The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) applied research and development backbone, the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), used Eurosatory 2026, held in Paris from 15 to 19 June, to showcase three artificial intelligence (AI)-focused start-ups it has spun off to enter the defence and security ecosystem.
All based in Abu Dhabi, the start-ups showcased were:
- SIRBAI, which specialises in autonomous-co-ordination capabilities for mission execution across distributed fleets of autonomous systems, combining mission planning, agentic autonomy and multi-system co-ordination to reduce operator cognitive load, focusing on large-scale co-ordination while maintaining human oversight and decision-making;
- TacticaAI, which offers decision-intelligence capabilities that harness fragmented operational data to facilitate faster, clearer decisions by combining data fusion, geospatial intelligence, generative reasoning and visualisation to reduce decision latency while keeping humans in control; and
- Centaure.AI, which offers AI-driven security capabilities that turn existing infrastructure, including cameras, sensors and surveillance systems, into a context-aware ecosystem that detects threats, recommends or executes response actions and manages incidents from detection through to resolution.
All three start-ups’ capabilities are designed to turn fragmented intelligence, sensor and operational data into real-time decision support across the defence sector. Together, they support mission planning, intelligence interpretation, security operations and autonomous system co-ordination, including swarm-enabled capabilities that can operate at scale, accelerate mission execution and reduce operator workload while keeping humans in the loop for critical decision-making.
Their debut comes as the UAE continues to deepen its strategic partnership with France in artificial intelligence, following a 2025 framework for co-operation spanning AI infrastructure, research and talent. It also comes amid growing Emirati-French defence and technology ties, including EDGE Group’s European expansion through a Paris office. The start-ups are part of a growing pipeline of UAE deep-tech capabilities that support EDGE’s wider defence and security ecosystem while also addressing broader defence, security and critical-sector needs globally, advancing the UAE’s push to build sovereign AI capabilities with international relevance.
At Eurosatory on 16 June Warsight had a discussion with Dario Albani, CTO of SIRBAI. He noted that at the UMEX 2026 unmanned and autonomous systems exhibition, held in Abu Dhabi in January soon after SIRBAI was formed, the start-up signed a strategic partnership agreement with EDGE that will explore collaboration opportunities in advancing next-generation swarm capabilities for EDGE’s range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Most notable of these, and a flagship programme for SIRBAI, is the Jeniah unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) produced by EDGE entity ADASI.
SIRBAI, Albani explained, offers a command-and-control system for man-on-the-loop swarming UAVs that has proven the capability to control 19 different UAVs all performing different, independent missions.
“This allows you to build a mission, you ship the mission to the drones and then you just press start and you monitor the drones. At any point in time you can actually get into the drone, control with man-in-the-loop for that specific unit if you want, [but] the concept is that you trust the swarm to do the mission, even without communication.”
Albani explained that SIRBAI’s swarming C2 capabilities can be provided to new or even legacy UAVs by fitting them with the company’s Swarmlink onboard hardware module (effectively a small box), which connects the UAV to the SIRBAI ecosystem and thus delivers distributed edge intelligence for autonomous co-ordination, collaboration, and re-tasking across drone teams, even in disconnected or degraded environments.
Albani added, however, that SIRBAI’s capability is modular, allowing the company to offer everything from the company’s whole swarming ecosystem down to individual application programming interfaces (APIs), depending on customer requirements.
