Kyten Technologies Builds Battery Packs for Things That Fly, Swim, and Orbit

The Macro: 100,000 Flying Machines Need Batteries That Do Not Explode

The defense and aerospace industry is building things at a pace not seen since the Cold War. Drones. Autonomous submarines. Satellites. Low-orbit spacecraft. The US alone is deploying over 100,000 unmanned vehicles across military and commercial applications. Every single one of them needs a battery pack.

These are not phone batteries. Aerospace-grade battery packs need to survive extreme temperatures, vibrations, vacuum conditions, and shock loads that would destroy anything you find in a consumer device. They need to be light, reliable, and deliverable fast. The legacy supply chain cannot keep up. Traditional battery pack manufacturers take 6 to 12 months for design and production. When you are building a defense drone on a government timeline, waiting a year for batteries is not an option.

The market structure is interesting. There are plenty of battery cell manufacturers. But the pack assembly and integration layer is fragmented, slow, and dominated by companies that were not built for the current pace of aerospace production. There is a real opening for a company that can deliver custom aerospace-grade packs quickly without compromising quality.

The Micro: Six Years at Starlink, Now Building for Everyone

Lucas Maddox and Cooper McBride founded Kyten after spending their careers in exactly this world. Lucas spent nearly three years at Starlink managing test and manufacturing challenges. He also cofounded the University of Wisconsin solar car team. Cooper progressed from Tesla intern to leadership roles at SpaceX and Shield AI, where he built 30-person engineering teams. Between them, they have put 6,000+ battery packs into low Earth orbit.

That experience is the entire pitch. These two know how to build battery packs that work in space. Now they are offering that capability to the broader market. Kyten handles fully custom pack geometry with all cell chemistries, integrated battery management systems, and automated design-to-production workflows. The claim is that they can compress the typical 6-12 month timeline into one week for design and one week for production.

They are a two-person team out of Seattle, part of YC Winter 2026 with partner Jon Xu. The site lists applications across manned and unmanned aircraft, space launch vehicles, spacecraft, marine vessels, and ground vehicles. The contact information is direct: [email protected] and a phone number. That level of accessibility is unusual and signals that they are in active sales mode.

The Verdict

Kyten is the kind of company I get excited about. Real engineering expertise applied to a real supply chain bottleneck in a market that is growing fast and paying well. Aerospace battery packs are not a venture-scale market by traditional VC standards, but the defense and commercial aerospace boom changes that calculus significantly.

The risk is scaling manufacturing. Going from two founders to a real factory is a capital-intensive, operationally complex leap. Battery manufacturing requires quality control systems, supply chain management, and regulatory compliance that most startups underestimate. The fact that both founders have manufacturing experience at SpaceX-scale is encouraging, but there is a difference between operating inside a well-funded machine and building one from scratch.

The competitive pressure comes from established defense contractors who have their own battery pack capabilities, and from companies like EaglePicher and EnerSys that serve aerospace. But the legacy players are slow, and speed is exactly what the market needs right now.

In 30 days, I want to see the first production orders fulfilled. In 60 days, the question is whether repeat customers are coming back for second and third orders. In 90 days, I want to know the pipeline of defense contracts. If Kyten can land even one major DoD subcontract, the revenue trajectory changes completely.