Shield AI – a deep-tech company building state-of-the-art autonomy software products and defense aircraft – announced it has completed a $240 million F-1 strategic funding round, raising its valuation to $5.3 billion. The funding was completed with major participation from strategic investors L3Harris and Hanwha Aerospace and participation from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, U.S. Innovative Technology, and Washington Harbour. The funds will enable Shield AI to expand the deployment of Hivemind Enterprise to OEMs, governments, and companies to empower the more significant robotics and drone industrial base to build autonomy products.
Hivemind Enterprise is an autonomy software suite for developers/organizations building, testing, evaluating, and deploying autonomy for intelligent machines. It accelerates autonomy development by delivering a multi-year head start with platform products and AI-powered toolsets and leveraging Shield AI’s proven edge autonomy work, enabling unmanned systems to operate in GPS—and comms-denied environments.
Hivemind’s Enterprise product suite includes an integrated autonomy factory, industrial-grade production-ready middleware, a rich autonomy catalogue, and seamless mission control. It empowers developers to build and own their mission-ready autonomy solutions quickly and flexibly.
The interest and participation from investors are a testament to Shield AI’s momentum after a year of successful milestones and recent technology integration announcements, such as mission autonomy work with L3Harris. And the company is pleased to have received support from a number of other strategic investors as part of this fundraising round.
KEY QUOTES:
“Developing autonomy is both complex and costly. Hivemind Enterprise solves this widely known problem and enables the rapid and efficient proliferation of resilient, high-performance autonomy for intelligent machines across industries. Hivemind Enterprise is about supercharging the industrial base to build and monetize autonomy, enabling a world of millions of autonomous systems in the next ten years.”
– Nathan Michael, Shield AI’s Chief Technology Officer
“The same tools that make up Hivemind Enterprise have already enabled Shield AI to autonomously fly F-16s, MQ-20s, MQM-178s, operate V-BATs in GPS- and communications-denied environments, and have quadcopters explore buildings and tunnels for U.S. and Israeli forces. Partnerships with strategics like L3 Harris and Hanwha Aerospace further accelerate efforts to proliferate resilient autonomy.”
– Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s President and Co-Founder
“The need for advanced autonomy has never been more urgent, and Shield AI is proving that autonomy at scale is not only possible but inevitable. Their commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI-driven autonomy aligns with our Trusted Disruptor strategy, where we partner to accelerate the delivery of AI-enabled solutions and emerging technologies to meet our customers’ needs faster and more efficiently.”
– Christopher E. Kubasik, Chair and CEO of L3Harris
