Exclusive: Powerus Teams Up With Swarmer

A formal US-Ukraine drone deal has yet to be finalized, but that hasn’t stopped companies from inking partnerships of their own. In an exclusive release to Tectonic this morning, US-based drone company Powerus and US-Ukrainian UAV software company Swarmer announced a partnership to explore integrating Swarmer’s swarming tech with Powerus’ “air and maritime platforms, mission systems, and US-based manufacturing and integration resources.” With Swarmer’s experience and operator trust developed in Ukraine and Powerus’ traction—and connections, thanks to some friends in the White House and on their cap table—the team has big plans for their partnership. Power up: To back things up, this ain’t Powerus’ first rodeo with Ukrainian defense tech. In fact, that’s kind of their whole M.O., and their origin story is straight out of a movie script. To date, Powerus has three main companies under its umbrella: They also have their own family of small interceptor drones called Guardian, which they recently signed a contract with the US Air Force Special Operations to supply “at scale” and deploy in the Middle East. Big buzz: For its part, Swarmer—which opened a US headquarters and went public on the Nasdaq in March (with shares skyrocketing 600 percent in its first day of trading)—builds software that enables “groups of drones to execute missions autonomously, translating human-defined objectives into coordinated action.” That includes: And—as you’d expect from a company with Ukrainian roots (their parent company is based in Austin)—their stuff is pretty battle-proven. According to their S-1, they’ve flown over 100,000 combat missions in Ukraine. Teaming up: When Tectonic asked Swarmer co-founder and US CEO Alex Fink what the company’s US strategy was before their IPO, he said it was twofold: Work with the military to understand what operators really need in terms of autonomy and swarming, and work with companies to integrate Swarmer’s software directly onto their platforms. The latter is what this whole deal with Powerus is about. “We’re going to work together to figure out ways to advance the technology to the point where the Department of War can trust swarm technology,” Velicovich said. “The importance of swarming can’t be understated—everyone talks about wanting a million drones, but we don’t necessarily have a million pilots, so swarm technology gives you that capability of one man being able to control hundreds of drones, and that’s what we need.” “We’ve been working [with Swarmer] and have had a strong relationship leading up to their IPO, and it’s a win-win situation for us both,” he added. “Our goal is to get better capabilities in the hands of operators faster, and when we pair those technologies together, it provides better tech for the soldier to have out there at their disposal, versus having to go to all these different vendors.” That whole breaking-down-siloes thing is very much in vogue these days (Operation Jailbreak, anyone?), so they’re betting that this team-up is just what the Pentagon ordered.