Hivemind: ST Engineering and Shield AI partner on autonomous flight

ST Engineering and Shield AI have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on integrating Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomous flight software into ST Engineering’s unmanned systems.

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on February 5, 2026. 

ST Engineering and Shield AI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will see the two companies collaborate to integrate Shield AI’s Hivemind into ST Engineering products. Announced during the Singapore Airshow in a February 4 press release, the agreement covers the following: 

• Autonomy Integration: The integration of Shield AI’s Hivemind pilot—an AI-driven software that enables aircraft to operate without GPS or human pilots—into ST Engineering’s unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
• Onward development: ST Engineering will assess Hivemind’s Software Development Kit for its ability to “support the indigenous Singapore-led sovereign design, testing, and deployment of mission autonomy.”

“We see strong potential in embedding Hivemind into our platforms to increase the depth and operational resilience of our solutions. This collaboration creates new opportunities to co-develop future-ready capabilities that can scale across our defence, public security, and potentially commercial applications,” Lee Shiang Long, group chief tech & digital officer at ST Engineering said.

This wasn’t the company’s only agreement at the airshow, however. It also announced a collaboration with LODD Autonomous to “advance unmanned cargo delivery capabilities across the medium- to high-lift segment,” a post on the ST Engineering LinkedIn page explains.

Using ST’s new DrN-600 drone, LODD Autonomous will conduct medium-lift cargo delivery trials in the UAE. The DrN-600 is designed to transport payloads exceeding 100kg over distances of 70km to 120km, facilitated by a versatile cargo compartment. In parallel, LODD’s Hili hybrid VTOL aircraft—which features a 250kg payload capacity and a range of up to 700km—will be integrated into the ST Engineering DroNet solution.

• ST Engineering launches Victory, first drone mothership for Singapore – Calibre Defence 
• India picks V-Bat and Hivemind from Shield AI – Calibre Defence 

DroNet is an end-to-end, drone-agnostic operating platform developed by ST Engineering to enable large-scale, autonomous unmanned aircraft system operations. It was notably the first solution approved by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights in urban environments.

ST Engineering is also building drone motherships for Singapore, which will be a class of six vessels designed to carry and deploy autonomous platforms. It is possible that some of these agreements will contribute to the realisation of the drone mothership concept.

Calibre comment: Autonomous systems need collaboration

Few if any companies appear able to provide all of the elements of an autonomous system. There are two key components, the hardware–sensors, platform, computing, power–and the software. The software includes the user interface and the autonomy stack, which helps the platform make sense of what it detects and make decisions accordingly. It is common for companies to partner and collaborate on the different elements rather than provide them all internally. However, it is also likely that the two types of company will merge over time, either through acquisitions or expansion of products, like Shield AI’s recently announced X-Bat. 

Lead image credit is Shield AI.