The bottleneck
Autonomy is scaling. Human control is not. Every drone ships with its own controller and interface, and most missions still need one operator per robot.
Investors
The human interface
for physical AI.
Cacti is building the vendor-agnostic natural language C2 layer that lets one operator command an entire robotic team from any wearable.
The opportunity
Drones are the beachhead.
Every robot is the market.
The beachhead
Defense drone operators first: squad-level command and supervision through the military wearables soldiers already carry.
The expansion
The same human intent layer extends to unmanned ground vehicles, humanoids, and robots across agriculture, construction, energy, and mining.
Why now
Many headsets.
No common way to command robots.
The U.S. Army is funding mixed reality headsets for soldiers at scale.
Feb 2025
Anduril takes over the Army’s $22B IVAS mixed reality headset program from Microsoft.
Sept 2025
The Army awards more than $350M in next-generation headset prototypes: $159M to Anduril and $195M to Rivet.
Aug 2026
Anduril moves its EagleEye headset into phase two with 170 upgraded prototypes. Rivet and Elbit Systems of America are also in the program.
2027+
Soldier testing of phase two headsets begins in early 2027, with a production decision expected in fiscal 2028.
The gap
These programs fund the display, night vision, and situational awareness. Commanding a mixed team of robots from that headset, across vendors and with natural voice and gesture, is still unsolved. That is the layer Cacti builds.
Why Cacti
Positioned to own the interface layer.
- Vendor-agnostic by design
- One natural language C2 layer across robots and wearables, instead of a new controller and GUI for every platform.
- Built on years of research
- Five years of DoW-funded human–machine teaming research at The University of Texas at Austin’s Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group, with peer-reviewed publications and physical demonstrations.
- A founding team of roboticists
- Four co-founders who built the foundational technology for spatial feedback, wearable interfaces, and human supervision of robotic teams.
