were very aware of a new capability on the battlefield,” Lythgoe says.
On the frontlines in Ukraine, Russian jammers intersect communications and radio indicators, main drones to veer off target and even fall from the sky and crash. Many U.S. drones haven’t been capable of carry out. However after an eight-month iteration interval in 2024, Defend AI’s V-BAT cleared rigorous Ukrainian jamming assessments. In 2025 alone, the drones have executed greater than 35 missions and recognized greater than 200 Russian targets within the warzone, in line with the corporate.
The preliminary success Defend AI has seen with V-BAT in Ukraine and on U.S. shores with the Coast Guard and Marines has helped the startup land a $5.6 billion valuation and positioned it as one of many hottest protection startups of 2025, proper behind its higher-valued and extra hardware-heavy rival Anduril Industries. Main authorities contractors, generally known as the “primes,” have begun to pilot Defend AI’s autonomous plane software program system, Hivemind, for the experimental plane they’re constructing for the U.S. navy. Overseas allies and U.S. companions like Romania, Indonesia, and Japan have bought its surveillance drones.
Defend AI needs to harness this traction and switch it into significant monetary outcomes. It’s trying to a brand-new autonomous fighter jet it’s constructing, the X-BAT, to assist make it occur.
It’s additionally trying to a brand new CEO. In Could, the corporate introduced in a brand new chief government—Gary Steele—who has a observe report of taking tech firms to multi-billion exits. With Defend AI’s cofounder and former CEO, Ryan Tseng, moving into one other management place, Steele has plans to develop the corporate’s income 70%-100% every year till it hits $1 billion in annual income for the 12 months ending March 2028, up from the roughly $300 million Defend AI notched within the 12 months ending in March 2025.
“I think the number one thing I think about is: How do we scale this?” says Steele, who spoke with Fortune over two interviews, his first since being named Defend AI’s CEO.
Courtesy of Defend AI
It received’t be straightforward. As a part of Defend AI’s technique, the 1,200-person firm might want to persuade legacy protection retailers that the AI-powered autonomous software program Hivemind can do greater than energy Defend AI’s personal drone. A grotesque accident in 2024—by which a U.S. Navy servicemember had the information of his fingers successfully sliced off throughout a drill with the V-BAT—put a damper on final 12 months’s income, and gave the corporate a public black eye that its executives are anxious to place behind them. And Steele, who’s likable and seemingly adept at navigating inside politics, has walked right into a management place notoriously tough within the startup world: a CEO seat at an organization the place the founders preserve key management roles, board seats, and stakes within the enterprise they created.
Defend AI is at an inflection level. Now Steele should show that he’s the one who can take it to the subsequent degree.
‘This inflection was happening’
Even earlier than Anduril, there was Defend AI.
Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL, partnered up together with his brother after he, Ryan Tseng, had offered a startup to Qualcomm. The 2 of them, with cofounder Andrew Reiter, needed to take the autonomy that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had been promising would rework the auto and e-commerce industries and translate it to the battlefield. This was again in 2015—two years earlier than Anduril began to take form, and never lengthy earlier than protests erupted inside Google over a contract it was renewing with the Division of Protection.
Whereas Palantir had been securing authorities contracts for years, constructing navy expertise was uncommon amongst Silicon Valley tech-types on the time, to not point out exceedingly controversial. The Defend AI staff turned down an preliminary $5 million funding as a result of it had been contingent on Defend AI ditching its supposed navy focus and going business—which its founders weren’t keen to do. “It was really, really uncommon, if non-existent, for venture firms to be doing DoD-first companies,” says Peter Levine, a basic associate at Andreessen Horowitz, who sits on Defend AI’s board.
Because the enterprise capital-backed protection tech business has matured, nevertheless, the Tseng duo have change into synonymous with the business and with the traction the sector has garnered since geopolitical tensions began climbing in 2021. That climb sped up, after all, in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and views on the house shifted dramatically.
Defend AI had began with the now-discontinued quadcopter known as the “Nova,” which, on first look, appears like a perfectly beef-ed up model of a drone you would possibly purchase at Radio Shack. Its innovation was in its tech stack, the AI-powered autonomous software program system Defend AI calls “Hivemind,” which ingests information from onboard sensors—issues like infrared cameras, radar, indicators intelligence, and satellites—to construct a mannequin of its setting, then use AI to navigate, plan routes, keep away from threats, and execute missions with out the necessity for distant management.
Courtesy of Defend AI
With Hivemind, the quadcopter may go into probably the most harmful components of a constructing and collect intelligence of potential ambushes or hidden combatants, so troopers wouldn’t need to stroll in blind. The Nova has been used for a number of missions within the Center East, inlcuding in October 2023, when Israeli forces used it to discover Hamas’ tunnel community under the Gaza Strip.
The Protection Division’s price range for quadcopters is comparatively small, nevertheless, in line with Ryan Tseng, so Defend AI pivoted in 2021 by way of its acquisition of the V-BAT, a towering surveillance drone able to flying as much as 18,000 toes and for 13 hours into enemy territory. The drone, which takes off and lands vertically, can fly from a ship or boat with out a runway or launch mechanism, which has helped it notch contracts with the U.S. Coast Guard and Marines. But it surely’s the struggle in Ukraine that has actually put V-BAT on the map.
Like many different U.S. protection startups, Defend AI donated expertise and {hardware} to Ukraine’s navy for testing and experimentation—for proof that their drones may rise up in a battle zone. Lots of these firms rapidly got here to appreciate that they couldn’t, together with Defend AI.
The drones weren’t geared up to function in areas the place combatants may jam their communication indicators or GPS, says Nathan Michael, Chief Know-how Officer at Defend AI, who says the V-BATs they initially despatched to Ukraine didn’t have Hivemind on board. “We had to come back and revisit our strategy,” he says.
It took roughly eight months for Defend AI’s tech staff to include Hivemind into the V-BAT. After the replace, V-BAT underwent two new rounds of intense testing in summer time 2024: a two-day test-run the place seven jammers tried to knock it down, in addition to a 60-mile take a look at mission, the place the V-BAT was utilized in jammed airspace to identify a Russian surface-to-air missile system and alert the Ukrainians, who hit it with a rocket. Each assessments had been profitable, in line with Ukrainian paperwork reviewed by Fortune, and Defend AI ultimately despatched over 16 V-BAT drones to Ukraine—most of them bought by European allies—and so they’ve been serving within the subject ever since.
“I suspect that this year, more than half of our business is international”
Gary Steele, CEO, Defend AI
Certainly one of its most noteworthy missions to date was in April, when a V-BAT flew some 80 kilometers into Russian-held territory, south of Zaporizhzhia, over two days to determine—then assist destroy—two navy headquarters and barracks, the place Russian pilots and operators had been remotely controlling the nation’s highly-lethal FPV drone fleet.
New enterprise has been pouring in within the months since, in line with Steele. Defend AI began promoting its V-BATs to the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Egypt this 12 months. Steele wouldn’t give specifics, however mentioned that Defend has “hundreds of millions” of {dollars} value of latest contracts in Asia, Europe, and the Center East alone. And this summer time, in late August, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine formally named Defend AI one in every of its “verified business partners,” permitting it to compete for state procurement contracts and entry packages—and making it a real participant within the struggle effort.
“I suspect that this year, more than half of our business is international,” Steele says, noting that he arrived on the firm “as this inflection was happening.”
Defend AI is at present manufacturing the V-BATs out of its 107,000‑sq.‑foot “Batcave” manufacturing and engineering facility outdoors of Dallas, the place the corporate is constructing 200 plane per 12 months, although it simply inked a cope with the producer JSW to ultimately begin producing them in India as effectively.
Courtesy of DVIDS
Defend AI both sells the V-BAT outright, or, as is the case for practically all of its contracts with the U.S. navy, serves as a contractor working the V-BATs for the shopper, and the orders or contracts vary from 4 to 300 plane, in line with the corporate. For buy, every V-BAT prices about $1 million, although the associated fee can fluctuate relying on what number of the shopper is buying or the tech that’s built-in into the system. Defend AI additionally licenses Hivemind to prospects, together with Singapore and South Korea, as an autonomy software program suite and developer platform. Hivemind made up roughly 30% of the corporate’s income within the 12 months ending in March 2025. Whereas the corporate says it makes “some revenue” from the early demonstrations and integration work it’s doing with primes, together with Airbus, RTX, and Northrup Grumman, the way forward for that enterprise line will largely rely upon whether or not the Division of Protection ultimately opts to buy these merchandise.
‘Every single investor made money’
Steele was nearly gliding across the mild brown wood flooring of his San Francisco apartment once we first met in August. He had left his loafers in his workplace and was enthusiastically sliding about in his gray slacks and socks, mentioning varied work that scatter the partitions of his second residence, a nook condo with floor-to-ceiling home windows on the highest flooring of a skyrise close to the Ferry Constructing.
“It’s hard to get the colors right,” Steele says as he factors to a portray hanging in a visitor toilet. The artist, Doron Langberg, is one in every of many current artwork college graduates that Steele started following on Instagram shortly after they graduated—a behavior he picked up after he began gathering artwork in 2014.
Steele—together with his type smile and knack for an rising artist—was not the choose one might need anticipated on the helm of Defend AI, whose drones have helped destroy some $400 million value of Russian weapons.
Steele’s background is in software program, working the businesses Splunk and Proofpoint, which centered on information analytics and cybersecurity. Steele based Proofpoint and says he scaled it to $1.5 billion in income earlier than Thoma Bravo bought it in an all-cash $12.3 billion deal in 2021. At Splunk, Steele got here in when it was shedding cash, then offered it to Cisco two years later for $28 billion in 2024. Cisco stored him on, making him president of the corporate’s $55 billion go-to-market technique.
He’s assured—perhaps even a bit smug—in his observe report of returns. “If you look at my history at Proofpoint, literally every single investor made money,” Steele says. “Every single one.” That, he says, is likely one of the causes that Defend AI’s board, lined with Silicon Valley traders from Andreessen Horowitz and Point72 Ventures which have backed the corporate, thought Steele would do effectively within the CEO seat.
“He has scaled very large companies,” Andreessen Horowitz’s Levine says. “We wanted an emphasis on software, because as we go forward, we intend to make that software available to many other organizations who will use that software on their hardware. And Gary had that background.”
Steele joined the corporate simply as Defend AI had introduced its most up-to-date funding spherical, $240 million at a $5.3 billion valuation. Shortly after the spherical closed, Defend AI prolonged the spherical by elevating an extra $300 million, hoisting its valuation to $5.6 billion, Fortune is first to report. In whole, the corporate has raised $1.4 billion in fairness and $200 million in debt—taking it from a GPS-denied quadcopter firm to one of the crucial well-funded personal protection firms within the U.S. and one of many definitive gamers engaged on autonomy within the personal markets.
“They’re right there with Anduril,” says Ali Javaheri, an rising tech analyst at PitchBook. “They have serious venture backing from the big firms. They have serious backing from the Primes. They are winning contracts.”
However Defend AI hasn’t loved the identical scale that Anduril has. Anduril mentioned it had notched $1 billion in income in 2024. Defend AI, comparatively, hit $300 million on the finish of its most up-to-date fiscal 12 months, in line with the corporate. That was a $100 million shortfall of the $400 million it had been aiming for.
Courtesy of Defend AI
Defend AI credit the shortfall to an incident that happened throughout a take a look at with the U.S. Navy in 2024, which was first reported by Forbes earlier this 12 months. Certainly one of its V-BAT drones had tipped over throughout a take a look at, and a Navy servicemember who rushed to seize it inadvertently grabbed the propeller and severed the tops of three fingers, in line with a abstract of the next investigation, which was obtained by Fortune by way of a information request. The Navy’s investigation mentioned that, due to poor sign, it took 45 minutes for anybody to come up with emergency companies earlier than the servicemember, in addition to the items of his fingers on ice, could possibly be transported to the hospital, in line with witness testimony and findings from the Navy’s investigation. Defend AI says it had a Tactical Fight Casualty Care-qualified worker who supplied fast medical care on website after which initiated fast floor transport to the closest medical facility.
The incident was grotesque and publicly embarrassing. Whereas many of the findings of the Navy’s subsequent investigation had been redacted, the Navy paperwork say that Defend AI’s preflight temporary packet didn’t have ample directions for emergency procedures, and that Defend AI’s tip-over coaching didn’t embrace sensible coaching workout routines, in line with the information. The V-BAT—even the drones operational and within the subject—was grounded for 2 weeks because the investigation ensued, and it ended up delaying a sequence of contracts.
“Many purchasing decisions were delayed as a consequence of that investigation”
Ryan Tseng, Chief Technique Officer, Defend AI
“Aviation is dangerous. Machines are complicated, and through a Swiss cheese situation, a person lost their fingertips, and it was an unfortunate event,” says Ryan Tseng, who was nonetheless CEO on the time of the incident. After the incident, the corporate added a warning on the duct surrounding the propeller, together with “extensive” hands-on sensible train necessities. It later rolled out an unassisted launch and touchdown functionality that eradicated the necessity for an individual to be concerned in any respect.
Tseng described the Forbes story in regards to the incident as “sensationalized” and contested the notion that there have been any deeper-rooted questions of safety on the firm, or that the accident had any relation to his resolution to step apart. Whereas “many purchasing decisions were delayed as a consequence of that investigation,” Tseng says, “for a long time, it’s been back to normal.”
In interviews, Ryan Tseng and Levine emphasised that it was Tseng’s thought to step into the chief technique officer position and produce on a brand new CEO. “He wasn’t pushed out,” Levine insists, including: “It’s not like he did anything wrong.”
Ryan Tseng says that, as the corporate hit 1,000 staff, he questioned whether or not he was the individual to take it to five,000 individuals. “I’ve told people, and I don’t think they believe me, but I’ve never felt a particular attachment to the CEO role,” Tseng says. Tseng says he first approached the board this previous winter, however they inspired him to remain on. After the funding spherical closed, he prompt they revisit the dialog.
About seven months into the management transition, the Tseng brothers and Steele say they’ve discovered a steadiness and that they speak daily. Ryan Tseng has moved into the technique position, the place he oversees company improvement and M&A. Brandon Tseng, who is predicated out of Washington, D.C., continues to steer development and is targeted on prospects and investor relationships. Steele is targeted on working the enterprise, earning money, and bringing on new individuals, having employed 4 new executives since he joined, together with a Chief Authorized Officer and Chief Advertising Officer.
“This transition between Ryan and Gary has been the best transition from a founder to a new CEO that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been around for a while,” Levine says.
When requested in regards to the dynamic between himself and the Tseng brothers, Steele says he was effectively conscious of the significance of their roles, as a result of he was a founder himself. “I understand what that means,” he says, noting that he wouldn’t have joined the corporate if he didn’t really feel like they might work effectively collectively. “I needed to feel like we saw the world in a similar way,” he says. For him, he says he was satisfied that the Tseng brothers approached the world with the identical instincts as him, a “relentless” work ethic, and a “hands-on, problem solver’s mindset.”
The corporate wouldn’t share what voting energy the brothers nonetheless have, solely that they’re “still significant shareholders.” The corporate mentioned that Defend AI “operates with a mature governance structure and an independent Board. No single individual has the ability to make leadership changes on their own; those decisions rest with the Board as a whole, just like any well-run company.”
What’s coming subsequent
On the finish of October, Defend AI unveiled a brand-new product: an autonomous fighter jet with a 2,000-mile nautical vary known as the X-BAT. Defend AI has been engaged on the X-BAT for 18 months, designing a large vertical take off and touchdown plane that wouldn’t want a runway, in line with Brandon Tseng. Defend is aiming to have its first take a look at flight someday subsequent 12 months, and begin manufacturing in 2029. The X-BAT is meant to go with the V-BAT, which is proving to be the corporate’s workhorse—at the least for now.
To date, Defend AI is working with eight of the navy’s essential 25 contractors, in line with Ryan Tseng. For starters, it’s being included into Basic Atomics’ MQ-20 unmanned fight aerial automobile, a Kratos BQM-177A goal drone, and an Airbus H145 twin-engine mild utility helicopter.
Courtesly of Defend AI
However, importantly, these have been demonstrations, not deployments, with little income. Defend AI nonetheless has to show its capabilities to those primes—and ultimately to the Protection Division—earlier than they’d roll the expertise out extensively. “The customer has to have confidence to go do this,” Steele says.
A kind of early companions is Airbus, which began working with Defend AI in spring 2025 on an Airbus DT25 goal drone in addition to an autonomous developmental Lakota helicopter that it hopes to ship to the Marine Corps within the subsequent “couple of years,” in line with Carl Forsling, director of enterprise improvement and technique at Airbus. “If that’s successful, then that market is going to continue to expand—both with the Lakota and potentially other platforms,” Forsling says.
Steele emphasised that the corporate needs to place itself throughout a sequence of platforms. “While we’ve been very focused on aircraft, because that’s the place we started, there’s tremendous opportunity as we cross domains,” he says.
PitchBook’s Javaheri identified that Defend AI is prone to profit from the Protection Division’s current resolution to hone in its 14 priorities down to 6, one in every of which is “applied artificial intelligence” programs, which would come with autonomy. “Aerospace and defense autonomy is the name of the game, and Shield AI is one of the leaders in that,” he says.
On the entrance traces
Whereas protection tech firms have gotten more and more prevalent in Silicon Valley—and Washington, D.C.—there’s something intrinsically totally different a couple of protection firm than its enterprise or shopper counterparts, even when the identical storied enterprise capital companies have begun backing all of them.
Defend AI is a living proof. For one, its make-up: 18% of its 1,200 staff are veterans, together with Defend AI’s head of communications, Lily Hinz, who served within the Navy. Almost the entire 30 staff stationed in Kyiv are former Ukrainian troopers.
“While there are many ways to conduct ourselves, we choose to act in a manner that is moral, good, and of high standards—leaving the world better than we found it, simply because it’s the right thing to do,” Tseng wrote.
“‘Move fast and break things’ is the wrong mantra when ‘things’ are people and escalation paths.”
Garrett Smith, CEO, Reveal Know-how
Garrett Smith, an lively Marine Officer who’s CEO of the tactical edge tech firm Reveal Know-how, says that, when a product lives in a “life-and-death” setting, it “changes everything.”
Threat could be very actual for Defend AI staff. In contractor-operated offers, in addition to in complicated, high-risk environments, staff are sometimes stationed for months on the bottom (or at sea) the place its drones are deployed. In Ukraine, its 30 operators frequently journey between cities to help mission planning, monitor sorties, and troubleshoot in actual time to adapt to new threats and feed classes discovered again into the V-BAT.
That degree of proximity is all about belief, in line with Lythgoe, Defend AI’s head of Ukrainian operations, who says that, if you will ask a soldier to belief their life together with your expertise, you want to have the ability to show that you’re simply as dedicated to them. That has meant Lythgoe has solely been residence together with his spouse again within the U.S. 4 weeks during the last 12 months, which is “not ideal,” he admits. “That is the job, I believe,” Lythgoe says. “Inherantly, it’s the role of the defense sector to understand problems and to give the war fighter the edge. And to do that, you have to understand the problem, otherwise you’re guessing. And so you really do need to be close to the problem to do that.”
