Eight companies were announced as winners of the Army’s xTechDisrupt competition Oct. 15 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C.

A total of 375 companies participated in the event, giving one-minute pitches to three-judge panels in one of four key areas: electronic warfare; power generation, management or storage; unmanned aerial systems; and counter-unmanned aerial systems.

Thirty-two finalists then pitched their solutions before the winners were selected.

Each winner will receive $62,500 and an opportunity to participate in the U.S. Army Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center experimentation event in Hawaii scheduled for Nov. 7–16.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll lauded the companies that participated in the event, an Army effort to find agile, adaptive and lethal technology solutions from eligible small- to medium-sized businesses.

“To the companies that participated: You are the innovators that will make the Army great and strong for the next 250 years,” he said.

Matt Willis, Army FUZE director, acknowledged the “exceptional talent and innovation we have across the small-business ecosystem.”

FUZE is an initiative that provides funding to startups to purchase and field equipment to soldiers in weeks, instead of years. The xTechDisrupt competition at the AUSA meeting was the first competition in the program.

“The xTechdisrupt program that we’ve run here at AUSA is a clear example of how the Army FUZE program is not just talk—we’re delivering on the secretary’s imperative to identify, test and accelerate innovation on operationally relevant timelines,” Willis said. “It’s about moving ideas quickly from concept to operational reality.”

The eight winning companies are:

* R2 Wireless, which pitched passive radiofrequency detection, classification, geolocation and tracking.

* Mesodyne, which pitched a fuel agnostic, ultra-portable quiet generator capable of utilizing gasoline, diesel, JP-5. JP-8 and other types of fuel, reducing soldiers’ battery load by hundreds of pounds.

* Auterion, whose Skynode is an all-in-one flight controller and mission computer that powers autonomous robots with the company’s operating system, transforming them into a networked, artificial intelligence-enabled system.

* Nine Five North, which pitched a UAS with ground-penetrating radar for mine or unexploded ordnance sensing and clearing.

* Orion Edge, which has a low size, weight, power and cost fully autonomous radiofrequency control for low probability of detection jamming and disruption of adversary navigation and digital messages.

* Inergy, which pitched stackable batteries to provide portable energy storage at the edge.

* Aurelius Systems, which has low size, weight, power and cost laser weapons systems for counter-drone defense.

* Modalic, which pitched a drone mothership capable of carrying several small UASs longer distances, enabling longer range swarm systems.

For more information on xTechDisrupt, click here.