Shield AI is turning autonomy software into a defence aircraft company

Shield AI announced $2 billion of new financing and the planned acquisition of Aechelon in March 2026. The package included $1.5 billion in Series G capital at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation and $500 million in fixed-return preferred equity. Aechelon brings defence visual simulation and training into Shield after Shield had already revealed V-BAT as its tactical VTOL UAS and X-BAT as its larger AI-piloted VTOL combat-aircraft program.

Team

Shield was founded in 2015 by Brandon Tseng, Ryan Tseng and Andrew Reiter. Brandon Tseng came from the Navy SEALs. Gary Steele is CEO, Ryan Tseng is president and chief strategy officer, Brandon Tseng is president, and Nathan Michael is CTO.

Autonomy Stack

Hivemind is the software layer across Shield products. Hivemind Enterprise is a platform for developing, evaluating, testing and deploying autonomy. The platform includes EdgeOS as a runtime environment, Pilot as an autonomy catalog, Forge as an autonomy factory and Commander as a command-and-control toolkit.

V-BAT is a Group 3 VTOL UAS for ISR and targeting, with more than 13 hours of endurance, a 40 lb maximum payload, fully unassisted launch and landing, deployment in under 30 minutes by a two-person team and operation from a 4.6 m by 4.6 m landing zone. It can operate in winds up to 25 kts and from a moving ship at 10 kts.

ViDAR handles airborne surveillance, Tracker detects objects in video and Tracker C-UAS detects drones from EO/IR cameras.

Shield offers Hivemind Enterprise, EdgeOS, Pilot, Forge, Commander, ViDAR, Tracker, Tracker C-UAS, X-BAT and V-BAT in the same corporate product menu.

Aircraft And Simulation

X-BAT is an AI-piloted VTOL fighter-class aircraft unveiled in October 2025 for contested environments. It is designed for launch and recovery from ships, remote islands and austere forward bases, with Hivemind handling autonomous and collaborative operation. X-BAT moves Shield from tactical UAS toward a higher-end aircraft category with harder requirements for mission planning, training, operator trust, maintenance and procurement.

Aechelon adds synthetic environment capability to that aircraft program. Aechelon provides high-fidelity visual simulation and training systems used in defence aviation. Simulation gives Shield a place to test autonomy behaviors, operator workflows, sensor views and mission conditions before live flight.

Visual simulation can support training, operator familiarity and scenario testing, but customer confidence still depends on real aircraft logs, exercise results, mission availability and sustainment data. Shield has disclosed the transaction, the financing package and the product architecture. Fielded aircraft programs and customer operating records will carry the harder evidence.

Evidence Boundary

Public material now shows a dated sequence: 2015 founding, Hivemind autonomy tooling, V-BAT as a Group 3 VTOL UAS, X-BAT as a larger VTOL combat-aircraft program, Aechelon as simulation infrastructure and a $12.7 billion valuation. Public material does not yet show delivered aircraft counts by customer, mission availability, autonomy performance under degraded conditions, fleet sustainment, training adoption, contract depth or repeatable operational results across the full aircraft family.

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