IMSAR LLC (“IMSAR” or the “Company”), a leading developer and manufacturer of low size, weight and power (“SWaP”) synthetic aperture radar (“SAR”) payloads and mission software for unmanned and manned aircraft, today announced the completion of a strategic investment from OceanSound Partners (“OceanSound”), a private equity firm that invests in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving aerospace, defense, government, and highly regulated end markets. Ryan Smith, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of IMSAR, will continue to lead the Company and has retained significant ownership interest alongside the management team.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Springville, Utah, IMSAR develops synthetic aperture radar that delivers all-weather, day-and-night imaging, moving target indication, and change detection in conditions that degrade optical and infrared sensors, across areas far wider than a gimbal-mounted camera’s field of view. The Company’s NSP-series radars, onboard processing, and Lisa 3D mission software are integrated on more than 100 unmanned and manned platforms worldwide, spanning Group 2 through Group 5 unmanned aircraft, including the Shield AI V-BAT, AV Jump 20, Textron Aerosonde, Tekever AR3 and AR5, Insitu ScanEagle, and Integrator, as well as light manned ISR aircraft. IMSAR supports U.S. Navy and U.S. Army requirements and equips allied ministries of defense across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Americas. IMSAR’s radars are compact, pod-mounted payloads that install through a single connector carrying power, Ethernet, and navigation data, avoiding the custom radomes and airframe modifications competing systems require, and can be removed or exchanged in minutes. Nearly all of the underlying technology, from the electronically scanned antenna to the Lisa 3D operator software, is developed in-house.

“IMSAR has built something rare: technology that is genuinely hard to replicate, proven in the field, delivered by a team that operators trust,” said Joe Benavides, CEO and Founder of OceanSound Partners. “IMSAR’s RF surveillance solutions are well positioned to address critical U.S. Department of War priorities, including the Department’s Drone Dominance program, delivering lower-cost and high performance autonomous and counter autonomous solutions at scale and quickly to better manage threats from U.S. adversaries. OceanSound has spent years investing behind the companies modernizing how defense customers sense and understand their environment, and IMSAR is among the most impressive we have encountered. We are proud to partner with Ryan and the entire IMSAR team, and we look forward to helping them build on their differentiated drone-focused technology developed over more than twenty years.”

With OceanSound’s support, IMSAR will invest in radar performance, next-generation product development, and manufacturing and commercial infrastructure to accelerate speed-to-field and scalable production, while expanding AI-enabled exploitation and automated target recognition capabilities built on the Lisa 3D software platform. Drawing on two decades of operational small-form-factor radar collections, IMSAR will apply machine learning to continuously improve its models for automatic target recognition, change detection, and target classification, building the proprietary data foundations required by next-generation autonomous systems and enabling differentiated AI-powered sensing capabilities. Over time, the Company intends to broaden its portfolio from radar toward a multi-mission RF sensing capability, through both internal development and acquisitions of complementary sensing and AI-enabled exploitation technologies. IMSAR will remain an open, platform-agnostic partner to the unmanned aircraft ecosystem rather than compete with the OEMs it serves.

“Our purpose is to give operators a clear picture when nothing else can see,” said Ryan Smith, CEO and Founder of IMSAR. “We talk about democratizing radar, and what we mean is simple: a capability that used to require a large, expensive aircraft now flies on something a small team can launch from a ship or the back of a truck. Everything this company has built has come from our engineers, technicians and field teams spending time with the people who fly these missions, watching what fails, and fixing it. We chose OceanSound because they understand that the mission and the engineering come first, they know this market and the people in it, and they have built businesses like ours before.”

“OceanSound was built to partner with founder-led technology companies at exactly this moment, when the capability is proven and the opportunity in front of them is larger than what they can serve today,” said Ted Shanahan, Partner at OceanSound Partners. “We are investing in commercial reach, in the software and analytics layer, and in added capability across the sensing portfolio. The people who built this company are the reason we are here, and we are investing behind them.”

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP served as legal advisor to OceanSound. Guggenheim Securities, LLC served as exclusive financial advisor and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP served as legal advisor to IMSAR.

About IMSAR

Established in 2004, IMSAR is a leading developer and manufacturer of low size, weight and power synthetic aperture radar and moving target indication payloads and mission software for unmanned and manned aircraft. The company’s NSP-series radars, onboard processing, and Lisa 3D mission software deliver all-weather, day-night imaging, ground and maritime moving target indication, and coherent change detection to operators across maritime domain awareness, land force reconnaissance, border security, and wide-area surveillance missions. In-house radar design, signal processing, software development, and production at IMSAR’s Springville, Utah facility allows the company to move from requirement to fielded capability at mission speed. For more information, please visit www.imsar.com.

About OceanSound Partners

OceanSound Partners is a private equity firm that pursues investments in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving aerospace, defense, government, and highly regulated end markets. OceanSound employs a partnership approach, working closely with founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of middle market businesses to support their strategic growth objectives. The firm has offices in New York, West Palm Beach, and Buenos Aires. For more information, please visit www.oceansoundpartners.com.

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