Today, Deepnight announced it has been awarded an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) by the U.S. Army under the Delivering Unmatched Thermal Capability Hastened (DUTCH) program. The award funds development of Deepnight’s proprietary AI imaging platform for thermal sensing, extending the platform beyond its current low-light imaging work into a new sensor modality.

“This program lets us prove that the same imaging platform driving our night vision work can bring that same intelligence to the thermal band,” said Deepnight CEO Lucas Young. “The Army gets high-end performance without the high-end price tag. It’s a critical step in building a platform that scales across every sensor a soldier depends on.”

As the Army scales attritable, mass-produced drone fleets, equipping every unit with high-performance thermal sensors has been cost-prohibitive using current hardware. Today’s leading thermal sensors can cost several thousand dollars per unit, which is a price point that makes outfitting large, expendable-by design fleets economically unworkable at scale.

Under the DUTCH program, Deepnight’s proprietary AI imaging platform will be integrated with lower cost thermal sensor hardware, using the company’s neural network-based image processing to deliver performance approaching that of far more expensive thermal systems. The goal of the program is to move high-performance thermal sensing from a premium capability to one that can be manufactured and fielded at scale, at a fraction of today’s typical cost.

Thermal and low-light imaging are complementary. For example, thermal excels at detecting a person in a treeline, but the recognition and fine-detail identification needed to understand a scene rather than simply detect it benefit from the kind of AI-driven image processing Deepnight has built its platform around. Extending that platform into thermal is a continuation of Deepnight’s strategy of expanding across sensor modalities, rather than building single-purpose point solutions.

Development under the OTA is underway, with Deepnight and the Army continuing to define testing and performance milestones under the DUTCH program.

About Deepnight

Based in San Francisco, CA, Deepnight is a dual-use startup delivering state-of-the-art night vision technology solutions. Unlike legacy night vision built around image intensifier tubes, Deepnight is the first company to approach night vision AI-first, pairing digital image sensors with neural network-based image processing to set a new standard of low-light imaging. Founded by engineers and AI research scientists from the computational photography teams behind leading smartphone platforms, Deepnight won the Army’s xTech Search 9 competition in 2025 and has raised $14M. For more information, visit www.deepnight.com.

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