Brandon Tseng was born in Houston and grew up mostly in Seattle. He studied mechanical engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy and later earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.
He served as a Navy SEAL officer and fought in Afghanistan. According to David Ignatius of The Washington Post, a mission in Uruzgan province went badly after poor reconnaissance of a hostile building, and his unit took casualties. That experience led to Shield AI.
In 2015 he founded the company in San Diego with his brother Ryan and Andrew Reiter, using about $100,000 from friends and family. Its first contract came in 2016 from the Defense Innovation Unit. Its software, Hivemind, lets aircraft fly without GPS or a radio link.
Shield AI passed a $1 billion valuation in 2021, raised $165 million at $2.3 billion in June 2022 and $200 million at $2.7 billion in October 2023. In March 2025 Gary Steele replaced Ryan Tseng as CEO. A $1.5 billion Series G in March 2026 valued the company at $12.7 billion.