A defense technology firm and a data-analytics giant known for government work are joining to build an AI company that lets militaries and critical infrastructure operators run sophisticated models without ever handing their data to an outside provider. The new venture, Regna AI, is designed to answer a problem that has quietly grown alongside the AI boom: how do sensitive organizations tap into cutting-edge machine learning while keeping their most guarded information inside walls they control?
Ondas, a U.S.-listed defense technology group, will own Regna AI outright at launch and act as its first customer, while Palantir Technologies supplies the infrastructure needed to train and adapt the models. The arrangement mirrors a tension familiar well beyond the battlefield: organizations increasingly want the convenience of modern connected tools, whether that means a shared operational dashboard or simply a VPN that handles video calls well for a remote briefing, without surrendering control over where that data travels or who might intercept it. For militaries and intelligence agencies, that tension is existential rather than a matter of convenience.
Why Commercial AI Models Pose a Problem for Governments
Large commercial AI systems are typically trained and hosted by a handful of major providers, with data frequently passing through cloud infrastructure the customer does not own or fully audit. For a retailer or a media company, that trade-off is usually acceptable. For a government agency handling classified intelligence, or a company running critical infrastructure, it often is not. Data sovereignty, chain-of-custody requirements and the risk of foreign access to sensitive information mean many organizations cannot simply plug into a public AI model, however capable it might be.
Regna AI is built around the idea that customers should not have to choose between powerful AI and data control. Instead of forcing organizations to build large models from the ground up, a costly and slow undertaking, the company intends to develop specialized models tuned to specific missions that can be deployed entirely within a customer's own environment, including on hardware placed in the field rather than in a remote data center.
From Drones to Command Centers
The initial focus is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work, with plans to expand into broader defense, security, critical infrastructure and industrial applications. A central use case involves autonomous systems operating where communications are unreliable or actively jammed, including drones, stratospheric balloons, ground vehicles and surface vessels, alongside the command-and-control systems that coordinate them.
The software is meant to help human operators weigh evidence, compare courses of action and consider changes to a mission plan, with final decisions still requiring human authorization. That design reflects a broader principle shaping military AI policy: automation can accelerate analysis, but accountability for consequential decisions remains with people, not algorithms.
Built on an Existing Partnership
Regna AI extends work the two companies have already done together on SkyWeaver C4I, an open-architecture system built to link surveillance capabilities from the stratosphere down to the tactical edge. That collaboration gives the new venture a tested foundation for operating across multiple platform types in environments where connectivity cannot be assumed.
The launch also fits a pattern of rapid consolidation at Ondas, which employs roughly 1,000 people in Israel and recently acquired three defense technology businesses, Insignito, Ottopia Defense and Caribou Labs, for a combined $56 million. Those deals bring the company's acquisitions over the past two years to more than fifteen, spanning drones, robotics, counter-drone systems, intelligence and communications technologies, and positioning Ondas as an increasingly integrated player across the defense technology landscape.
