The company teaching cities to read the sky - and to know exactly who is flying in it.
There is a strip of sky - from the ground up to a few hundred feet - that no one used to think about. It sits below the altitude where commercial aviation lives and above the reach of a fence. For most of history it was empty. Then came cheap, capable drones, and that empty band became the most contested and least understood airspace in the country.
Airspace Defense, founded in 2015 as Airspace Systems, was built to make that band legible. The company's patented Airspace Spatial platform fuses several streams of information - Remote ID broadcasts, radio-frequency and electronic sensing, radar returns, and AI-powered analytics - into a single live picture of who is flying where. It does not just spot a drone as a blip. It works to identify the aircraft, classify the threat, and, crucially, locate the operator on the ground.
That last capability is the point. Plenty of systems can tell a security team that something is in the air. Airspace Defense's pitch is attribution: turning an anonymous quadcopter over a stadium into a known aircraft flown by a locatable person. The company describes its Remote ID service as a "digital license plate for drones" - a phrase that captures the whole strategy in five words.
The company operates out of the Daly City / San Francisco Bay Area and keeps a deliberately small team of roughly two dozen people. What it lacks in headcount it makes up in provenance: the founding group came out of Apple, Google and Cisco, and the company likes to note that its technology was "invented in America by Americans."
The mission it prints on its own materials is unusually plain for a defense-adjacent company: "protecting those who cannot protect themselves." In practice that means the crowds inside an arena, the workers around a power substation, the passengers near a runway - the people underneath a sky that got a lot more crowded without anyone asking them.
Airspace Defense sells to organizations that share one blind spot: they are responsible for a place, and they cannot see the sky above it.
Its customers span public safety and law enforcement agencies, national defense and the US military, and large enterprises. On the commercial side that includes events and stadiums, airports and aviation, utilities and energy, ports and maritime facilities, corporate campuses, and executive protection details. On the government side, the work runs deeper - the company co-developed its Galaxy monitoring platform with the US Department of Defense, and its autonomous Interceptor drone was funded by the US Army.
The problem it solves is consistent across all of them. A drone flying over a packed stadium is a safety question, a privacy question and a security question at once - and, until recently, security teams had no reliable way to answer any of them in real time. Many venues, the company notes, use the historical data from Airspace Galaxy to understand recurring incursions and prevent the next one. The value is not only the alarm in the moment; it is the pattern that emerges over weeks.
Chart: relative focus across Airspace Defense's stated market verticals. Directional, based on public company materials.
A layered system: sensing hardware in the field, a fusion engine in the middle, and a browser on the customer's desk.
The patented, city-scale visibility platform. Combines Remote ID, electronic and RF sensing, radar and AI analytics to detect, identify and mitigate unauthorized drone activity.
A Remote ID service that authenticates and identifies unmanned aircraft and pilot locations in real time. The "license plate" that ties a drone to its operator.
Always-on monitoring with long-range detection, instant AI classification and automated response. Co-developed with the US Department of Defense and FAA-compliant.
The first fully autonomous, AI-powered interceptor drone, funded by the US Army, built to capture rogue drones. Now in the Smithsonian collection.
Browser-based subscription with no hardware for the customer to install. Sensing gear is deployed within coverage zones; the customer just logs in.
Traffic deconfliction for public-safety drone programs, so agency aircraft and unknown drones can be sorted and managed in shared airspace.
In a field crowded with companies that compete on how they stop a drone, Airspace Defense competes on how fast it can tell you who is behind one.
The counter-UAS market includes names like Dedrone, DroneShield, Fortem Technologies, AirSight and Anduril. Much of that industry is organized around interdiction - jamming, netting, or otherwise neutralizing a drone. Airspace Defense's differentiator sits one step earlier in the chain: identification and operator location at city scale, delivered as software rather than a single fixed installation.
Three things reinforce that position. First, the platform is patented and built for city-scale coverage rather than a single perimeter. Second, the delivery model is Data as a Service - browser-based, no customer hardware install - which lowers the barrier to adoption. Third, the company sits inside the rule-making process itself: it is a founding member of the FAA Drone Advisory Committee and an active member of the UAS Identification and Tracking Aviation Rulemaking Committee. Being at the table where the standards are written turns regulatory compliance from a cost into a head start.
The business model reflects that software-first stance. Revenue comes primarily from B2B and B2G subscriptions to airspace awareness, complemented by co-developed hardware and systems programs with the Department of Defense and other government customers. Public estimates put annual revenue in the low single-digit millions against roughly $63M raised - the profile of a company still early in converting a hard-won technical and regulatory position into scale.
Jaz Banga, Noah Moore and Earl Stirling launch Airspace Systems with a team drawn from Apple, Google and Cisco.
The company raises a $20M Series A and launches the Galaxy drone security solution, co-developed with the US Department of Defense.
Builds the first fully autonomous, AI-powered interceptor drone, funded by the US Army, to capture rogue drones.
Raises a $38M Series C and repositions around Airspace Spatial and Remote ID city-scale visibility.
The Airspace Interceptor drone joins the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum collection.
The Airspace Interceptor is one of few startup-built products in the National Air and Space Museum collection.
Built the first fully autonomous, AI-powered interceptor drone funded by the US Army.
Founding member of the FAA Drone Advisory Committee and active member of the UAS ID & Tracking ARC.
Airspace Spatial is described as the only patented platform built for city-scale airspace visibility.
It secures low-altitude airspace by detecting, identifying and tracking unauthorized drones and their operators, using a platform that fuses Remote ID, radar, RF sensing and AI analytics.
It was founded in 2015 as Airspace Systems by Jaz Banga (CEO), Noah Moore and Earl Stirling, with a team from Apple, Google and Cisco.
Public safety and law enforcement agencies, national defense and the US military, and enterprises across stadiums, airports, utilities, ports, executive protection and corporate campuses.
Roughly $63M in total, including a $20M Series A in 2018 and a $38M Series C reported around 2021.
Its Airspace Interceptor - the first fully autonomous, AI-powered interceptor drone funded by the US Army - was added to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum collection.