Skyline Nav AI’s software can guide you anywhere, without GPS — find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

you are lost Worse, no cell signal. Keep you from the last thing completely That creepy little blue dot is the universal sign that, somewhere up there, a GPS satellite is watching over you.

But even if you haven’t?

Kanwar Singh thinks he has found a solution. For the past few years he has been developing a vision-based navigation system with his startup Skyline Nav AI. The so-called Pathfinder software can look at almost anything — buildings, tree-lined streets, even aerial views — and quickly match it to a database and generate real-time navigation.

This can be useful if you live in a large city with tall buildings, or in a mountain pass, where the line-of-sight of a GPS satellite is blocked. (Singh knows this all too well: In 2014, his friend Hari Simran Singh Khalsa Died while hiking in the mountains in Mexicolost the way.)

But Singh says a more important near-term use — one he says is crucial to national security — is that Skyline’s technology could be a backstop against an increasingly popular tool of modern warfare: GPS jamming.

Skyline Navy AI is already working with the Department of Defense, NASA and 100-year-old defense contractor Kierfote on its specific uses, despite being a bootstrapped startup with just eight full-time employees.

Now, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025Singh will make his pitch for Tech Startup battlefield Top 20 Finalists in Skyline Nav AI Startup Competition And he brought a new product to show off: the Pathfinder Edge. It’s a small edge computer with a shrunken-down version of Pathfinder that can be installed on almost anything to enable use of Skyline’s “GPS-independent” navigation.

Visual navigation isn’t new, Singh is quick to point out. Tomahawk missiles have long used more primitive forms of the concept along with other technologies to hit targets precisely, for example. Singh said Skyline’s achievements are twofold: the ability to navigate essentially anywhere without GPS by using AI to quickly recognize a scene, and to perform the same feat at the edge without expensive GPUs.

Singh eventually wants Skyline’s technology to become ubiquitous, but he doesn’t see it as replacing GPS. Instead, he thinks it will sit alongside GPS, just as our phone calls today are automatically routed through cell towers, Wi-Fi or even satellites — often without us noticing.

“When you or I buy the next car, the next drone, or we get on the next plane, it will be GPS-independent thanks to Pathfinder, and the ability of this software to work on common edge computing that requires no cellular, no Wi-Fi,” Singh said in an interview with TechCrunch.

It is a high sight. But Singh is comfortable taking big swings.

A Sikh who immigrated to the United States nearly 20 years ago, Singh Sen was getting his master’s at Harvard when he decided to join the U.S. Air Force after hearing a speech by John McCain. But he was repeatedly rejected, because of his hair, beard and turban – visible articles of faith that prevented him from serving.

Instead of giving up, Singh lobbied Congress and the White House and was eventually able to join the army. But still he was asked to give up his articles of faith to attend basic training. so he Filed a case against the Defense Department – Which is faster caved and offered religious concessions Singh and others, and became an army captain and battalion signal officer.

“I come from a family of entrepreneurs and military personnel, and you know, there are things that are worth fighting for,” he said. “It was one of those things that, as an American, I was asked to make my First Amendment choice to exercise my faith or serve my country.”

Thanks to the many military connections Singh made throughout the process, he was able to work on the concept behind the Skyline Nav AI. He worked with the DoD’s Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to develop GPS-independent navigation to combat the rise of GPS jamming. And he started Skyline, which licensed that technology from ARL.

Singh says the work he is doing at Skyline is a “calling”. (He’s even written an entire book about the dangers of GPS going dark.) But it’s already proving to be good business.

“We’ve always been profitable, and so we’re very lucky that people, our customers, pay us before the product is ready to use”.

If you want to learn from Skyline Nav AI, and watch dozens of additional pitches, attend valuable workshops, and make connections that drive business results, Go here to learn more about this year’s disruptionHeld in San Francisco from October 27 to 29.