Sapient Perception ApS, a Copenhagen-based developer of AI sensor systems for unmanned aerial vehicles, has raised a €2 million pre-seed round co-led by Balnord and FORWARD.one.

The funding will support development of the company’s software-defined camera platform and IGNITE AI Framework, expand its engineering team, and back initial customer deployments across defense, security, and emergency response.

The company was founded by Anthony Garetto (CEO), Lau Nørgaard (CTO), and Michael Messerschmidt (CBO), a team with a combined 45-plus years of experience in sensor architecture, imaging technology, and defense markets — including backgrounds at Phase One, the Danish high-resolution imaging company.

The core problem Sapient Perception is addressing is a persistent constraint in ISR drone operations: the trade-off between coverage and resolution. A drone zoomed out to watch a wide area loses the detail needed to identify vehicles, personnel, or threats. Zoomed in for a closer look, operators lose situational awareness of the surrounding environment. In fast-moving missions, switching between views creates gaps. The company’s 10K sensors are designed to eliminate that trade-off, covering up to 100 times the area of conventional drone cameras at full resolution in a single frame. Onboard edge processing — running on an NVIDIA-based unit in a payload weighing under 500 grams — converts that imagery into actionable output in real time rather than requiring post-mission analysis.

The system integrates with standard drone platforms through MAVLink, CAN, and Ethernet interfaces and is NDAA compliant and ITAR-free, built on a fully allied supply chain — certifications that matter for U.S. and NATO procurement pipelines.

The platform is already deployed operationally. Sapient is working with Dropla Tech to integrate its wide-area sensors into UAVs designed to fly low and ahead of military convoys, feeding imagery into Dropla’s Blue Eyes platform, which the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence is using in real time to detect ambush drones and landmines along frontline supply routes. Sapient is also working with partners deploying its sensors on high-altitude and stratospheric platforms for wide-area ISR across Europe and North America.

The founders presented their physical AI for ISR approach at XPONENTIAL Europe in Düsseldorf earlier this year, where the team demonstrated the system’s application to contested-environment situational awareness.