When the Pentagon announced the FY26 APFIT program winners way back in December, they were very coy about which companies won which awards.
One APFIT award stuck out—a $49.7M contract with the US Army for “Real-Time Command and Control at the Tactical Edge,” the largest APFIT award to date. Months later, San Antonio-based startup Darkhive has piped up to take credit for that big win.
Bridging the valley: First, a bit about APFIT. The program—full name “Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies”—was introduced in 2022 and designed to help small businesses building military tech bridge the infamous “valley of death” and speed up development. APFIT:
- Was first funded by the FY22 NDAA
- Has awarded—in total—over $1.4B in contracts to over 75 different companies
- Received roughly $1.4B in funding between the appropriations act and BBB last year
- Awards contracts between $10M and $50M to small businesses and non-traditional defense contractors
Darkhive’s $49.7M contract—the program’s “highest single award to date”—was just under APFIT’s $50M maximum statutory cap, “demonstrating both the depth of operational need and APFIT’s ability to efficiently transition and scale mature technologies,” the Pentagon said in December. Let’s look at what’s got the Pentagon hyped about the ‘hive.
Hive hype: Darkhive, founded in 2021, has made a name for itself on both the hardware and software sides of the ball, billing itself as a tactical autonomy and edge software company built around small UAS. Prior to the APFIT award, the company had won over $14M in SBIR contracts and raised a combined $25M in its 2023 Seed and 2024 Series A rounds.
Their product portfolio runs across both drones and the software that powers them, including:
- Yellowjacket: Darkhive’s square-shaped, teeny tiny eight-inch ISR drone designed for indoor and outdoor use.
- Obelisk: Their foldable, four-foot-wide autonomous ISR drone with a 45-minute flight time and EO/IR payloads and software capable of spotting and classifying vessels on the water’s surface, tested by the Navy last September.
- Broodbox: Darkhive’s software to operate their Yellowjacket drones.
- Fleetforge: A software platform designed to speed up software integration and delivery for UAS.
- Redqueen: A mobile app that allows operators to use voice commands to control drones.
According to the Pentagon’s announcement, the $49.7M APFIT award is designated for “Real-Time Command and Control at the Tactical Edge,” so we can assume it’s focused on the latter three software offerings. Darkhive’s announcement didn’t reveal too much, and the company didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
“This award represents a significant milestone in Darkhive’s ability to provide our advanced hardware and software solutions at scale and keep pace with demand across the military services,” Darkhive CEO John Goodson said in the announcement. “We understand the urgency to advance compute and connectivity at the tactical edge.”