You are lost. Worse, there is no cell signal. the last thing holding you back completely The strangest thing is that little blue dot – the universal sign that, somewhere above, a GPS satellite has its eye on you.
But what if you don’t even have that?
Kanwar Singh thinks he has found a solution. For the last few years he has been building a vision-based navigation system with his startup Skyline Nav AI. So-called pathfinder software can look at almost anything – buildings, tree-lined roads, even aerial views – and instantly match it to a database and generate real-time navigation.
This can be useful if you’re in a big city with tall buildings, or on a valley road surrounded by mountains, where the line of sight to the GPS satellite is blocked. (Singh knows this too well: In 2014, his friend Hari Simran Singh Khalsa Died while hiking in the mountains in MexicoHave lost your way.)
But Singh says an even more important near-term use – which he describes as vital to national security – is that Skyline’s technology could be a backstop against an increasingly popular tool of modern warfare: GPS jamming.
This is particularly the use case in which, despite being a bootstrapped startup with only eight full-time employees, Skyline Nav AI is already working with the Department of Defense, NASA, and 100-year-old defense contractor CareFoot.
Now, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Singh will make his case for technology on the Startup Battlefield stage; Skyline is a top 20 finalist in the Nave AI Startup Competition. And he’s got a new product to show: Pathfinder Edge. It is a small edge computer with a shrunken version of Pathfinder that can be installed on almost anything to enable the use of the Skyline’s “GPS-independent” navigation.
techcrunch event
san francisco
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October 27-29, 2025
Singh is quick to point out that visual navigation is nothing new. For example, Tomahawk missiles have long used a more rudimentary form of this idea, along with other technologies, to deliver precision strikes on targets. Singh said the successes of Skyline are twofold: the ability to navigate essentially anywhere without GPS by using AI to instantly recognize a scene, and achieving 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 a GPS replacement. Instead, he believes it will stick with GPS, just as our phone calls today are automatically routed over cell towers, Wi-Fi, or even satellite – often without us realizing it.
“When you or I buy the next car, the next drone, or we get on the next plane, it will be GPS-independent because of Pathfinder and the ability of this software to work on simple edge computing that doesn’t require any cellular or Wi-Fi,” Singh said in an interview with TechCrunch.
This is a lofty vision. But Leo is comfortable taking big ups and downs.
A Sikh who immigrated to the US about 20 years ago, Singh was pursuing his master’s degree at Harvard when he decided to join the US Air Force after hearing Senator John McCain speak. But he was repeatedly rejected because of his hair, beard and turban – visible signs of faith that prevented him from serving.
Instead of giving up, Singh lobbied Congress and the White House and was eventually successful in enlisting in the Army. But they were still asked to abandon their articles of faith to attend basic training. so he Sued the Department of Defense – who quickly bowed down and gave religious exemption Singh and others, and he became an army captain and battalion signals officer.
“I come from a family of entrepreneurs and military personnel, and you know, there are some things worth fighting for,” he said. “It was one of those things where, as an American, I was being asked to choose between my First Amendment rights to follow my faith or to serve my country.”
The many military connections Singh made throughout this process led him to work on the ideas that form the foundation of Skyline Nav AI. They worked with DoD’s Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to develop GPS-independent navigation to combat the increase of GPS jamming. And they 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 turning off GPS.) But it’s already proving to be good business.
“We’ve always been profitable, and so we’ve been very fortunate that people, our customers, have paid us to make the product even before it’s ready for use,” he said.
If you want to learn first-hand from Skyline Nav AI, and want to see dozens of additional pitches, participate in valuable workshops, and build relationships that drive business results, To learn more about this year’s disruption, go hereHeld in San Francisco from 27 to 29 October.
