Argus Defense Systems — Investor Brief

$4K

UNIT COST

vs. $30K–$150K incumbent industrial drones. Structural, not subsidized.

16

PEOPLE

2 founders + 14 engineers. All SJSU. All unpaid. Zero salary drawn since inception.

156

FLIGHT TESTS

Sub-meter positioning on the GPS-denied stack. V1 is flying today.

3 / 3 / 1

LOIs / VC TALKS / HACKATHON

3 active-duty Army LOIs. a16z, Antler, Anfa in motion. Approved into Army xTech (SF).

$2M / $18M

PRE-SEED RAISE

Post-money SAFE cap, 18-month runway. $250K = ~1.39% of company.

80%+

SOFTWARE GROSS MARGIN

Recurring autonomy subscription. Same stack across defense and four civilian verticals.

Argus builds autonomous ISR drones that fly without GPS — $4,000 per unit versus $50,000+ for legacy systems, NDAA-compliant, U.S.-built. The U.S. military is our wedge, but this brief is built around a different question: can Argus win as a venture-scale company even if zero government contracts ever convert? We believe the answer is yes, and this document lays out why.

What's inside

The no-government-contracts thesis — five structural reasons Argus wins in private markets independent of DoD revenue.
Team breakdown — founders, five engineering pods, and the operating model behind 16 unpaid people shipping at scale.
Use of $250K — exactly what a $250K check unlocks, with a dollar-by-dollar deployment plan and 90-day milestones.
Private-sector GTM — four target verticals, sales motion, pricing, competitive positioning, and 18-month commercial milestones.

Government contracts accelerate Argus.

They do not define it.

Government revenue is the wedge most defense-tech companies bet the entire company on. Argus is structured differently. The same engineering investment that makes our drone defensible to the U.S. Army makes it dominant in four commercial markets where the buyers are not the Pentagon.

01

The unit-cost moat is structural, not subsidized.

$4K per unit versus $30K–$150K for incumbent commercial drones is a 7–37x cost advantage, and it does not come from a DoD subsidy. It comes from our vertical-integration roadmap (motors, batteries, flight controllers, frames built in-house) and from designing for attritability from day one. Even if every defense contract evaporated, Argus would still be the only autonomous ISR-grade drone available at sub-$10K to civilian buyers.
02

Software margins compound across every customer.

Autonomy is an 80%+ gross-margin recurring product. The same vision-nav, mission-planning, and fleet-ops stack that flies a drone in a contested combat zone flies it through a pipeline canyon, a multi-floor warehouse, or a state-park grid search. A $1K/month subscription across 100 mid-market commercial customers is $1.2M ARR with no government anywhere on the revenue.
03

NDAA pricing power exists outside the DoD.

The DJI ban does not stop at the Pentagon. 30+ U.S. states have procurement restrictions on Chinese drones for state and local agencies. U.S. utilities, water districts, municipal services, and increasingly insurance-driven enterprise buyers require NDAA-compliant gear. Every quarter that perimeter expands — and we are pre-qualified on day one.
04

Civilian markets test cheaper and iterate faster.

DoD pilots run 12–36 months. A county fire department or a mid-market utility can pilot in 90 days. We can run six to ten civilian pilots in the time it takes to close a single DoD contract. Faster feedback → better product → deeper moat. Civilian revenue is the fastest path to the next round — and the cheapest place to fail and learn.
05

Our founder DNA is civilian-expansion-first.

Sellab grew up in a warzone. He is not building Argus to chase government contracts — he is building it to put autonomous ISR in the hands of every operator who needs eyes in places GPS cannot reach: search-and-rescue teams in state parks, ranchers with 500 head of cattle, utility crews after a storm. Civilian expansion is not a hedge against DoD risk. It is the entire mission.

Government contracts accelerate Argus.

They do not define it.

16 people total. 2 founders, 14 engineers across 5 functional pods. All SJSU. All currently unpaid. Every dollar raised has gone into prototype hardware, not burn. Founders meet daily with pod leads.

Leadership

Sellab Ahmadzai

CEO · Founder

Background. Born and raised in Afghanistan. Survived six bombings before age twelve. Junior at SJSU; going full-time on Argus after May 2026 semester. Currently 70+ hours/week on the company.

Why he wins. Lived the problem. Founded Argus to build the ISR platform he wished existed growing up. Personal mission, not a market opportunity.

Owns. Vision, fundraising, military and government relationships, GTM strategy, hardware integration oversight, partnerships.

Hrittik Chatterjee

CTO · Co-founder

Background. Ex-Tesla Autopilot — sensor fusion and robotics. Held standing offers from Rivian and IBM, walked away from all of them. Built an AI-kernel OS that generates engineering CAD and PCB designs from natural language. Background in agricultural AI.

Why he wins. Deepest autonomy stack a 22-year-old could realistically build. Quit Tesla to work unpaid on Argus — the costliest-possible signal of conviction.

Owns. Engineering org, autonomy software, hardware-software integration, technical hiring, R&D direction.

Five pods of 2–4 engineers is the smallest unit that can run truly parallel build tracks. Today's capital funds one pod's hardware needs at a time. With the round closed, all five run concurrently — that is the velocity unlock the company is built around.

Vision & Autonomy

4 ENGINEERS

Mandate. GPS-denied vision navigation (VIO/SLAM), perception, AI/ML, sensor fusion. Owns the autonomy stack on Jetson Orin + OAK-D Lite.

Lead. Senior CV/ML engineer with prior published research and shipped autonomy work.

Reports to. CTO (Hrittik)

Hardware & Mechanical

3 ENGINEERS

Mandate. Frame design, mechanical integration, structural test, propulsion mounts, payload integration (thermal sensor and gimbal).

Lead. Mechanical engineer with prior aerospace or robotics build experience.

Reports to. CEO and CTO jointly

Embedded & Flight Controls

3 ENGINEERS

Mandate. Flight controller firmware, motor and ESC tuning, low-level control loops, sensor calibration, power management.

Lead. Embedded engineer with flight-controller and real-time-systems background.

Reports to. CTO (Hrittik)

Mission Software

2 ENGINEERS

Mandate. Ground station, mission planning UI, fleet operations, command-and-control integration, the C2 track for Army xTech.

Lead. Full-stack engineer with backend + embedded UI background. (One is the engineer in the Speedrun video.)

Reports to. CTO (Hrittik)

Test & Operations

2 ENGINEERS

Mandate. Flight testing, range operations, QA, regression suites, log analysis, customer demo support. Owns the 156-flight-test record.

Lead. Operations-minded engineer with hands-on flight test experience.

Reports to. CEO (Sellab)

A $250K check from F.inc lands inside our $2M pre-seed at $18M post-money cap (roughly 1.39% of Argus). Below is exactly where every dollar goes and what each line unlocks — including the first compensation ever drawn at Argus.

$112K

$50K

$40K

$25K

$23K

45%

20%

16%

10%

9%

Allocation	Amount	Unlocks
Components & prototype hardware	$112,000	Jetson Orin modules, OAK-D Lite stereo, thermal sensors, motors, ESCs, batteries, frames. Component stock for 5–10 prototype units (today: 1–2).
Team stipends	$50,000	First compensation drawn at Argus since inception. Token monthly stipends ($1.5K–$2K) for the five pod leads through pre-seed close and the 90-day execution window. Locks in technical leadership at the highest-leverage moment of the company.
Manufacturing readiness	$40,000	Tooling, supplier deposits, jig fabrication, first-batch assembly for 50-unit run. Sets up SBIR Phase II fulfillment and first commercial-SKU inventory.
Test & validation infra	$25,000	Second test bench, RF/EMI gear, flight-test range fees, calibration rigs. Two pods validate in parallel rather than time-sharing one bench.
Operations & reserve	$23,000	Legal (IP, contracts, SAFE close), CPA, CAD/PCB software seats, cloud and compute, lab space at SJSU, demo travel, plus a small buffer for trade shows (xTech follow-on, AUVSI, AFWERX) and unexpected hardware failures.

Milestones $250K unlocks (next 90 days)

Three parallel build tracks live, not one — vision nav, thermal integration, and C2 comms iterate concurrently.
Five pod leads transition from unpaid to paid for the first time — locks in technical leadership through the round close and Phase II execution.
Iteration loop weeks → days. Component lead time drops because we hold parallel inventory rather than waiting on each batch sequentially.
5–10 prototype airframes flying simultaneously, enabling proper A/B testing of design variants.
Live demo at Army xTech hackathon (San Francisco) with Shield, IQT, DCVC, and Palantir judging — fully funded for travel and on-site iteration.
First commercial pilot SKU branched from the defense firmware, ready for public-safety design partner deployment.
Manufacturing partner relationships in place for the first 50-unit production run.

Defense is the wedge, not the ceiling. The same product, the same engineering team, the same unit cost — aimed at four civilian markets where the buyers are not the Pentagon and the sales cycles are 4–10x shorter.

Hostile-environment constraints transfer.

Search and rescue in mountainous state parks, pipeline inspection in canyons, ranch monitoring at night — all share the GPS-denied, comms-contested conditions that drove our original product architecture.

Unit economics beat every incumbent.

Legacy industrial drones run $30K–$150K per airframe. Argus's $4K unit cost unlocks buyer categories that have been priced out of professional drones entirely.

The regulatory tailwind compounds.

NDAA-compliant and U.S.-built is increasingly a procurement standard across federal, state, and critical-infrastructure private buyers. DJI-banned customers are a pre-qualified addressable market.

01

Public Safety & Search-and-Rescue

Buyer: State park services, county sheriffs, fire departments, SAR non-profits, emergency management agencies.
Pain: Lost hikers, active wildfires, missing persons, post-disaster triage. Hours matter. Ground search with manual assets is slow and expensive.
Why Argus: Thermal payload + GPS-denied vision nav + AI person-matching. Already on the roadmap (SAR pod). Deploy 6+ drones for grid searches; identify signs of life via thermal; stream live to incident command.
Sales motion: Direct-to-agency. State pilot → multi-agency. Grant-funded (FEMA, DHS, state emergency services).
Target price: $6K–$8K per airframe (25–40% premium over defense SKU).
Design partners: California State Parks, Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office, Mountain Rescue Association chapters.

02

Critical Infrastructure Protection

Buyer: Oil & gas pipeline operators, utility companies, data center operators, ports, water districts.
Pain: Asset surveillance across long perimeters, theft and vandalism, post-outage triage, environmental compliance, insurance-driven monitoring mandates.
Why Argus: Persistent autonomous patrol, thermal catches hot spots (equipment failure, leaks), GPS-denied resilience across canyons, tunnels, indoor warehousing. NDAA-compliant means U.S. utilities can actually buy it.
Sales motion: Enterprise B2B. Pilot → MSA → multi-year. SCADA and physical-security integrators or direct.
Target price: $8K–$12K hardware + $200–$500/month autonomy software per fleet unit.
Design partners: Mid-market pipelines (TX/OK), regional utilities (Western U.S.), Tier-2 data centers.

03

Large-Scale Agriculture

Buyer: Commercial ranches (500+ head), large-acre row crop operators, vineyards, agribusiness co-ops.
Pain: Livestock tracking across wide terrain, crop health, property security, predator detection at night, rising insurance costs tied to loss prevention.
Why Argus: Long endurance + thermal + autonomous mission planning. Runs at night when incumbents can't. No GPS anchor needed in canyon ranchland. Cheap enough to deploy a fleet per property.
Sales motion: Channel-led through ag-tech distributors (John Deere Smart Farming, ag-insurance) and direct to anchor customers.
Target price: $5K–$7K per airframe + $100–$300/month autonomy subscription.
Design partners: Texas ranch alliances, California Central Valley ag consortiums, Montana/Wyoming cattle operations.

04

Commercial Private Security

Buyer: Mid-to-large campus security (tech, biotech, pharma), private estate security, warehouse and logistics hubs.
Pain: Cost of physical patrols, coverage gaps, overnight monitoring of large outdoor or indoor footprints. Labor cost rising; insurance requirements tightening.
Why Argus: Autonomous patrol cycles, GPS-denied indoor capability (warehouses, multi-floor campuses), thermal for intruder detection. Integrates with existing CCTV / access-control stacks.
Sales motion: Partnership with private security firms (Allied Universal, GardaWorld) for distribution + direct enterprise deals for marquee campuses.
Target price: $10K–$15K per airframe + $500–$1K/month managed service.
Design partners: Bay Area biotech campuses, Amazon & FedEx regional warehouse hubs, high-net-worth private estates.

TRACK A

Direct enterprise pilots

Identify 2–3 anchor customers per vertical. Offer hardware at cost in exchange for a 6-month pilot commitment, case-study rights, and reference status. Use pilot data to establish pricing anchors and close larger contracts post-pilot.

TRACK B

Channel partnerships

Identify existing distributors in each vertical — ag-tech resellers, utility service providers, private security firms — and build white-label or co-branded arrangements. Lower margin per unit, higher velocity, lower enterprise sales cost.

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

Public Safety first (shortest pilot-to-contract cycle, highest-margin custom SKU, grant-funded procurement). Critical Infrastructure second (highest ARR ceiling, longest enterprise cycle). Agriculture third (channel-heavy, volume play). Private Security fourth (partnership-dependent, slower to stand up solo).

Hardware gross margin target: 40–50% (defense baseline ~40%).
Autonomy software subscription: tiered by mission complexity and fleet size. $100/mo (basic patrol) → $1K/mo (enterprise fleet).
Managed services (optional): for security and critical-infrastructure verticals, bundle ops + hardware at a flat monthly rate. 3–5x lifetime value.
Never discount the hardware SKU below the $4K defense price. Private-sector pricing premiums reflect integration and support, not gouging.

Illustrative Year-1 ARR per anchor customer

Vertical	Hardware (units)	Hardware Revenue	Software ARR	Year 1 Total
Public Safety (agency pilot)	4 units	$28K	$12K	$40K
Critical Infrastructure (utility)	8 units	$80K	$36K	$116K
Agriculture (ranch / co-op)	6 units	$36K	$18K	$54K
Private Security (campus)	6 units	$72K	$60K	$132K

Numbers are illustrative anchor contracts in Year 1. With 10 anchor customers across the four verticals we clear roughly $800K–$900K ARR — software running ~30% of total and expanding every year. None of this revenue requires a U.S. government contract.

The autonomous-ISR-grade drone market splits four ways below us. Each competitor wins one or two of the dimensions buyers care about. None wins all four.

	Argus	DJI / Autel	Skydio	Flyability
Unit price	$4K	$1K–$5K	$6K–$15K	$30K–$50K
NDAA-compliant	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
GPS-denied autonomy	Native	Limited	Strong (visual)	Strong (indoor)
Thermal payload standard	Yes	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Built for attritability	Yes	No	No	No
Defense-grade hardening	Yes	No	Partial	No
Software subscription model	Yes	Limited	Yes	Limited
U.S.-built supply chain	Yes	No	Yes	No (Swiss)

vs. Self-build / internal drone programs

Utilities and ranchers who try to assemble their own drone programs consistently fail on integration and software. We sell the full stack at a price point that beats the raw bill-of-materials of a self-build, before labor.

Government revenue, if and when it arrives, is upside on this baseline.

Months 1–6

Q2–Q3 2026

Close $2M pre-seed; unlock parallel build tracks across all 5 pods.
Sign 2 public-safety pilot partners (1 state park, 1 county sheriff).
Prototype SAR-specific mission profile (thermal person-match).
First grant-funded agency PO validates private-sector pricing.

Months 7–12

Q4 2026 – Q1 2027

Convert public-safety pilots to paid contracts ($50K–$150K).
Launch critical-infrastructure pilot with 1 utility / pipeline operator.
Open ag-tech channel conversations; 1 named distributor in flight.
Stand up dedicated civilian SKU separate from the defense line.

Months 13–18

Q2 2027

3 paid enterprise contracts across 2 verticals; $500K+ ARR.
Channel partnership signed with volume commitments.
Public-safety vertical at ~10 agencies; case studies published.
Private-sector revenue at 20–30% of total company revenue.

01

Our unit cost.

$4K hardware breaks the price barrier for buyer categories that have been priced out of professional autonomous drones. The addressable customer count for a $4K drone is 10–50x larger than for a $30K drone, which reshapes the TAM math completely.
02

Our vertical integration roadmap.

Motors, batteries, flight controllers, and frames built in-house let us absorb cost pressure, protect margin, and ship consistent SKUs across civilian and defense product lines.
03

Our software moat.

The autonomy stack that flies the drone without GPS in a warzone flies it through a mine, a canyon, a multi-floor warehouse, or a power substation. One engineering investment, every vertical.
04

Our team.

Sixteen people. Two founders. Five engineering pods. Zero salary drawn since inception. Walked away from FAANG offers to work unpaid, on-campus daily. The bar for joining is voluntarily giving up six-figure offers.

Government contracts accelerate Argus.

They do not define it.

Argus Defense Systems

Sellab Ahmadzai, CEO · production@argusdefense.us

How We Win Without Government Contracts.

What's inside

The unit-cost moat is structural, not subsidized.

Software margins compound across every customer.

NDAA pricing power exists outside the DoD.

Civilian markets test cheaper and iterate faster.

Our founder DNA is civilian-expansion-first.

Leadership

Sellab Ahmadzai

Hrittik Chatterjee

Vision & Autonomy

Hardware & Mechanical

Embedded & Flight Controls

Mission Software

Test & Operations

Milestones $250K unlocks (next 90 days)

Hostile-environment constraints transfer.

Unit economics beat every incumbent.

The regulatory tailwind compounds.

Public Safety & Search-and-Rescue

Critical Infrastructure Protection

Large-Scale Agriculture

Commercial Private Security

Direct enterprise pilots

Channel partnerships

Illustrative Year-1 ARR per anchor customer

vs. Self-build / internal drone programs

Our unit cost.

Our vertical integration roadmap.

Our software moat.

Our team.

How We Win
Without Government
Contracts.