OVI Ventures backs seed-stage founders building the next generation of unmanned aircraft — the platforms, the autonomy, the components, and the defense and public-safety missions they fly. Operated by a drone-industry operator. Bridged to Korea.
Most early-stage capital in physical AI is spread across robotics, autonomy, and industrial AI. We go narrow on purpose. Drones are the one category where the demand signal, the procurement shift, and the supply-chain rebuild are all happening at once — and where a seed investor who has actually built inside the industry can tell the difference between a demo and a deployable product.
Police departments, fire services, utilities, and defense customers are buying and operating drones at scale today. The question is no longer whether, but whose.
Trusted-supplier and domestic-sourcing requirements are reshaping who can sell to US government customers. That opens the door for new platform and component companies — and closes it for incumbents.
Motors, batteries, radios, flight controllers, airframes: the industry needs allied, non-adversarial sources for nearly everything. That is a once-a-decade opening for founders and for the partners who can connect them to it.
Seed-stage companies anywhere in the drone stack, US-based or US-bound, with a product already in a customer's hands.
Aircraft, flight software, and the autonomy stack that makes unmanned systems reliable enough to trust with a mission.
Motors, power, communications, sensors, and manufacturing — the trusted, allied-sourced building blocks the industry is short of.
Dual-use systems for allied defense, border and base security, and detecting and defeating hostile drones.
Drone-as-first-responder, fleet operations, and the software that turns aircraft into a deployable program for cities and utilities.
Our founding partner was employee #28 and VP of Strategy & Design at Brinc Drones, where he spent four years helping take a public-safety drone company from early product to scaled operations — through the design reviews, the procurement cycles, the certifications, and the field failures. We know what a drone company looks like from the inside at seed, and what it has to become by Series B.
Korea is one of the most capable allied sources of drone components, manufacturing, and strategic capital — and one of the hardest for US founders to reach. We work on both sides. For founders: trusted suppliers, manufacturing partners, and strategic investors. For Korean industry and capital: direct access to US drone deal flow, vetted by an operator who has bought and integrated these components himself.
Deal by deal today. Fund I to follow. Hands on only where we have actually done the work.
We invest through special purpose vehicles — one company, one decision, one group of aligned co-investors. Fast for founders, transparent for partners.
Product and industrial design, public-safety and defense go-to-market, supplier and manufacturing introductions, and Korea market entry. We do the things we have actually done — and stay out of the rest.
The SPV track builds a shared record with our partners before a blind-pool fund. Founders get capital now; partners see how we pick before they commit to a fund.
Investment opportunities are available to accredited investors by introduction only.
Building in drones? Send a short note and a deck. We reply to everything in our focus, usually within a week.
Co-investment, strategic partnership, supplier introductions, or press:
info@ovi.vc