uas
(10)
SeekOps Inc.
SeekOps is an Austin-based climate-technology company that mounts a NASA-derived laser methane sensor, the SeekIR, onto enterprise-grade drones to detect, locate, quantify, and report methane emissions for energy, renewable natural gas, and waste operators. Spun out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2017, its drone-agnostic Leak Detection and Quantification (LDAQ) systems help operators meet regulatory frameworks such as OGMP 2.0, EPA rules, and the EU Methane Regulation, and have been deployed onshore and offshore for majors including bp, Shell, TotalEnergies, and Equinor.
Todd Graetz
Todd Graetz is the co-founder and CEO of Aerolane, a Texas aviation startup building autonomous towed cargo gliders called Aerocarts, which let ordinary planes tow extra payload for only a marginal increase in fuel burn. Before Aerolane he spent his career at BNSF Railway, where he co-founded the railroad's uncrewed aircraft systems program and helped launch some of the first long-range beyond-visual-line-of-sight commercial drone flights in the U.S. under the FAA Pathfinder program. He is an active private pilot, an AUVSI board member, and a veteran of multiple FAA advisory and rulemaking committees.
Jia Xu
Jia Xu is CEO of SkyGrid, the Austin, Texas company building high-assurance airspace integration software for autonomous and unmanned flight. With a PhD from Stanford, dual master's degrees from Imperial College London and the London School of Economics, and career stints at the RAND Corporation, Airbus, General Atomics, and Honeywell Aerospace, Xu brings rare cross-disciplinary depth to one of aviation's hardest problems: teaching machines to share the sky. Under his leadership since August 2023, SkyGrid pivoted from generic airspace software to become a specialized third-party services provider for advanced air mobility - and was acquired by Wisk Aero (a Boeing subsidiary) in June 2025.
Grid Aero
Grid Aero is a Palo Alto aerospace and defense startup building the Lifter-Lite, an autonomous, long-range, heavy-lift cargo drone designed to move thousands of pounds across thousands of miles for military and commercial customers. Founded in 2024 by Arthur Dubois - a veteran of Joby Aviation and Xwing - the company is targeting contested logistics in the Pacific theater and remote civilian routes, with a deliberately simple airframe and AI-enhanced autonomy.
PowerLight Technologies
PowerLight Technologies is a Kent, Washington-based engineering company that transmits electricity through the air using lasers. Spun out of the original LaserMotive (founded 2006 by Tom Nugent and Jordin Kare), PowerLight builds end-to-end power beaming systems that keep drones flying for hours, relay energy across kilometers of free space, and underpin DARPA initiatives for terrestrial, aerial, and lunar power transmission.
Kyle Moore
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
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
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
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
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.