Problem

Seeing Systems addresses a modern defence problem: military units need affordable unmanned systems that can keep working in contested environments shaped by electronic warfare, jamming, rapidly changing threats and limited personnel. Its stated diagnosis is that defence procurement has produced expensive, rigid systems designed around outdated assumptions, creating wasted taxpayer funds, ineffective equipment and avoidable exposure to loss of life. The operational pain is particularly acute when one pilot is expected to control only one drone, rather than coordinate multiple autonomous assets.

The central use case is frontline reconnaissance and strike operations where resilience, mass and rapid adaptation matter: target acquisition, intelligence gathering with minimal personnel exposure, and loitering or one-way-effector missions in jammed environments. Seeing Systems says its modular architecture and agentic control system can reduce lifecycle cost by more than two times, making expendable or attritable capability practical at a scale that traditional high-cost platforms struggle to provide.

Product / Service

The company combines defence hardware, autonomy software and operator training. Its flagship Banshee is a modular autonomous tactical drone with swappable payloads, sensors, compute and communications components, allowing the same core platform to support strike, ISR or swarm missions and to be upgraded without replacing the whole system. The platform is designed for contested theatres, with fibre-optic-guided and modular radio options intended to maintain control under jamming; Seeing Systems lists use cases including frontline operations, perimeter security, reconnaissance, target acquisition and strike.

The software layer is an agentic control system that automates tasks such as navigation and coordination, interprets mission data in a human-teammate-like way and lowers operator cognitive load. The broader product family includes Bandit, a lower-cost FPV platform for high-volume training and attritable one-way-effector missions, and Aerie, an in-development multi-platform swarm and ground-control system. Delivery is collaborative rather than purely transactional: the company works alongside military and NGO partners, uses forward-deployed engineers to gather operational feedback, and also provides hands-on FPV training intended to take inexperienced personnel to mission-ready proficiency.

Market

Seeing Systems operates in defence technology, aerospace and military drones, specifically the emerging market for inexpensive autonomous strike systems, resilient mission autonomy and coordinated drone operations. Its own Y Combinator positioning names Anduril as the closest shorthand comparator. Other relevant comparables include Shield AI, whose Hivemind autonomy platform targets contested and degraded environments, and Quantum Systems, which combines autonomous defence platforms with integrated software and AI. These companies overlap with Seeing Systems in autonomy, AI-enabled command and control, and military unmanned systems, although Seeing Systems differentiates around modularity, affordability, attritability and UK/NATO frontline feedback.

The company is early-stage but not pre-revenue. Y Combinator lists it as an active Winter 2026 company, while public company and independent reporting identify customers and partners including the UK Royal Marine Commandos, other UK military units and four additional NATO forces. It has been shipping prototypes to Ukraine for iterative testing and feedback, and the founders reported early revenue from UK military users before entering YC. Tectonic Defense also reported manufacturing capacity above 5,000 units per month through a manufacturing partner, although the public evidence supports early customer validation and prototype deployment more clearly than scaled production or disclosed contract volume.