We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership with SiMa.ai to accelerate the deployment of next-generation autonomous drones.
Together we’re launching the ARK-SiMa.ai Modalix MLSoC Bundles — production-ready, high-performance solutions that pair SiMa.ai’s Physical AI platform with ARK’s made-in-the-USA Jetson carrier boards. The bundles are built for commercial, industrial, agriculture, and defense UAS that need serious onboard AI without blowing the SWaP budget.
SiMa.ai’s Modalix System-on-Module delivers 50 TOPS of multimodal AI at sub-10W, and it’s pin-compatible with NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Nano. That means it drops onto the same ARK carriers our customers already use. On the software side, Palette Neat is SiMa.ai’s agentic development environment, designed to compress AI application development from months to days.
“Autonomous intelligence is the next frontier for drones across defense, agriculture, and commercial applications. By building and validating this joint solution on SiMa.ai’s Physical AI platform, we give our customers a purpose-built Physical AI foundation, with exceptional performance per watt and familiar form factors, so they can develop faster and deploy at scale.”
Alex Klimaj, CEO, ARK Electronics
“The drone market is at an inflection point, and winning programs will be built on platforms that pair globally trusted hardware with best-in-class AI compute. With ARK Electronics, we are delivering the ecosystem a complete US-made, affordable solution for intelligent autonomy without compromising on performance or trust.”
Durga Peddireddy, VP of Strategic Business Development and Partnerships, SiMa.ai
Key Highlights
- 50 TOPS of multimodal AI at sub-10W
- Higher TOPS per watt than Jetson Orin Nano Super (67 TOPS at 25W) and Orin NX Super (157 TOPS at 40W)
- Pin-compatible with NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX/Nano — no carrier redesign
- Built-in eMMC storage, with an optional NDAA-compliant 480GB NVMe SSD
- Palette Neat agentic environment for faster Physical AI development
- ARK carriers manufactured in the USA and NDAA compliant
The Bundles
Two production-ready kits are available now to drone OEMs and system integrators.
ARK Just A Jetson with Modalix MLSoC Bundle
The compact option: an ARK Just A Jetson carrier, Modalix SOM, heatsink, and fan. Use it to add Physical AI compute to a drone, robot, or other edge application. An NDAA-compliant 480GB SSD is optional — the Modalix SOM boots from built-in eMMC.
ARK Jetson PAB V3 with Modalix MLSoC Bundle
The full-stack option: an ARK Jetson PAB V3 carrier, ARKV6X flight controller, Modalix SOM, heatsink, and fan. Flight control and Physical AI compute in one Pixhawk Autopilot Bus stack, with Ethernet between the SOM and the flight controller.
Read the joint announcement on the SiMa.ai press release.