OSCP Closes Series A for GNSS-Denied Navigation

A navigation system can lose its external reference in the air and its export path at the border. Montréal-based OSCP has closed an undisclosed Series A to address both problems with photonic inertial sensors that keep platforms oriented when satellite positioning is jammed, spoofed, degraded, or unavailable.

New Science Ventures led the financing, with Emerging Ventures and 2050 Capital participating. The round closed in August 2026 and was announced on October 1. New Science Ventures founder and managing partner Somu Subramaniam joined OSCP's board.

The amount and valuation were not disclosed. OSCP said it will use the capital to scale production in Montréal, grow its engineering and sales teams, and bring its next generation of photonic inertial sensors to market. That puts the Series A behind a manufacturing and integration challenge, not a victory-lap valuation.

What OSCP Announced

OSCPS Motion Sensing Inc., operating as OSCP, was founded in 2015 by Kazem Zandi, its CEO. The company designs and manufactures gyroscopes, inertial measurement units, and navigation hardware for drones, aircraft, vessels, rail systems, robots, and ground vehicles that cannot assume GNSS will remain trustworthy.

The Series A announcement names New Science Ventures as lead investor and Emerging Ventures and 2050 Capital as participants. It does not name a financing amount, current valuation, customer, revenue figure, backlog, or production volume, so none should be inferred from the round label.

OSCP previously reported a $1.2M Seed from 7percent Ventures and 2050 Capital, along with $4.2M in earlier grants. The company said that $5.4M pool supported commercialization of a prototype tested with Thales. Because the Series A amount remains private, the earlier figure is historical context rather than a current total-funding number.

Why GNSS Denial Is Becoming an Operating Problem

Modern platforms use global navigation satellite systems for positioning, navigation, and timing, but the signal arriving from space is weak enough to jam and structured enough to spoof. A platform may continue moving after interference starts while its estimate of position and heading becomes progressively less reliable.

That risk is no longer confined to a defense slide. EASA and EUROCONTROL published a joint action plan in March 2026 as interference became a regular operational concern around parts of European airspace. EASA then revised its safety bulletin in July, adding updated procedures, training guidance, and operational measures. Transport Canada has also warned civil operators about both jamming and spoofing.

An inertial system gives the platform an internal reference by measuring acceleration and rotation. The trade-off is drift: small sensor errors compound while an outside position fix is missing. The useful commercial question is therefore not whether an IMU can produce data, but how long the complete system can preserve a trustworthy navigation solution inside the customer's size, weight, power, cost, and export constraints.

The Photonic Bet

OSCP's architecture uses light moving through a photonic integrated circuit to measure rotation through the Sagnac effect. The company combines photonic gyroscopes with MEMS accelerometers, aiming to approach the stability associated with larger optical systems in a package that can fit smaller autonomous platforms.

The company says 2 tactical-grade products in its MK2 family are shipping today, while its MK2Z remains a navigation-grade prototype. OSCP reports that a 21-minute Montréal road test with GNSS positioning denied ended 5.7 m from ground truth for the photonic MK2E2, compared with 20.5 m for the MEMS MK2M2 under the same aiding setup. That is a company-run demonstration, not an independent certification, but it makes the customer problem concrete: heading error becomes position error while the vehicle continues operating.

OSCP is also moving beyond a raw sensor. NavigationGate combines an OSCP IMU with on-board sensor fusion, dual-antenna RTK-compatible GNSS, and customer aiding sensors to output position, velocity, and attitude. Support for ArduPilot, an open-source ROS 2 driver, RS-422, and CAN-FD reduces the integration work between the sensor and the platform that must act on its data.

What the Series A Has to Prove

Deep-tech rounds often arrive at the moment a laboratory advantage meets factory reality. Photonic performance is only one part of the product. Calibration, yield, packaging, environmental qualification, software interfaces, lead times, field support, and repeatable customer integration determine whether the sensor becomes a dependable component rather than an impressive demonstration.

OSCP's hiring page shows open roles across photonics, navigation, software, and engineering, which matches the announced use of funds. The company has also qualified in three streams of Canada's Defence Drone Initiative Marketplace, including a stream covering sensor fusion and advanced positioning, navigation, and timing. That qualification can create a path to solicitations, but it is not a contract and guarantees no revenue.

The ITAR-free claim matters in the same commercial frame. OSCP says its products are designed and manufactured in Canada without US-origin ITAR-controlled content. Customers still face Canadian export rules and their own compliance obligations, but an allied platform builder can evaluate OSCP without automatically importing a US re-export dependency into the bill of materials.

The Market Signal

New Science Ventures is backing OSCP at the point where navigation resilience is becoming a systems and supply-chain decision. The investor is not funding a new reason for GNSS interference to matter; aviation and defense authorities have already established that. It is funding one company's attempt to turn photonic sensing, local manufacturing, open integration, and exportability into a coherent product line.

OSCP has not disclosed enough commercial data to declare that transition complete. The more useful evidence will come from manufacturing consistency, independent performance validation, named deployments, customer renewals, and programs that move from qualification into paid production. The Series A gives the Montréal team room to build that record while more vehicles are being asked to navigate through a world where the signal overhead is no longer assumed to be honest.