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Overwatch Imaging Marks 10 Years of Automating Airborne Intelligence
- Overwatch Imaging
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
February 2026 - Hood River, Oregon: Overwatch Imaging, a developer of autonomous airborne imagery intelligence systems, is marking its 10th anniversary this month, capping a decade-long evolution from a bootstrapped startup into a globally deployed provider of AI-enabled sensor autonomy for civil, commercial, defense and intelligence missions.
Founded in February 2016 in Hood River, Oregon, the company was created to address a persistent problem in airborne intelligence: traditional human-in-the-loop imaging systems struggled to scale for wide-area, time-critical missions that require finding small but consequential objects quickly.
Overwatch Imaging set out to automate that process by moving intelligence processing to the edge, exploiting computer vision and artificial intelligence to find key information in imagery streams, and reducing dependence on constant human attention.
Today, the company’s Smart Sensors and Automated Sensor Operator (ASO) software are deployed across six continents, supporting missions ranging from wildfire and disaster response to search and rescue, maritime interdiction, border security, and defense ISR operations.
“After spending years working with airborne imaging systems, it was clear to me that asking highly trained operators to stare at imagery feeds and look for a needle in a haystack was not efficient, effective or scalable,” said Greg Davis, Overwatch Imaging founder and CEO. “Those systems weren’t built for wide-area, time-critical search for small threats. Overwatch Imaging was founded to address that gap.”
Davis, an aerospace engineer by training, began his career as a software engineer at NASA and Lockheed Martin Space Systems before moving into uncrewed aircraft systems program leadership. His experience supporting defense missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Naval operational theaters exposed the limitations of traditional imagery workflows, particularly in environments where bandwidth is constrained and decisions must be made quickly.
Geography also played a role in shaping the company’s early direction. Hood River and the surrounding Columbia River Gorge sit at the intersection of a global drone and imagery intelligence innovation hub, a watersports mecca, and one of the most wildfire-prone regions in the United States. That combination influenced early development across both civil and defense use cases, with real-time wildfire intelligence, search and rescue and maritime domain awareness emerging as the company’s first operational applications.
As its technology matured, Overwatch Imaging abstracted the sensor autonomy software from its own airborne sensors to enable compatibility with third-party full motion video systems. Capabilities originally developed for the company’s own sensors evolved into platform-agnostic edge software designed to automate detection, tracking, and prioritization directly onboard airborne systems. That transition greatly expanded the company’s addressable market and accelerated adoption across multiple mission types.
“We’ve been supporting real customer missions since almost the very first month,” Davis said. “We delivered our first Smart Sensor to a wildfire mapping customer before we even had a logo. That operational focus has stayed with us as the company has grown.”
The company’s growth has been reinforced by venture investment in multiple phases, starting with initial support from Tenax Aerospace, followed by Series A funding in 2022, led by Squadra Ventures and Shield Capital, with participation from L3Harris Technologies and Bridger Aerospace. These investments supported the transition from a sensor-centric business to a software-driven autonomy enabler. A subsequent growth round in 2025 helped scale development, deployment, and international reach.
Looking ahead, Overwatch Imaging enters its second decade amid rising demand for real-time intelligence. From increasingly destructive wildfires to more complex security threats, the need for scalable, autonomous sensing continues to grow. Both traditional crewed aircraft as well as uncrewed aircraft systems are adopting autonomous sensing in response to expanding roles and data overload.
“Our focus hasn’t changed,” Davis said. “The challenges are still the same: how to deliver timely, actionable intelligence at scale for missions that matter. Our tools have evolved and the team has grown, but our focus on the mission remains at the center of our work.”
Media Contact:
Adam Lapierre, Marketing Manager: adam@overwatchimaging.com
It's Party Time:
Overwatch Imaging is hosting two events in the month of February - one in Hood River, Oregon and one in Washington, D.C.- to celebrate the milestone and kick-off the next 10 years of innovation and growth.
For details about either of the events and registration links, send an email to: marketing@overwatchimaging.com with "10-Year Celebration" in the subject line.
About Overwatch Imaging:
Overwatch Imaging is an imagery intelligence technology company working to bring sensor autonomy to time-critical airborne search, detection, tracking and monitoring missions. Our Automated Sensor Operator (ASO) software, native to our own line of purpose-built Smart Sensors and as an upgrade for airborne video gimbal platforms, brings Superhuman Vision and Workload Reduction to users of real-time imagery intelligence systems. We fundamentally believe that modern edge processing and AI-enabled autonomy can perform an important set of time-critical imagery intelligence missions better, faster and more safely than humans can alone.
Founded in 2016 in Hood River, Oregon, we support private sector companies as well as federal, state and local agencies around the world with missions ranging from wildfire mapping and disaster response to law enforcement, border security, maritime domain awareness and tactical intelligence.
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