West Palm Beach-based Ondas Inc. and Palantir Technologies have launched Regna AI, a new AI company focused on defense, national security and mission-critical operations. The venture pairs Ondas' expertise in autonomous defense and security systems with Palantir's AI infrastructure and engineering capabilities.
Regna AI aims to help governments and defense organizations build and deploy specialized AI models in secure environments they control. Interim CEO Ryan Hartman named two principles: sovereignty and speed. Institutions would keep their data, model weights and computing environments, and the technology is meant to run at the edge, on drones, aircraft and vessels, with humans keeping decision authority.
Ondas CEO Eric Brock said he believes Regna AI can become a foundational platform for the U.S. Department of War and allied governments. Palantir CEO Alex Karp's claim that specialized models outperform frontier models is the companies' stated position, not an independently established result.
Why it matters for Florida
South Florida's technology sector is taking a larger role in advanced technologies with national and global reach. A West Palm Beach public company building defense AI adds to that.
"Sovereign AI matters to Florida businesses. Companies want control over their data and models, and local builders who deliver that will find real demand," said Wesley Schlemmer, Executive Director of the Florida Blockchain Business Association.