MentionFox lists 291 Aerospace and defense companies. Of them, 134 are Y Combinator companies (the newest batch here is Fall 2026, with 6); 33 filed a Form D notice with the SEC; 124 won an SBIR or STTR award.
Companies291
Y Combinator134
Form D filers33
SBIR/STTR winners124
By year
- 2026: 110 companies (41 Y Combinator, 32 Form D filers, 37 SBIR/STTR winners); median amount sold $6.1M across 30 Form D notices
- 2025: 93 companies (16 Y Combinator, 77 SBIR/STTR winners)
- 2024: 26 companies (16 Y Combinator, 10 SBIR/STTR winners)
- 2021: 18 companies (18 Y Combinator)
Aerospace and defense startups from other years
Companies from before 2020, or from a year with fewer than 15 of them. Every other year has its own full list, linked above.
| Company | What it does | Date | Amount | Round / stage | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HyLight | Unmanned airships for inspecting our critical assets | Summer 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Metalware | Firmware cybersecurity | Summer 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Orbio Earth | Tracking methane emissions with satellites | Summer 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Singularity | Building and Protecting an Exciting Future | Summer 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Radical | Building persistent, high-performance infrastructure in the sky | Winter 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Stralis Aircraft | Emission free hydrogen electric aircraft | Winter 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Boston Materials, Inc. (funding history) | Filed Dec 29, 2022 | $2M | SEC Form D | ||
| Airhart Aeronautics | Airplanes anyone can fly | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Array Labs | We're building satellites to create a real-time 3D map of the world. | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| MaverickX | Engineering the future of chemistry for natural resource extraction | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Quindar | Datadog for Space | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Seaflight Technologies | We make the world's most efficient aircraft | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Velontra | Hypersonic space plane that can take-off from any location and weather | Summer 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| AstroForge | We Mine Asteroids | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Beyond Aero | First electric business aircraft designed for hydrogen propulsion | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Capuchin | Search and automation for engineer-to-order companies | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Hubble Network | Bluetooth to Space | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Rownd | Fully autonomous defense solutions for the global edge. | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Wyvern | High-res hyperspectral pictures of Earth from space | Winter 2022 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Avion | Avion builds and operates autonomous eVTOL drones that deliver vital… | Winter 2020 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Farcast | We build advanced satcom user terminals | Winter 2020 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Talyn Air | Long range, battery electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. | Winter 2020 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Epic Aerospace | Last-mile delivery for satellites. | Summer 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Lucid Bots | We build robots for dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs. | Summer 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Geosite | Geosite is an enterprise SaaS platform for spatial data. | Winter 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Heart Aerospace | Heart makes electric airplanes with an all-electric range of 250 miles | Winter 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| JetPack Aviation | Flying motorcycles | Winter 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Ravn | Ravn is building a heads-up display for soldiers. | Winter 2019 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Corvus Robotics | Autonomous drones to help warehouses scan inventory. | Summer 2018 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Paladin | We deploy autonomous drones to 911 calls | Summer 2018 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Pyka | Autonomous electric airplanes | Summer 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Tesseract | Tesseract builds better thrusters for modern satellites | Summer 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Apozy | Apozy makes every website safe to browse | Winter 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Volansi | Autonomous VTOL delivery solutions. | Winter 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Wright Electric | Boeing for electric planes | Winter 2017 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| ApolloShield | ApolloShield is a system that detects unwanted drones and drives them… | Summer 2016 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Iris Automation | Enabling autonomous drone operations globally through AI software | Summer 2016 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Astranis | Advanced satellites for high orbits. | Winter 2016 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Boom | Economically and environmentally sustainable supersonic travel | Winter 2016 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Relativity Space | Building humanity’s multiplanetary future. | Winter 2016 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Flirtey (SkyDrop) | Flirtey is the world’s first commercial drone delivery service and… | Summer 2015 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Shred Video | Shred Video builds automated video & photo systems that allow… | Summer 2015 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Alchemy | Nanotechnology-enabled coatings for automotive and defence sectors | Summer 2014 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing | |
| Per Vices | Building Mission Critical Software Defined Radio products. | Winter 2012 | Y Combinator batch | Y Combinator listing |
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Figures come only from the record linked in each row; a blank means the record gives none. How these lists are built.