Kyle Moore is co-founder and Software Fellow at Pyka, the Alameda, California company building the world's largest commercially-approved autonomous electric aircraft. A self-taught programmer who started writing code at age 11 from rural Washington, Moore brought firmware and robotics expertise from Google X to help design Pyka's Pelican — a 1,320-lb autonomous electric aircraft now spraying crops across four continents and delivering cargo for the U.S. Air Force. Pyka has raised $95M in total funding and achieved back-to-back FAA authorizations for the largest uncrewed aircraft systems in U.S. commercial history.
Arthur Dubois is the co-founder and CEO of Grid Aero, a Palo Alto-based autonomous cargo aircraft startup building what he calls 'the pickup truck of the skies' - rugged, unmanned aircraft capable of hauling thousands of pounds over thousands of miles to places conventional logistics can't reach. A Stanford-trained aerospace engineer who helped scale Joby Aviation and led engineering at Xwing before its acquisition by Joby, Dubois founded Grid Aero in 2024 after growing frustrated with the complexity and cost of retrofitting legacy aircraft for autonomy. In January 2026, Grid Aero raised a $20M Series A to bring its Lifter Lite autonomous cargo aircraft from prototype testing into real-world military and commercial operations.
John Keh is the Founder and CEO of Valtec, a San Diego-based maritime AI and drone company that deploys autonomous VTOL systems on commercial fishing vessels to detect tuna schools in real time. A UC Berkeley alumnus and former US Air Force geospatial intelligence analyst with 250+ missions across South Korea and the Middle East, Keh pivoted from food delivery (3rd employee at Caviar, Uber Eats courier intelligence lead) to maritime defense after four years building startups in Taiwan. Valtec raised a $2M pre-seed round in March 2025 backed by SparkLabs Taiwan, Wavemaker VC, DRONE FUND, Guitar Hero founder Kai Huang, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, with the company's Larus VTOL drone and Fulcan AI platform now deployed on 40+ fishing vessels across Taiwan and the Philippines.
Tim Jenks is the Interim CEO of PowerLight Technologies, a Kent, Washington-based company pioneering laser-based wireless power beaming for drones, defense systems, and space infrastructure. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate with a nuclear engineering master's from MIT and an MBA from Stanford, Jenks spent over two decades building NeoPhotonics from a venture-backed startup into a NYSE-listed company before selling it to Lumentum Holdings for approximately $918 million in 2022. Now he's steering PowerLight through a pivotal moment: in April 2026, the company achieved the world's first wireless power beaming to a fielded military drone in flight, delivering kilowatt-class laser energy to a Kraus Hamdani Aerospace K1000ULE at 5,000 feet altitude - a breakthrough that could redefine how unmanned aircraft operate in contested environments.
Adam Bry is co-founder and CEO of Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight. A childhood R/C aerobatics national champion turned MIT robotics researcher, he turned down a DJI acquisition in 2014 to bet everything on autonomy — and won. Today Skydio has deployed over 60,000 drones to every branch of the U.S. military, 1,200+ public safety agencies, and 45 of 51 state transportation departments, with a $4.4 billion valuation and $3.5 billion U.S. manufacturing expansion underway.