Ondas Inc. and Palantir Technologies announced the formation of Regna AI on Monday, a new standalone company bootstrapped by the defense firm and powered by Palantir's software, aimed at giving governments and militaries artificial intelligence tools they fully own and control. The announcement, dated out of West Palm Beach and Miami, positions Regna AI to start with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work before expanding into security, critical infrastructure and industrial markets.
Regna AI is built on Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, according to a press release detailed by Voice of Alexandria. The new venture is initially wholly owned by Ondas, with Ondas itself serving as Regna AI's first customer, deploying fine-tuned models for autonomous mission orchestration at the edge. Ondas CEO Eric Brock framed the stakes bluntly: “No government should have to build its AI strategy on models or data infrastructure it does not control,” he said, adding that he believes Regna AI can become a foundational AI platform for the U.S. Department of War, allied governments, and defense and industrial companies.
The pitch centers on cost and control. Building a frontier AI model from scratch can run into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, per the release relayed by the same outlet, a price tag few governments or institutions can justify on their own. Regna AI instead combines open-weight models, customer-controlled mission data, and Palantir's operational platform, letting sovereign clients inspect, modify, and host the models locally on edge hardware without routing data through external servers, according to a separate tech report by Diego Almada Lopez.
Built for Combat Zones Without Internet
Regna AI's models are designed for deployment across ISR systems including drones, stratospheric balloons, ground vehicles, surface vessels, and command-and-control nodes, supporting operations in denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited-connectivity conditions. The capabilities are meant to help operators assess evidence, compare options, and propose mission-plan updates that still require human review and authorization before action. Palantir CEO Alex Karp said sovereign AI trained on mission knowledge and tradecraft outperforms frontier models while removing dependence on them, arguing that a sovereign institution should own and control all layers of the AI stack, and that Regna AI will make that kind of sovereign AI accessible to institutions that cannot justify building their own frontier model.
The venture is not emerging in a vacuum. Ondas and Palantir already collaborate on SkyWeaver C4I, a system integrating layered surveillance from the stratosphere down to the tactical edge that now serves as an operational foundation for Regna AI's mission-specialized models in multi-domain, degraded-connectivity environments. That partnership traces back to March, when Palantir, Ondas, and World View Enterprises formed a multi-domain intelligence alliance spanning three joint initiatives, as Dronelife reported, with World View's stratospheric balloons providing persistent sensing that bridges the gap between satellites and tactical drones.
Open-Weight Models Line Up With Federal Policy
The approach also lines up with federal priorities. The White House's “America's AI Action Plan,” published in July 2025, explicitly directs federal agencies to foster open-source and open-weight AI models to boost national security innovation while avoiding vendor lock-in, according to the Wilson Center. Open-weight architectures allow sovereign clients to inspect and host parameters without relying on external cloud APIs, a structure that directly shapes how Regna AI is being pitched to government buyers.
Ondas, Regna AI, and Palantir say they will work to scale the platform and support initial customer deployments over the coming months, with Palantir providing model-training infrastructure and support delivery while the two companies collaborate on forward-deployed engineering to tailor capabilities to customer workflows. Ondas has reported significant demand for sovereign, mission-specialized AI capabilities, part of a broader defense push that included its largest acquisition to date: the $875.8 million cash-and-stock purchase of drone maker DZYNE Technologies in July, which Ctech reported brought projected 2026 revenues of $191 million and established the Ondas Sentinel division integrating long-endurance surveillance aircraft with counter-drone systems, according to Ctech.
Defense and Intelligence Leaders
Retired four-star Army General Charles Flynn is a C4ADS board member and senior advisor at Palantir. Former Mossad Director David Barnea, who led the Israeli intelligence agency from 2021 to 2026, joined Ondas that same month as President and Chairman of Ondas Defense Ltd. to oversee global defense relationships, according to Investing.com.
Financially, the momentum has been building for weeks. Ondas has projected 2026 revenue of at least $525 million, with a pro forma order backlog of approximately $757 million. The company accumulated more than $270 million in new defense and security orders between mid-August and early October, Benzinga reported, building on $105 million in orders disclosed during its August earnings call.
Investors responded quickly Monday morning. Ondas shares climbed between 4% and 6% in early trading following the Regna AI announcement, outperforming peer defense drone companies such as Red Cat Holdings, which stayed roughly flat despite launching a new drone the same day, according to 24/7 Wall St. The Defiance Drone and Modern Warfare ETF was down 1%, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF was essentially flat.
A South Florida Defense-Tech Corridor
The Regna AI launch also underscores a tightening South Florida corridor between the two companies. Palantir relocated its principal executive headquarters from Denver to Aventura in February, part of a broader migration of major tech headquarters toward the Miami metro area, as Hoodline previously reported. That move placed Palantir's corporate seat in close regional proximity to Ondas' own West Palm Beach headquarters, a pairing the companies are now leaning on as Regna AI moves from announcement toward its first fielded deployments.
