China targets U.S. airfields to ground fighter jets before takeoff, prompting Shield AI to develop X-BAT, a vertical takeoff AI-piloted fighter jet for 2029.

Shield AI, a San Diego startup that's building artificial intelligence "pilots" for military aircraft and drones, has pulled in an additional $60 million in venture capital funding. The money is follow-on investment to a financing that Shield AI announced in June. It brings the total amount raised in the Series E round to $225 million -- made up of $150 million in equity and $75 million in debt. The additional capital came from the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund. Founded in 2015, Shield AI has raised just under $575 million since inception.

As you may have noticed, I'm pretty obsessed with covering the best A.I. startups. Check out my posts on Prospectus. On this Newsletter I've taken special care to talk about A.I. being used in war and national security and will continue to do so. Recently, I was alarmed about a startup that wants to use Drones equipped with Tasers to help monitor for school shootings. Curiously most of his ethics board resigned in protest.

Shield AI announced on 22 July that it has acquired Heron Systems, bringing together two US software companies that are developing artificial intelligence (AI) pilots for military aviation. "Together, Shield AI and Heron will accelerate the deployment of advanced AI pilots to legacy and future military aircraft – an urgent and necessary step towards achieving national security priorities and remaining credible in the face of sophisticated peer countries," the announcement says. Heron Systems made headlines last year when its AI software defeated a human US Air Force F-16 pilot 5-0, and five other AI pilots, during the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) AlphaDogfight Trials. "Heron has developed the most advanced AI pilot for fighter aircraft in the United States," Shield AI co-founder and CEO Ryan Tseng said. Heron general manager Brett Darcey said that joining a larger company like Shield AI will provide "the opportunity and scale to accelerate the integration of our AI pilot on a next-generation fighter" and unmanned aircraft systems (UASs).

One key example: This fall, Apple's Siri assistant will start processing voice on iPhones. Right now, even your request to set a timer is sent as an audio recording to the cloud, where it is processed, triggering a response that's sent back to the phone. By processing voice on the phone, says Apple, Siri will respond more quickly. This will only work on the iPhone XS and newer models, which have a compatible built-for-AI processor Apple calls a "neural engine." People might also feel more secure knowing that their voice recordings aren't being sent to unseen computers in faraway places.

Shield AI, the technology company focused on developing innovative AI technology to safeguard the lives of military service members and first responders, expressed its gratitude to Forbes for naming the company as one of the "AI 50: America's Most Promising Artificial Intelligence Companies" for 2020. The five-year-old company has developed AI technology that enables unmanned systems to interpret signals and react autonomously in dynamic environments, including on the battlefield. Shield AI's products are already being utilized by the US Department of Defense to augment and extend service members' ability to execute complex missions. Shield AI co-founder Brandon Tseng, who served in the U.S. Navy for seven years, including as a SEAL, said "Following my last deployment, I came home with the strong conviction that artificial intelligence could make a profound positive impact for our service members. This was the idea that Shield AI was founded upon, and a half-decade later, we are elated to have Forbes recognize our innovation of AI technology as both promising and meaningful." Shield AI has grown from fewer than 30 employees at the end of 2017 to nearly 150 today, while producing revenue metrics on pace with the growth trajectory of the most promising venture-backed start-ups, including doubling its revenue between 2018 and 2019.

Written by Vibhav Ganesh, Senior Autonomy Engineer. As is evident in the name, the key component of any autonomous robotic system is its basic autonomy; its loop of perception, cognition, and action which enables a robot to determine what it should do, when it should do it, and how. In the following paragraphs, I will cover the topic of mapping, an integral component of the perception component of this loop. In order to effectively operate within a complex and dynamic environment, a robot must be able to represent its surroundings. To do so, it seeks the answer to the question, "What does the world look like?" by creating a digital representation of the world called a map.

The Pentagon is developing its own'AI soldier drones' that can hunt down the enemy and even fly inside buildings to give military bosses a look inside. A 1m Army award, awarded through a new Pentagon tech-focused'Defense Innovation Unit Experimental' project, is for a nine-month'prototype project in the area of Autonomous Tactical Airborne Drones'. It will work with a secretive firm called Shield AI to develop the systems. One of Shield AI#'s drones in action: It can create a 3D map of a room and send it back to controllers. It is believed the units could be sent into buildings by special forces soldiers to create 3D maps, one of which is shown here.

Working together, the likley modified commercial drones could be good indoor scouts. There is little detail in the 1 million contract award posted yesterday. The award, from the Army, but through the Pentagon's brand-new tech-focused "Defense Innovation Unit Experimental" DIUx, is for a nine-month "prototype project in the area of Autonomous Tactical Airborne Drones." Two other salient features stand out in the little, obligatory blurb attached to the notice. The contract comes from the Naval Special Warfare Command, which mostly oversees Navy SEALs, and the contract was awarded to Shield AI.