Defense technology company Shield AI raised $165 million as part of a Series E funding round, increasing the company’s valuation to $2.3 billion. With this deal, Shield AI joins Space X, Palantir, and Anduril as the only multi-billion-dollar defense-tech startups of the past 20 years. Shield AI has built an autonomous flying system for military and commercial aircraft called Hivemind, which allows aircraft to operate without GPS, communications, or a pilot. The company's products are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense. Ryan Tseng, CEO & Co-Founder of Shield AI, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Shield AI Raises $165 Million Series E to Accelerate Building A.I. Pilot for Military & Commercial Aircraft

But I want to turn now to another startup, shaking things up. This is the one we told you about before the break Shield ai it's a defense technology company building aI pilots for aircraft and the company raising 100 and 65 million in a series E round bringing its valuation to 2.3 billion. Well with the deal Shield AI joins SpaceX and volunteer is one of the only multibillion dollar defense tech startups of these past two decades. And joining me now is Ryan Sang co founder and Ceo of Shield. Ai Ryan thanks so much for coming on the show. Your company absolutely fascinating saying it's building an AI pilot for both military commercial aircraft. Give me some more details about this technology and how it works. Yes, thanks first for having thank you for having me on Kristen um we build an Ai pilot that allows aircraft to gain access to areas that would otherwise be too dangerous uh for people to fly the planes. Um, Ai pilots are regarded by many, including us as one of the most strategically important technologies for national security over the next 50 years. And you know, thankfully, I think for us, a movie has come out recently that really makes clear the value proposition of the product that we're delivering. If you've seen the most recent Top Gun movie, the entire premise is focused on this idea that there are regions that are very dangerous and difficult to access and it requires, you know tom cruise to come in and fly a jet through a very improbable set and and and accomplished a very improbable outcome and were effectively using ai to put a tom cruise and a computer that can then go on top of the world's most advanced fighter aircraft, interesting. Okay, so I'm sure obviously the government sees a big advantage in using what you're offering here, Ryan, who are some of the clients, how are they using this already? We sell our capability to both defense and commercial customers uh certainly is adopted by many of the services and also allies of the United States. Our AI pilot is deployed today on small and medium sized aircraft, were not on the full sized fighter aircraft today and those are deployed around the world in operations. Most of those operations are classified, but the adoption is there and it's growing. So once this autonomous pilot makes its way to an unsafe area, what is it capable of doing in that area where it's not safe for an actual human to go? So the most important capability of an AI pilot is to be able to read and react in an environment where communications and GPS are degraded or denied. One of the great capabilities of humans is that they're not dependent on these electronic systems in order to navigate to an objective and accomplish a mission because, you know, we are very good at problem solving and reasoning and the trick or the objective of an AI pilot is to enable it to accomplished missions with similar or much better performance than a human pilot without having to rely on Gps or very consistent communication. So what's the evolution from here? I mean obviously the U. S. And our allies have not decided to intervene on the ground in Ukraine as Ukraine is not a NATO member. That's Russia's war for now. But I think a lot of people looking at the world as we know it and concerns concerned obviously that we could see further conflict pop up. How does your technology come into place and what's the evolution of it? This is a topic that I'm passionate about. Thank you for the question. I regard security and stability as one of the most important things for human progress and achievement. Whether you care about climate change, education or medicine or any other noble mission, you've got to have security and stability as the starting point and it's become pretty clear that ai pilots are one of the most important technologies for our country and our allies to be able to continue to contribute to global security and stability and that I'll just I'll pass there. Well, certainly Ryan, we're watching your company closely, a lot of money, a big valuation and certainly we know technology that is in the utmost demand right now. So Ryan, I hope you come back on the show, congratulations again. That's Ryan saying Ceo and co founder of Shield Ai