3×
Founder & CEO
Airwai · Soaring · Skylift
Airwai · Soaring · Skylift
AI · Autonomy · Critical Infrastructure
Amir Emadi
Founder · CEO · Board Director
Three-time founder building the autonomous civil engineer: technology that lets machines see, judge, and certify the physical infrastructure the world runs on.
2026 LA Times A&D Visionary
3× Founder & CEO
$20M+ raised
U.S. patent holder
$20M+
Venture capital
raised across ventures
raised across ventures
15+
Years building & scaling
AI, vision & autonomy
AI, vision & autonomy
1st
U.S. Army autonomous
resupply, fielded
resupply, fielded
With Airwai VEGA
Profile
A founder, CEO, and multi-domain technology executive with 15+ years building and scaling artificial-intelligence, computer-vision, and autonomous-systems companies in the most heavily regulated markets there are: defense, aviation, and critical infrastructure.
Amir has founded and led three technology companies as CEO and raised over $20M in venture capital across them. He holds a granted U.S. patent plus pending U.S. and international filings in AI machine supervision and autonomy, and was named a 2026 Aerospace & Defense Visionary by Los Angeles Times Studios.
His work moves frontier technology from concept into operational use: automated inspection, real-time anomaly detection, predictive intelligence, and scalable cloud infrastructure. He briefs U.S. and allied government leaders, including the Pentagon (U.S. Department of War), the U.S. State Department, and the Government of Albania, on AI and autonomous systems, and was an external expert consulted by the White House PCAST for its 2023 Report to the President.
The Arc
Fifteen years, one thesis: teach machines to trust the physical world.
Four companies, each pushing autonomy and machine perception a step deeper into critical infrastructure — from the AI inspection platform now running on live airfields back to the heavy-lift firefighting drones where it started.
Building LAIRA — a sensor-agnostic AI platform that turns ordinary video, LiDAR, and positioning data collected from a moving vehicle into automated inspection and predictive condition intelligence for critical infrastructure: runways, taxiways, roads, and the surfaces underneath them. Findings flow into the customer's own map system (Esri, the geospatial platform behind every U.S. commercial airport) on a scalable serverless cloud.
- First commercial deployment at San Bernardino International Airport; in beta with the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, with pathways opening across the Air Force and Army.
- Partnered with Esri (jointly published case study); authored and filed the company's foundational patent; led capital formation on a lean, AI-augmented operating model.
Autonomous air vehicles for U.S. defense, spun out of Caltech's CAST. Soaring raised $16M+ and scaled to a ~35-person team, carrying its R&D through to first commercial delivery.
- Fielded the Gabriel system (TRL-7 — demonstrated in an operational environment) behind the U.S. Army's first-ever autonomous resupply missions.
- Holds the granted U.S. patent and pending international filings on the aircraft's rotor and control architecture.
Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the California Institute of Technology's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST) — running the venture studio that spun frontier autonomy and AI machine-supervision research into venture-backed companies.
Holds a Caltech computer-vision (AI machine-supervision) patent application from the work.
A heavy-lift firefighting and first-responder drone company, recognized as a TEDx "Most Innovative Company." Skylift built autonomy and hardware in partnership with Caltech / JPL and DARPA programs, including the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.
- Led the FAA's San Diego UAS Integration Pilot Program (FAA / U.S. Department of Transportation) — one of ten national programs shaping how drones fly in U.S. airspace.
- Supported the U.S. Marine Corps NexLog resupply effort and partnered with the San Diego Supercomputer Center to apply data science to wildfire suppression.
Field record
From the flight line to the runway.
Recognition & Service
Trusted where the stakes are highest.
Award · 2026
Aerospace & Defense Visionary
Los Angeles Times Studios
White House PCAST
External expert consulted for the 2023 Report to the President on modernizing wildland firefighting.
Harvard Business Review
Advisory Council member — AI, ML & robotics.
Forbes Technology Council
Member — AI, ML & robotics.
AUVSI
Air & defense advocacy committees for autonomous-systems and robotics policy.
Briefed / engaged
Pentagon · U.S. Dept. of War
DARPA
U.S. Army
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Navy
U.S. State Department
U.S. Congress
Government of Albania
Intellectual Property
Granted & pending patents.
A granted U.S. patent plus pending U.S. and international filings across autonomous flight, airfield ground autonomy, and AI machine supervision.
P1
Methods and Systems for Control, Communication, Detection, and Navigation of Autonomous Airfield Driving Vehicles+ Airwai refinements
P2
Multi-Tier Pavement and Airfield AssessmentReal-time perception substrate · validated-data training flywheel · multi-path camera calibration · vision-inertial geo-referencing · hybrid on-device / cloud inference
P3
High-Resolution Camera Network for AI-Powered Machine Supervision
P4
Coaxial Rotor Pair Assembly with Variable Collective-Pitch Rotor / Propeller
P5
Collective-Pitch Adjustment Mechanism for Variable-Pitch Propeller or Rotor
P6
Systems and Methods for Yaw-Torque Reduction on a Multi-Rotor Aircraft
Education
MBA, Global Management
Thunderbird School of Global Management
B.A., International Security
San Diego State University
AI & Machine Learning
Professional education · MIT