The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger coun

Airdog’s founders are back with a precision-strike drone meant for modern warfare

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2024-11-06 17:00:08

The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger countries can afford legions of tanks, helicopters, and precision-strike systems, smaller nations find themselves scrambling for cheaper ways to defend themselves.

Origin, a new defense tech startup out of Latvia, specializes in making reusable, autonomous drones that can deliver munitions far more cheaply than similar solutions. The company already has commercial agreements with two NATO countries, though these remain unnamed for security reasons.

Founded in 2022 by Agris Kipurs and Ilya Nevdah, Origin emerged after the pair exited Airdog, which made an autonomous drone that is famously used for recording extreme sports. Eventually, Airdog was acquired by U.S. smart home solutions developer Alarm.com.

“Airdog was a consumer drone. We were the first in the world to launch an autonomously flying system in 2015,” Kipurs (CEO) told TechCrunch. “We founded Origin in March of 2022, obviously in response to the invasion of Ukraine. We realized that we had to go back to doing what we do best, this time for military applications. We knew that the skill set that we have as a team is rare, as we’d been building autonomous systems for 10+ years.”