Tycho Ai Inc.

Tycho Ai Inc., a Boston-based small business, develops autonomous navigation and perception technologies for defense applications as a prime contractor under federal small-business set-asides, with 100% of recent awards concentrated in DoD and Air Force SBIR programs. The company operates exclusively as a prime (six awards, no subcontract activity) and competes entirely under the Total Small Business set-aside category across NAICS 541715 (Research and Development in Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences) and related PSC codes for defense R&D services.

Tycho Ai's capability portfolio centers on GPS-denied and GPS-unreliable autonomous navigation systems, vision-based perception for precision autonomy, and resilient inertial guidance for small aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles operating in contested environments. Recent representative work includes a $2 million Definitive Contract awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory on March 31, 2026, for Tracking & Resilient Inertial-Derived Estimation for Naval Targets (TRIDENT), with performance through October 1, 2027; a $2 million Office of the Secretary of Defense Phase II SBIR award on July 1, 2025, for Next-Generation UAV Autonomy fusing vision, AI, and inertial sensing; and a $1 million Air Force Research Laboratory Phase II SBIR purchase order awarded June 27, 2024, for high-precision low-size-weight-and-power robust autonomy and navigation. The company also holds a $228,817 Army Phase I SBIR contract on cognitive terrain flight assistance awarded July 21, 2025, and a $150,000 Aeronautical Systems Center Phase III SBIR effort on visual autonomy navigation for GPS-unreliable aircraft (VANGUARD) completed in July 2025.

Customer concentration is entirely DoD-aligned, with the Air Force Research Laboratory holding two awards worth $3 million combined potential value and the Office of the Secretary of Defense holding two awards worth $2.1 million. The Army and Aeronautical Systems Center account for the remaining $379 thousand. All five dollars and five hundred thousand dollars of combined potential value across six awards is fully obligated. Award velocity has grown modestly — two awards in 2024, three in 2025, one in 2026 — with one award (the $2 million TRIDENT contract) facing recompete exposure within the next twenty-four months. Tycho Ai carries no parent vehicles (GWAC, IDIQ, or BPA seats) and no subcontractor relationships; all work is direct-funded SBIR and related small-business set-aside R&D contracts with defense agencies.