Armen Arakelyan is Co-Founder and CTO at Ornadyne (YC P26), a defense tech startup building autonomous flapping-wing aircraft that look, fly, and sound like real birds for military reconnaissance.

Armen engineered Starship components at SpaceX, then led machining operations at the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, where the team set the amateur rocketry altitude world record at 144 km.

Armen brings deep aerospace hardware expertise from one of the world's most demanding engineering environments, applying propulsion and systems knowledge to a new frontier in low-detectability drone technology.

Ornadyne is a Y Combinator (P26) company that has raised $1M in seed funding, with Y Combinator as a key investor, and won YC's group product showcase competing against top cohort companies.

Ornadyne's ornithopters are engineered to defeat acoustic, visual, and electronic detection by counter-UAS systems, positioning the company to restore US leadership in bio-inspired autonomous flight for defense applications.