A Danish startup promising to give drones a much wider field of view without sacrificing detail has raised €2 million in pre-seed funding, as demand grows for faster, edge-based decision-making in defence and security operations.
Founded by Anthony Garetto, Lau Norgaard, and Michael Messerschmidt, the company is targeting a long-standing limitation in drone operations: the trade-off between imaging coverage and resolution. UAVs can capture vast amounts of data, but bandwidth constraints and processing limits often force operators to switch between views to maintain situational awareness.
Sapient says it gets around this by pairing 10K sensors, which can capture far wider areas without dropping detail, with onboard processing that turns that imagery into usable output in real time. The idea is to cut down what needs to be sent over data links, while giving operators something they can act on straight away rather than sift through later.
“In mission-critical situations, the ability to make fast, informed decisions determines outcomes,” said Anthony Garetto, CEO and co-founder of Sapient Perception. “Our perception layer enables persistent situational awareness through a far wider lens, while delivering the important details to operators in real time. Having this whole picture means decisive action can be taken faster and with a higher level of confidence.”
The company is already working with Dropla Tech to integrate its sensors into UAVs designed to operate ahead of military convoys. The imaging feeds into Dropla’s Blue Eyes platform, which is being used by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence to process real-time drone video for detecting threats such as ambush drones and landmines along supply routes.
Sapient is also collaborating with partners deploying its systems on high-altitude platforms, including stratospheric ISR use cases, as it looks to demonstrate the flexibility of its technology across different operational environments.
Investors backing the round pointed to the growing importance of turning sensor data into usable intelligence at the edge. “Modern defense and security operations are not taking advantage of the most advanced sensors and the vast data they generate,” said Jarek Pilarczyk, Partner at Balnord. “Sapient Perception addresses this challenge with a highly differentiated edge AI approach that we believe will become foundational to next-generation systems.”
Cailin Greiner, Investment Manager at FORWARD.one, added: “In the environments Sapient Perception serves, every second matters. Their technology turns high-quality sensor data into real-time insights at the edge, enabling 100× greater coverage than today’s systems. It’s a clear step change — built by a team that knows how to move fast and deliver.”
