Vermeer CEO Brian Streem is quickly becoming Mr. Worldwide.
This morning, the Ukrainian-American drone visual navigation startup announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s expanding operations to India and will begin selling its systems there through a local partner called Athena Intelligent Solutions.
The team-up means Vermeer now has direct access to the Indian market, while Indian drone producers—who historically have relied uber-heavily on Chinese components—can now use a GPS-free navigation system tested and proven on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“India represents one of the fastest-growing and most strategically important markets for GPS-denied navigation and terminal guidance technologies, and Athena is the ideal partner to help Vermeer get into the market there,” Streem told Tectonic.
Map it out: Since it was founded in 2018, Vermeer has made quite the name for itself, well, getting drones where they need to go.
The company’s bread-and-butter is a Visual Positioning System that uses:
- Electro-optical and infrared cameras
- AI models trained on massive terrain datasets
- Preloaded 2D/3D maps for real-time matching
This all helps drones figure out where they are, what they’re seeing, and where they’re going without ultra-jammable RF links or GPS.
Basically, when jamming risk is high—say, on the front line in Ukraine—Vermeer is a good piece of kit to have on board your UAS if you wanna stay on mission.
Real talk: And we’re not just saying that—some of the biggest names of the game are already using Vermeer’s VPS, including the US Army, US Air Force, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
- In total, Streem told Tectonic they have about 50 customers and 12 “return customers,” including Anduril.
- The company also raised a $10M Series A led by Draper Associates late last year.
Gone south: Streem said that the company decided to move to India because it’s a massive (fairly untapped) market where drone makers are simultaneously inundated with Chinese parts and trying to decouple from them.
- India deployed self-built UAS for the first time during Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May 2025, but post-operation analysis showed that most parts in the drones were from China.
- The country is building drones and counter-drone systems as part of something called the “Self-Reliant India” initiative.
But—to put it bluntly—most Indian-made drones perform pretty badly when jammed. “[India] recently had a competition for drones that could fly in GPS-jammed environments. 40 drone companies showed up, and all 40 failed,” Streem said. That’s where his company will come in.
Holding hands: In technical terms, Athena will act as Vermeer’s “value-added reseller and strategic partner”—basically, Athena (a security technology company itself) will be authorized to sell Vermeer’s kit to drone makers, while also working with Streem and his team to tweak the system to work better for Indian use cases.
Eventually, Streem said, the company will produce Vermeer VPS in-country themselves.
And they ain’t stopping there. They’ve already got partnerships in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ukraine (including with Sentry, Firestorm, and Skyeton) and are working on more in the Middle East and “other key theaters.”
Pitbull better watch out.