Defense Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Tenet Industries is building low-cost, mass-manufacturable strike drones. We have developed our own HW and SW platform optimized for automated manufacturing, enabling hyperscaling of production across multiple strike categories (FPV, fixed-wing, shahed-type, missiles). We're using design-for-automation and first principles to reimagine how a defense product is developed and manufactured. Thereby lowering the cost and filling the arsenals of the west. Our first product is a kamikaze quadcopter.

We are making AI weapon systems for the modern battlefield. Our first product EDDA is a small, low power, low cost fully autonomous-capable counter drone system. It's designed to be used on vehicles, bases, or carried - to stop group 1 suicide drones.

DAIVIN! builds tankless dive gear that unlocks breath autonomy in extreme environments. Starting from underwater environment our mission is to remove the need for dangerous, heavy and bulky oxygen tanks in space, air and on land and replace them with water!

We're building inexpensive, autonomous strike drones designed to stay operationally relevant as warfare evolves. By combining true hardware modularity with an agentic control system that lowers cognitive load on operators, we enable faster upgrades, broader adoption, and more than 2x reduction in lifecycle cost. Our customers and partners include the UK Royal Marine Commandos, several other units in the UK, and 4 other NATO forces, and we are currently shipping prototypes for iterative feedback. Think of us as Anduril, but with worse weather, and better banter.

We provide defense companies with simulation infrastructure to train and validate autonomous systems.

Always-on intelligence and connectivity for Defense. Icarus builds autonomous, solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 feet for weeks at a time, above the clouds harnessing the power of the Sun, but never too close. It’s the modern-day U-2 spy plane, except each costs $100K and is built by the thousands. The future of warfare is in the Stratosphere.

Perseus Defense is building a mass-manufactured Counter UAS solution for the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Current solutions are one-to-one, too dangerous for use on U.S. soil, and orders of magntiude more expensive than the threats they defeat. Our self-guided missile platform is man-portable and multi-domain capable. It senses, engages, and eliminates threats with drastically reduced cost per engagement over existing kinetic solutions. Solving this critical national security problem requires understanding complex DoD needs along with actual rocket science including aerodynamics, guidance, navigation, control, and much more. Jason and Steve met at Penn State while they pursued their PhD and MS in aerospace engineering, respectively. Their past experiences designing space helicopters for NASA, making Boeing airliners land autonomously, controlling swarms of unmanned autonomous systems, teaching aerospace engineering at Stanford, winning multiple ONR and DOE engineering competitions, and founding an international drone competition makes them the perfect team to create transformative solutions protecting our service members. "If you build this, it will be mandatory equipment for every truck, boat, and convoy in the U.S. Military. We're talking thousands of units." - Former DoD Procurement Officer The White House just released Executive Order, "Unleashing American Drone Dominance" which adds billions of dollars, government support, and streamlined regulations to enable the development of our product. Traction: Jason and Steve used more than 100 end-user interviews across the DoD and DHS to shape the product to something of critical need to both boots on the ground and DoD purchasers. In 8 short weeks following a strict 2-week design-build-test cycle, the team has gone through 4 major guided missile iterations with over 30 live-fire flight tests. They were invited to Ft. Hood to present their platform to the 1st Cavalry Division, and also briefed the Pentagon and U.S. congressmen on current U.S. vulnerabilities to advanced drone technology. Perseus Defense is actively standing up cooperative research agreements with U.S. Army DEVCOM's Applied Research Laboratory, Aviation and Missile Center, Armaments Center, and High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

Conntour enables organizations to query thousands of security cameras using natural language. Users can search past footage (“Find a man with tattoos on his left arm”), configure real-time alerts (“Notify me if someone climbs over the wall”), and extract data (“How many pickup trucks entered yesterday?”). Unlike traditional video analytics limited to pre-defined parameters (like a weapon, bag, or license plate), Conntour supports unlimited, highly specific scenarios described in plain language. This enables a single human to monitor thousands of cameras. Matan (CEO) worked with security cameras for years, leading video surveillance in the Israeli Military. Tomer (CTO) is a second-time founder and former director of engineering. Our team also includes computer vision experts from Israel’s elite 8200 intelligence unit and former top officials from the Mossad. Conntour is backed by General Catalyst, selected for the first-ever Palantir fellowship, and advised by Bob Flores, former CTO at the CIA.

DeepNight is building the next generation of night vision with AI.

Detect and safely block unwanted drone intrusions. Track down and arrest unauthorized operators. Developed by experts from Israel Defense Forces and currently serving more than 25 countries, ApolloShield is the world leader in detecting and blocking drone intrusions, as well as tracking down and arresting unauthorized drone operators.