Birdstop

Birdstop is an American manufacturer of autonomous security and inspection drones, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. It was founded in 2019 by chief executive Keith Miao and was originally based in California, flying its networks from a mission control in the San Francisco Bay Area. In November 2025 it opened a headquarters and manufacturing facility at 200 Walker Street in Bedrock's Icon building on the Detroit riverfront, with 21 employees at the time of the move. The company says it relocated to draw on the region's automotive electronics supply chain, since automotive parts and drone components share overlapping specifications and testing requirements, and in January 2026 it launched a new generation of Detroit-made drones.

Its product is the Fealty system: an autonomous quadcopter that lives in a powered station the company calls the perch. The drone flies for up to 45 minutes, tolerates 33 mph wind, carries an IP54 rating and operates from -4 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. The standard payload pairs a 4K visible camera with a 640 x 512 radiometric thermal imager and optical zoom, and the aircraft is RTK and 5G enabled; methane and gas sensing and LiDAR are optional, while a spotlight and PA speaker are listed as coming soon. The perch launches the drone in under 3 seconds, watches its surroundings with a 360-degree camera and microphone array for acoustic detection, covers an operational range of 10 miles, provides up to 3,352 TOPS of on-site AI compute, encrypts with AES-256 and runs on 120 V AC power.

Missions run from Mission Control, software that handles detection, dispatch, live video, patrol scheduling and logging. It supports pre-planned patrols and alarm-triggered dispatch with operators authorising flights remotely, lets one operator run multiple perches, and integrates with SCADA, computer-aided dispatch, video management and access control systems. The company states that the system is NDAA compliant, SOC 2 Type II certified and FAA authorised, and it reported several FAA approvals for complex beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations in 2023.

Target markets are public safety, utilities, transportation, construction, data centres and logistics yards. Before the Detroit move Birdstop operated BVLOS drone networks that monitored power grids and telecom networks for public and private customers in Alabama, California and Texas. In May 2026 it began deploying Fealty with TSPS to monitor truck parking sites in Detroit and report real-time parking availability along freight corridors.

Birdstop raised USD 2.3 million in August 2023 in a round led by Lerer Hippeau, followed by a USD 4.6 million seed round led by Detroit Venture Partners, for total funding of USD 8.4 million as reported by Crain's Detroit Business. Backers listed by the company include Alabama Power, DataTech Fund, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford, Alumni Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau, Anorak Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Techstars, Talon, Graph Ventures, Timberline Holdings and TechSquare Ventures. The team lists prior experience at Google, the Earth Institute, Drone Volt, the US Air Force and NASA.