Ondas Inc. (NASDAQ:ONDS) is moving past drones and into the software that runs them.
On Monday, the defense tech company and Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) announced Regna AI. The new company will help governments and businesses build fine-tuned AI models inside their own secure environments.
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Regna AI is a standalone private company that Ondas bootstrapped and owns outright, and Palantir will provide the model-training infrastructure and help with delivery.
Ondas will also be Regna’s first customer. It plans to use Regna’s models to plan and run autonomous missions directly on its own equipment in the field.
Ondas CEO Eric Brock set a big goal. “We believe Regna AI can become a foundational AI platform for the U.S. Department of War, allied governments and the defense and industrial companies that serve them,” he said.
Hardware First, Now Models
Ondas grew its defense business through deals. In March, it agreed to merge with Mistral, a defense contractor with more than $1 billion in Department of Defense procurement contracts. In July, it agreed to buy autonomous aircraft maker DZYNE for $875.8 million in cash and stock.
Regna moves the company up the stack. Its models are built to run on drones, stratospheric balloons, ground vehicles, surface vessels and command-and-control nodes, including where connections are weak or cut off.
The software helps operators weigh evidence and compare options. A human still approves any change to the mission plan.
Control Is the Pitch
The timing helps. The Pentagon spent much of 2026 fighting with its AI suppliers. It labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the lab refused to lift limits on autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, and an appeals court upheld the blacklist on Sept. 25, Reuters reported.
“No government should have to build its AI strategy on models or data infrastructure it does not control,” Brock said.
Regna is built on open-weight models and mission data the customer controls. Palantir CEO Alex Karp argued the approach beats the big labs. “Sovereign AI, trained on mission knowledge and tradecraft, outperforms frontier models while removing dependence on them,” he said.
Running AI on field equipment could be Regna’s opening. When OpenAI struck its Pentagon deal in February, CEO Sam Altman said the company would keep deployment in the cloud rather than on “edge systems,” Fortune reported.
Open-weight models already have a seat at the table. Reflection, a startup building open-weight models, was one of seven companies cleared in May for the Pentagon’s classified networks, per CNBC.
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The announcement named no outside customers and gave no contract values. It also didn’t say how Palantir will be paid. Ondas said it is seeing “significant demand” and expects first customer deployments over the coming months.
Ondas is expected to report earnings around Nov. 11, according to CNBC. Any Regna customer pipeline or spending figures will be closely watched.
ONDS Stock Price Activity: Ondas stock was up 0.30% to $6.75 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Ondas shares have fallen from a 52-week high of $15.28 to about $6.75, a roughly 55% drop.
Photo: PJ McDonnell / Shutterstock
