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Tycho AI

GPS-free navigation chips for military drones

Raised to date

$8M

of $8M offered across 1 Form D filing

Investors
2
Last filed
May 13, 2026

About

Tycho.AI is a Cambridge, Massachusetts defense technology company spun out of MIT that builds edge autonomy for unmanned systems. Its Voyager stack combines compact custom silicon with visual-inertial odometry and satellite image matching so drones can navigate precisely without GPS/GNSS or a continuous communications link. The company targets low-altitude, high-speed flight — aiming for 200 mph under 25 feet of altitude with under 1% navigation deviation — for ISR, counter-UAS and swarming missions. Founded in 2022 by MIT professor Sertac Karaman, it exited stealth in October 2025 with a $10M Series A led by FirstMark after a $2M Pillar VC seed, and holds SBIR contracts with AFWERX, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Strategic Capabilities Office.

Runs full navigation and perception autonomy on a credit-card-sized, sub-seven-ounce FPGA/ASIC module rather than a power-hungry GPU, which is what makes GPS-denied precision navigation fit inside a small tactical drone's size, weight and power budget.

Funding

  • Option to acquireFiled May 13, 2026Form D
    $8M/ $8M

Product

Voyager

Autonomy hardware and software stack

A low-SWaP hardware and software autonomy stack — a chipset roughly the size of a credit card and under seven ounces — that gives drones, ground robots and counter-UAS platforms precision navigation and autonomous decision-making at the edge in GPS-denied and communications-contested environments.

  • GNSS-denied navigation via visual-inertial odometry plus satellite image matching
  • FPGA/ASIC compute instead of GPUs for low size, weight and power
  • Low-altitude high-speed flight navigation with obstacle avoidance

Built for

US military branches and defense agencies, plus drone and robotic platform manufacturers integrating an autonomy stack

People on file