DZYNE Technologies

DZYNE Technologies

DZYNE Technologies is a US defense manufacturer founded in 2012 and co-founded by Matt McCue, who ran it as chief executive until its sale. Its engineering and manufacturing sit in Irvine, California, where it opened a 125,000-square-foot facility in 2024 consolidating design, research and production; a separate analytics unit, DZYNE Analytic Systems, is in Fairfax, Virginia. Almost all of its revenue comes from US government customers, with the Air Force Research Laboratory the anchor.

Key Products

ULTRA — a Group 5 long-endurance ISR aircraft built with AFRL’s Center for Rapid Innovation on the airframe of the Stemme S12 motor glider. It has been described as exceeding 80 hours of endurance carrying more than 400 pounds of payload, and the US Air Force confirmed operating it from Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE in 2024. On 30 April 2026 DZYNE announced a multi-million-dollar AFRL award for three ULTRA Turbo aircraft, a turbocharged variant the company says works above 18,000 feet with 70-plus hours of endurance. The award value was not disclosed.

Grasshopper — an autonomous cargo glider delivered to the Air Force, with a turbine-powered Long Range variant that the company describes as a 1,700-pound launch mass vehicle with a standoff radius beyond 500 nautical miles. AFRL awarded more than $6 million on 6 August 2026 to work on range, payload modularity and navigation in GPS-denied conditions.

LEAP — a light aircraft converted to autonomous operation.

Blitz — a small autonomous aircraft, the low-cost expendable end of the range.

IonStrike — a low-cost kinetic interceptor fired from a four-cell launcher. The US Army’s 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade disclosed in May 2026 that it was assessing IonStrike in Europe under Project Bullfrog. That is an assessment, not a fielding decision.

Dronebuster — handheld counter-UAS jammers, which came to DZYNE with the June 2024 acquisition of High Point Aerotechnologies, a sister Highlander Partners portfolio company that had itself bought Dronebuster maker Flex Force. DZYNE says more than 2,500 units are deployed.

Ownership and Financial Position

DZYNE is no longer independent. Ondas Inc. (Nasdaq: ONDS), the West Palm Beach parent renamed from Ondas Holdings in January 2026, closed the acquisition on 2 July 2026 and announced it on 6 July, at $875.8 million — $200 million in cash and roughly 85 million shares worth about $675 million — leaving DZYNE holders, led by Highlander Partners, with around 13.8% of Ondas. It sits inside Ondas Sentinel, a new division combining DZYNE with World View; Ryan Hartman leads it and McCue became chief technology officer. Ondas guided DZYNE to $191 million of revenue in 2026 and more than $300 million in 2027. At its Q2 2026 results in August, Ondas raised group guidance to $525–550 million for the year against Q2 revenue of $83.8 million and a pro-forma backlog of about $757 million. The guidance figures are projections, not results.

Why It Matters

DZYNE is the rare defense-tech company with fielded hardware rather than a pipeline. ULTRA and Dronebuster are in operational use, which is a large part of what made it worth nearly $900 million. The risk sits on the other side of the deal. The growth case rests on guidance Ondas has issued rather than on reported results, on AFRL rapid-innovation and prototype money that is easier to stop than a formal program of record, and on integrating two acquired businesses into a new division at the same time. DZYNE also arrives inside a company whose own revenue only reached scale in 2026, so the combined entity has little operating history at its current size.