Join Date
July 2026
Gender
Not Specified
Age
Not Specified
About Robert Thelen
Rob Thelen is the CEO and co-founder of Rownd. Prior to Rownd, he was a Product-lead for IBM's API Connect, a $200M a year API management platform where he was responsible for all aspects of the product, dev prioritization to sales strategy. Robert is an Air Force veteran, where he led hundreds on the flight line, led a diverse combat advisor team in Afghanistan for a year, and was responsible for $1.2B in gov acquisitions. He received an MBA from Dartmouth and calls Durham, NC home.
Companies & Work
Rownd
Rownd AI builds fully autonomous drones that use local edge intelligence and global LTE/5G/SatCom failover to eliminate the 1:1 pilot bottleneck anywhere on earth or space. We are currently field-deployed with active customers across U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) via our defense business line, ArcEdge AI. Operating out of Raleigh, NC and Wisconsin, we leveraged our team's background in mobile hardware optimization and zero-trust architectures to build true cognitive autonomy directly onto physical aircraft. While we are heavily focused on defense technology today, our ultimate mission is scaling this physical autonomous infrastructure across commercial enterprise edge applications.
