News, deep dives, and analysis — every Auterion story, newest first.
Auterion is the software company trying to become the operating system of the drone age. Founded in Zurich by Dr. Lorenz Meier, the creator of the open-source PX4 autopilot, Pixhawk, and MAVLink, and now headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the company builds AuterionOS and the Skynode flight computers that let aircraft from different manufacturers fly as one coordinated system. Its September 2025 $130 million Series B valued it north of $600 million.
Our coverage traces a sharp pivot. Auterion’s early years were enterprise stories, from the Freefly Astro launch to open-source work with NTT. From 2024 the company became a defense force: a Rheinmetall partnership that grew into an equity stake, a Taiwan strategic partnership, a $50 million Pentagon contract for 33,000 AI strike kits bound for Ukraine, and a joint venture with Ukraine’s Airlogix to mass-produce strike drones in Germany. The through-line is jamming resistance: Skynode S guides drones to moving targets where GPS and radio links are dead.
The bet on open architecture is paying off in demonstrations as well as contracts. In December 2025, Auterion’s Nemyx swarm engine ran the first multi-manufacturer drone swarm to complete a full find-fix-finish kill chain, and in 2026 the company won a production award in the Pentagon’s Gauntlet competition and joined the FCC’s Blue UAS exemption list. The feed below carries every Auterion story as we publish it.
Last updated August 14, 2026 — the feed below updates with every new story.
Asked if he could defeat a drone swarm launched inside U.S. borders, Northcom's deputy commander said no. Nine days earlier, five autonomous drones hit a tank in Maryland.
Lorenz Meier picked a fight with half the defense industry on July 1. The Auterion founder, creator of the Pixhawk flight controller and the widely adopted open-source PX4 autopilot, published an essay arguing that the United States, Germany, and Ukraine now buy attack drones the way consumers buy cell phones: interchangeable hardware, replaced every two…
Ukraine publicly introduced a new long-range strike drone called Sichen on April 14 at a Ministry of Foreign Affairs exhibition in Kyiv. The aircraft is built for deep strikes at ranges up to 870 miles and carries an 88-pound warhead, as reported by Militarnyi. The name translates to “January” in Ukrainian, a reference to the…
Switzerland’s government-backed Taskforce Drones is preparing its next round of UAS technical trials for autumn 2026, building on a December 2025 campaign that pushed attack drones and counter-drone systems through some of the most challenging terrain in Europe, as JANES reports. The program is overseen by the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport…
Ukraine’s biggest drone manufacturer just opened a production facility on British soil. Ukrspecsystems, described as Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturer, has converted a building in Mildenhall, Suffolk into an operational drone factory, backed by a £200 million investment. When running at full capacity, it will produce up to 1,000 drones per month for Ukrainian soldiers fighting…
At the Munich Security Conference, Germany’s Auterion and Ukraine’s Airlogix announced a joint venture to mass produce autonomous strike drones for Ukraine and NATO allies, as Militarnyi reported.
Stay ahead of the curve with our breakdown of the Pentagon's $150M "Gauntlet" drone competition. Discover the 25 vendors selected for the Drone
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) just published a solicitation for something the U.S. military has needed for years but never had: a box that can store drones, launch them in mass, recover them, recharge them, and do it all over again with almost no humans involved. The program is called the Containerized Autonomous Drone…
AuterionOS is a hardware-agnostic operating system for autonomous drone fleets that runs on Auterion's Skynode flight computers. It makes drones from different manufacturers operate as one coordinated system, an approach often described as the Android for drones, and compatible aircraft can join a Nemyx swarm through a software update.
Skynode S is a compact onboard AI computer that converts manually flown drones into autonomous systems, combining a flight controller, vision processing, and an encrypted radio in a 38-gram package. It detects, tracks, and follows moving targets up to 1 km away even where GPS and communications are jammed. Ukraine is receiving 33,000 units under a $50 million Pentagon contract.
Nemyx is Auterion's swarm engine, launched in September 2025 as the first system coordinating drones from multiple manufacturers into a single AI-guided force. In December 2025 it powered the first multi-manufacturer hybrid swarm to complete a full find-fix-finish kill chain in a Munich demonstration.
Dr. Lorenz Meier, the creator of the open-source PX4 autopilot, the Pixhawk flight controller, and the MAVLink protocol. The company grew out of an academic drone project at ETH Zurich and Meier remains CEO.
Yes, and it is the capability our coverage cites most. Skynode uses computer vision and visual-inertial odometry so drones keep navigating and tracking targets when GPS and radio links are disrupted, a resistance that Ukrainian forces have proven in combat against Russian electronic warfare.
Per our coverage, no. Humans assign targets and authorize engagement, while the software handles navigation, swarm coordination, and terminal guidance. As we have put it: humans still make the call on what gets targeted; the AI does the flying.
No. Our earliest coverage is enterprise and public safety: the Freefly Astro drone built on Skynode, the first Sony A7R4 payload integration, open-source inspection drones with Japan's NTT, and first-responder autonomy updates. The defense pivot came from 2024 onward, driven by Ukraine.
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