Lantronix and Unusual Machines Partner to Deliver NDAA-Compliant AI-Autonomous Drone Components for U.S. Defense Programs
IRVINE, Calif., March 19, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lantronix Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRX), a global provider of Edge AI and Industrial IoT solutions that power NDAA-compliant unmanned systems, critical infrastructure, and resilient enterprise networks, and Unusual Machines, Inc. (NYSE:UMAC), a leading provider of NDAA-compliant drone components, today announced a strategic collaboration to develop next-generation autonomous drone components integrating edge AI compute with mission-critical flight control systems.
The collaboration aligns with accelerating U.S. defense investment in manufacturing autonomous systems at scale. The U.S. Department of War's Drone Dominance Program, a $1.1 billion, multi-phase initiative, is designed to rapidly field hundreds of thousands of advanced unmanned platforms by 2027. The program emphasizes trusted domestic supply chains, AI-enabled autonomy, modular architectures, and faster, iterative development cycles.
Under the collaboration, Lantronix's high-performance edge AI compute and system-on-module (SOM), together with Unusual Machines' flight components, enable real-time perception, autonomous navigation, and mission execution in demanding environments. Together, the companies are developing components that work seamlessly together to support a variety of scalable platforms used by their shared customers. This is expected to accelerate customer deployment timelines, reduce integration efforts, and support evolving operational requirements.
Lantronix's compute platform enables real-time perception pipelines, including sensor ingest, detection, classification, and tracking, allowing autonomous systems to operate independently at the edge and perform mission-critical functions such as identifying and responding to targets without reliance on external network connectivity. The platform builds on Lantronix's strengths in high-performance SOMs, integrated multi-sensor camera pipelines, and real-time AI perception and autonomous response. As an American technology company with an established operational track record, Lantronix is positioning its edge AI platform to help address critical gaps in the U.S. drone ecosystem and support trusted domestic supply chains as autonomous systems adoption accelerates.
"In modern autonomous systems, edge compute serves as the brain that enables real-time perception, autonomy, and mission execution," said Saleel Awsare, president and CEO of Lantronix. "This collaboration brings together edge AI compute and mission-critical flight control into a modular platform that allows our customers to accelerate development and scale production as demand increases. It reinforces our evolution from a component supplier to a platform partner serving the growing autonomous systems ecosystem."
"As autonomous systems scale, reliable and tightly integrated flight control becomes essential to enabling advanced onboard capabilities without having the drones fall out of the sky," said Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines. "Working with Lantronix allows us to design and, more importantly, debug our flight platforms to work across a variety of architectures that have advanced edge AI capability. We believe this positions both companies to provide better components to the drone manufacturers that are already proven to work."
The companies expect to begin joint platform development immediately, with initial demonstrations targeted over the next 12 months. The modular architecture is designed to support future upgrades without requiring full system redesign, enabling customers to adapt as mission requirements evolve.
The collaboration reinforces both companies' commitment to enabling a supply chain for autonomous systems. This will support evolving defense modernization initiatives and accelerate production at scale of AI-enabled drone platforms across defense, public safety, and commercial applications.
About Lantronix
Lantronix Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRX) is a global leader in Edge AI and Industrial IoT solutions, delivering intelligent computing, secure connectivity and remote management for mission-critical applications. Serving high-growth markets, including smart cities, enterprise IT and commercial and defense unmanned systems, including drones, Lantronix enables customers to optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation. Its comprehensive portfolio of hardware, software and services powers applications from secure video surveillance and intelligent utility infrastructure to resilient out-of-band network management. By bringing intelligence to the network edge, Lantronix helps organizations achieve efficiency, security and a competitive edge in today's AI-driven world. For more information, visit the Lantronix website.
About Unusual Machines
Unusual Machines manufactures and sells drone components and drones across a diversified brand portfolio, which includes Fat Shark, the leader in FPV (first-person view) ultra-low latency video goggles for drone pilots. The Company also retails small, acrobatic FPV drones and equipment directly to consumers through the curated Rotor Riot ecommerce store. With a changing regulatory environment, Unusual Machines seeks to be a dominant Tier-1 parts supplier to the fast-growing multi-billion-dollar U.S. drone industry. According to Fact.MR, the global drone accessories market is currently valued at $17.5 billion and is set to top $115 billion by 2032. For more information, please visit unusualmachines.com.
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements concerning growth expectations in the global drone market and Lantronix's positioning to capitalize on opportunities for growth in the drone and defense technology markets. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results, future business, financial condition, or performance to differ materially from our historical results or those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement contained in this news release. The potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, such factors as the effects of negative or worsening regional and worldwide economic conditions or market instability on our business, including effects on purchasing decisions by our customers; our ability to mitigate any disruption in our and our suppliers' and vendors' supply chains due to changes in U.S. or foreign government trade policies, including recently increased or future tariffs, a pandemic or other outbreaks, wars and recent conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, or other factors; future responses to and effects of public health crises; cybersecurity risks; changes in applicable U.S. and foreign government laws and regulations; our ability to successfully implement our acquisitions strategy or integrate acquired companies; difficulties and costs of protecting patents and other proprietary rights; the level of our indebtedness, our ability to service our indebtedness and the restrictions in our debt agreements; and any additional factors included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on Aug. 29, 2025, including in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Item 1A of Part I of that report, as well as in our other public filings with the SEC. Additional risk factors may be identified from time to time in our future filings. In addition, actual results may differ as a result of additional risks and uncertainties about which we are currently unaware or which we do not currently view as material to our business. For these reasons, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements we make speak only as of the date on which they are made. We expressly disclaim any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements after the date hereof to conform such statements to actual results or to changes in our opinions or expectations, except as required by applicable law or the rules of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC. If we do update or correct any forward-looking statements, investors should not conclude that we will make additional updates or corrections.
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