Sky Spy has raised 1.6 million dollars in an oversubscribed pre-seed round to bring its portable SIGINT technology to market, begin production, and expand its engineering team. The round was co-led by Expeditions Fund and Superangel, with participation from Freedom Fund, Sunfish Partners, Crosscourt Ventures, and Material Ventures.

The company was founded to address a growing operational gap in today’s congested electromagnetic environments. Modern battlefields contain thousands of civilian, commercial, and military transmitters. According to CEO Arsenii Hurtavtsov, traditional SIGINT systems cannot reliably operate in these conditions because they were designed for a much simpler spectrum. As he explained, “Agent 001 was built to close exactly that gap: put the receiver in the air, make it easy to integrate with any UAV, get close to the emitters, and run smart filtering onboard so you can pull a single threat out of electromagnetic chaos and hand a precise location and picture to the command post in seconds.”

Sky Spy’s first product, Agent 001, was recently validated on the front lines in Ukraine. Active military units used the system to detect and geolocate hostile jammers and UAV control stations with fifty metre accuracy, even in extreme electromagnetic congestion and jamming. Soldiers described it as the first solution of its kind to demonstrate reliable performance in live combat.

“The challenge was making many small engineering decisions add up to something that works on the edge, under real jamming and clutter, on drones that soldiers actually fly”. – Founder & CEO, Arsenii Hurtavtsov

Agent 001 weighs just over 500 grams and turns small drones into autonomous spectrum sensing platforms. It detects, classifies, and localises radio emitters in real time by combining RF intelligence with visual confirmation. The payload runs its complete signal processing chain onboard, which removes the need for external computing infrastructure. Sky Spy says the capability is the result of custom RF hardware, proprietary filtering algorithms, and extensive optimisation to keep performance high despite tight size, weight, and power limits.

Hurtavtsov says the goal is to give forces real time awareness in the spectrum. He argues that the side that understands and controls the RF environment gains a decisive advantage in conflicts increasingly shaped by UAVs and UGVs. He also believes small, attritable SIGINT payloads will shift strategy away from reliance on a few expensive airborne systems toward distributed sensing layers mounted on Group 1 and Group 2 drones.

Sky Spy is already working with several major UAS manufacturers. Partner selection focuses on operational reliability, strong engineering support, stable datalinks, and compatibility with interfaces such as Ethernet and MAVLink. For Sky Spy, a successful integration is one where the payload becomes a natural part of the drone’s mission stack and is fully incorporated into the manufacturer’s command and control ecosystem.

The founding team comes from Ukraine and now operates across the United States and several European countries. Their background combines technical expertise with operational experience gained in active combat zones.

Investors say the combination of battlefield validation, technical depth, and responsiveness to end user needs drove their decision to fund the company. Expeditions Fund described Agent 001 as an attritable airborne reconnaissance platform designed for one of the modern battlefield’s most urgent challenges. Superangel noted the team’s ability to solve difficult engineering problems and deliver capabilities that work where it matters.

Sky Spy says it is preparing for the next stage of growth as it moves from validation to scaled deployment. The company plans to expand its team, deepen partnerships with drone manufacturers, and support international customers seeking reliable SIGINT in environments where legacy systems struggle.