Hisham El-Halabi is Co-Founder and CTO at Vernius Systems, a Y Combinator-backed defense tech startup building low-cost autonomous radar seekers for interceptor drones, addressing critical gaps in modern counter-drone warfare.

Hisham studied Engineering Science at the University of Toronto and previously served as founding engineer at Suave Money, a P2P fiat-to-crypto marketplace adopted by multiple YC startups.

A serial founder with deep hardware roots, Hisham co-founded Auctify, raising $250K and building what was described as the world's first AI smart glasses, before pivoting to Sano AI, a calorie tracker that reached 30K users and $2.5K MRR.

At Vernius, Hisham leads the technical development of the Archimedes radar seeker, an autonomous guidance system that can be adapted to existing interceptors to detect and track drone targets in all weather conditions.

Within eight weeks of founding, Vernius secured $500M in letters of intent and completed a 45-unit sale to a special forces unit, while participating in YC Summer 2026 with $125K in seed funding.