New Drone Tech Company Theseus Raises $4.3 Million After Going Viral on Social Media

The new drone tech company, Theseus, founded in 2024, announced this Thursday that it raised  $4.3 million during a seed funding round. The new investment will be used to develop its Micro Visual Positioning System, an innovative solution for drones to operate autonomously in GPS-denied locations.

According to the announcement, the investment round was led by First Round Capital and had the participation of other investors such as Lux Capital and  Y Combinator.

“We’re rapidly developing solutions to urgent operational needs by engaging directly with operators and iterating at the pace of a tech company,” states the post. “GPS jamming is the first defense problem we’ve solved, but this is just the start.”

According to TechCrunch, the young founders of Theseus went viral on social media last year, after one of the three, Ian Laffey, shared a post on X showcasing its team’s achievement during a hackathon of building a drone for less than $500 that could fly without a GPS signal.

we designed, 3d printed and built a <$500 drone with that calculates GPS coordinates without a signal using a camera + google maps

in 24h pic.twitter.com/8P2QoQMNbW

— Ian Laffey (@ilaffey2) February 18, 2024

The post reached over 11 million views and got 800 comments, as well as the attention of investors and governments—as the lack of GPS signal is a current liability in military missions, including in the Ukraine war.

The system, designed by Carl Schoeller, Sacha Lévy, and Laffey—all under 25 at the time—, offers an important solution in the industry by making it possible for drones to fly autonomously using just Google Maps and a camera.

After the viral post in February 2024, the three engineers applied for Y Combinator, joined the Spring 2024 cohort, and founded the San Francisco-based company.

Theseus’s main product is its Micro Visual Positioning System (VPS), which considers current hardware and software technology to build cheap and efficient drones.

“Micro VPS works by looking at the ground and comparing camera images to a large database of satellite maps stored onboard,” wrote the team in the announcement. “By correlating features between the two, our Micro VPS accurately determines the drone’s position and relays that information just like a regular GPS.”

The team has been working in collaboration with the United States Special Operations Command and operators who can deploy the system. With the new funding, the company will be able to hire new talent, expand, and keep developing Micro VPS.

Other countries like China have also been developing drone technologies in multiple fields, such as the use of drones for cloud seeding, and Ukraine has been using drones to collect data to train AI-powered systems.