On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted In X that he and two others just met built a cheap drone in a hackathon who calculated his coordinates simply using the camera and Google maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha lMIVY and Carl Schoeller, they were all engineers under 25.
Technology had clear opportunities to combat the ruthless GPS blocking of aircraft in Ukraine. Instead of GPS, drone operators need to use high -tech glasses to guide their drones out of sight. But this leads to many problems, especially under bad conditions such as thick fog or at night.
At the end of Hackathon, Schoeller wishes his two teammates well and was separated, hoping that their trails could cross again.
But the tweet went to the virus and changed their lives. One day later, the three decided to apply to Y Combinator, successfully entering his own Spring 2024 coorde.
Now, their company based in San Francisco, TheseusHe just set $ 4.3 million in seed funding in a round led by the first round of Capital, with additional support from Y Combinator and Lux Capital, he said exclusively to TechCrunch.
Theseus unites a flock of other new businesses. There is Skydio, which focuses on replacing Chinese aircraft to enforce the US law and was recently valued at $ 2.2 billion in 2023. Shield AI, which manufactures Drone Reconnaissance, which recently increased with a $ 5.3 billion valuation. The largest defense player, Anduril, launched His own little drone last year, and refers to talks to raise $ 28 billion.
Theseus says he does not build aircraft, but focuses on hardware components and software that will allow almost every military drone to fly unmanned without GPS. Schoeller, Thesus chief executive, told TechCrunch that the company does not create targeting systems. Its software does not decide whether a particular point is a legal military target or not – the only focus is to get a drone from point A to b.
Theseus has not yet won US military agreements and has not developed into a real battlefield. So she uses her fresh chapter to focus on further building his technology, recruitment for three mechanical roles.
However, the tweet viral hackathon has received Thishus to observe from the US special forces, which have entered into an agreement on early testing and development. Theseus says she recently went to a secret base of special forces to test her latest system, sending TechCrunch a photo of him in action.
Overall, starting a company with people you know for less than a week “generally not consulted” but in the case of Theseus, justifying the jump of faith, Schoeller I wrote In LinkedIn.
