About
Brandon Tseng co-founded Shield AI in 2015 with his brother Ryan and Andrew Reiter after seven years as a U.S. Navy SEAL and Surface Warfare Officer aboard USS Pearl Harbor. The company's founding insight came from his deployment to Uruzgan, Afghanistan, where his unit took casualties because they had no autonomous reconnaissance of a hostile building. Shield AI now builds Hivemind, the AI pilot powering the V-BAT and Nova autonomous aircraft used by U.S. and allied forces; he serves as President and is one of the most active Washington-facing voices on autonomy in defense. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and was recognized by TIME on its 100 Most Influential in AI list in 2025. Brandon's wife and two children helped inspire Shield AI's mission to protect service members.
Previous roles
- U.S. Navy SEAL
- Surface Warfare Officer, USS Pearl Harbor
Notable work
- Co-founded Shield AI in 2015 to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems, drawing on seven years of service as a Navy SEAL and Surface Warfare Officer.
- Helped build and commercialize Hivemind, Shield AI's platform-agnostic autonomy stack for unmanned systems operating in contested and communications-limited environments.
- Represented Shield AI in a 2025 partnership with Singapore's DSTA and Republic of Singapore Air Force to co-develop AI for autonomous flight operations.
- Authored Shield AI's 'Do What Honor Dictates' culture essay, explaining the military origins of one of the company's operating values.
Mentioned in
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