• Deepnight has secured $4.6 million in contracts with the U.S. Army, Air Force, and major defense companies.
  • Their AI-powered night vision software works with off-the-shelf $50 smartphone cameras, eliminating the need for expensive bespoke hardware.

YC-backed startup Deepnight has raised $5.5 million to disrupt the night vision industry with AI-powered software. Founded by childhood friends and former Google engineers Lucas Young and Thomas Li, the company has already secured $4.6 million in contracts with the U.S. Army, Air Force, and major defense companies.

Night vision technology has remained largely analog, relying on optical lenses and chemical processes to enhance low-light visibility. Existing solutions, such as those from military contractors L3Harris and Elbit America, cost between $13,000 and $30,000 per unit. The U.S. Army has attempted to digitize night vision with a focus on hardware, including the $22 billion Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project.

Young, with expertise in computational photography, and Li, a specialist in AI and computer vision, saw an opportunity to tackle the problem through software.

Inspired by a 2018 research paper titled Learning to See in the Dark, Young realized that AI accelerators on system-on-chips had advanced enough to enable real-time low-light imaging. In 2024, the duo founded Deepnight and joined Y Combinator’s winter cohort.

To gain traction, Young wrote a white paper outlining their approach and distributed it at an industry event attended by members of the U.S. Army’s night vision lab. This led to a $100,000 contract in February 2024, just a month into Y Combinator.

A demonstration in Washington, D.C., showcasing their smartphone-based prototype further validated their technology, resulting in additional government contracts.

Deepnight’s software integrates with existing hardware, enabling a range of applications beyond the military, including security, automotive, drones, and maritime navigation.

The company’s $5.5 million funding round was led by Initialized Capital and included investments from Y Combinator, industry veterans, and even Vladlen Koltun, the scientist whose research initially inspired the company.

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah