Hyfix Spatial Intelligence, a Santa Clara-based startup, has raised $15 million in seed funding to develop a U.S.-manufactured autonomous systems chip for drones and robots. The funding round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Catapult Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Finality Capital, and hard-tech investor Sky Dayton. The company’s chip integrates flight control, high-precision positioning, secure communications, and onboard compute into a single system-on-a-chip, aiming to replace the current mix-and-match electronics used in most drones.
Addressing the Domestic Drone Supply Gap
'There is currently no end-to-end American supply chain for drones,' said Jeff Fluhr, partner at Craft Ventures. 'Hyfix is tackling one of the most critical pieces, custom silicon, so U.S. companies can build world-class autonomous systems without depending on foreign technology stacks.' This initiative comes as the FCC’s move to block approvals and imports of certain Chinese-made drones and radio frequency gear has increased demand for domestic alternatives.
'Geodnet is a high-precision geospatial network,' said Mike Horton, CEO of Hyfix. 'It uses reference stations that are put up to allow for more resilient and more accurate positioning than GPS alone, which is easily jammed and spoofed and doesn’t work very well for things like robotics.'
Market Opportunity and Future Applications
The global drone market is projected to grow significantly, with commercial applications alone expected to increase from $30 billion in 2024 to $55 billion by 2030. Despite this growth, Chinese manufacturer DJI continues to dominate, controlling approximately 80% of the global civilian drone market. Hyfix aims to provide a trusted domestic alternative, with its chip designed to maintain functionality even when GPS signals are jammed or spoofed.
The new funding will be used to complete the chip design and begin shipping production-ready chips to select partners this year. Hyfix is also developing a sub-250-gram reference drone to demonstrate its platform. Looking ahead, Fluhr envisions Hyfix’s technology powering a broader range of autonomous machines, from industrial systems to humanoid robots.