When a company called Vermeer raises $10M in Series A funding, it’s not just another defense tech headline, it’s a signal for where modern autonomy is heading. Founded by Brian Streem, a film-school kid from NYU’s Tisch who once ran the world’s largest drone cinematography company, Vermeer didn’t start in a defense lab. It started on movie sets, Fast & Furious, Spielberg, Oscar-winning films. Directors wanted drones to move like extensions of their imagination, and Streem built the tools to make it happen. Then he realized the Pentagon had the same problem: how do you direct a drone when GPS taps out and chaos moves in?
That pivot in 2018 transformed a Hollywood production problem into a battlefield solution. Vermeer now develops Visual Positioning System (VPS) tech that lets drones navigate in GPS-denied, jammed, or spoofed environments, no satellite, no signal, no problem. It’s vision-based autonomy that literally sees the world differently. Under CEO Brian Streem and CTO Suresh Kumar, the company went from 10 to 40 employees this year, built operations across New York and Kyiv, and proved its system in real combat zones with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That’s not theory, it’s deployment.
Draper Associates, led by Andy Tang, caught the vision early and led this $10M round, joined by AeroX Ventures, Boscolo Intervest, High Point Ventures, Rockaway Ventures, and the U.S. Air Force Techstars program. Add $7M+ in SBIR & AFWERX non-dilutive funding, and Vermeer’s total capitalization now tops $17M. For context, that’s not hype money, it’s validation from both the venture world and the defense establishment that Vermeer’s tech isn’t just working; it’s winning.
The product reads like sci-fi with a serial number. VPS uses 1–4 electro-optical or infrared cameras to compare live video against local 3D maps, powered by NVIDIA AI chips that process data in real time. The result? 2–10m precision navigation in any condition, night, snow, cloud cover, without emitting a signal. In other words, a drone that sees, not shouts. The system integrates with MAVLink, PX4, Ardupilot, and platforms like Draganfly’s Commander 3XL, making it plug-and-play across Group 1–4 UAS and even manned aircraft.
This $10M raise isn’t just fuel, it’s leverage. Vermeer’s expanding partnerships with the U.S. Army, Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and NATO allies. It’s scaling production, sharpening algorithms, and hiring across its dual U.S.-Ukraine footprint. The real takeaway? Innovation doesn’t always start in a lab; it starts where vision meets necessity. Brian Streem saw the gap between creative control and operational precision, and Vermeer built a system that closed it. GPS can lie. Vision can’t.