George Matus

Accounts of the year in which he founded his company differ: the complaint filed by Red Cat Holdings and Teal Drones in 2025, the November 2025 and September 2026 rulings of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and reports by the Deseret News in 2021 and The Salt Lake Tribune in 2026 give 2014, and the Drone Radio Show’s episode description says that he started the company in 2014 as a high school sophomore; Red Cat Holdings’ 2023 announcement, his own author biography on the Utah Business website, and reports by The Drone Girl in 2023 and DroneLife in 2025 give 2015; Red Cat Holdings’ July 2021 announcement says in its body that he founded Teal in 2015, while its company description at the end calls Teal a U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry drone manufacturer “since 2014.” His age at the founding is given as 16 by the Deseret News, 17 by The Salt Lake Tribune, and 18 by The Drone Girl and DroneLife.⁠[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

KSL.com wrote in July 2015 that he had started iDrone while still in grade school; Waterford School wrote in 2017 that the company was called iDrone when he was selected as a Thiel Fellow. Entrepreneur writes that the company was later named Teal, partly after the teal duck; The Salt Lake Tribune writes that it is named after a small, agile duck. KUTV wrote in December 2016 that he had come up with the concept of the Teal drone about two and a half years earlier.⁠[12][13][14][5][15]

On June 5, 2015, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2015 class of 20 Thiel Fellows, and he was among them. The announcement gives him as 17 at application and from Salt Lake City, Utah, working on unmanned aerial systems as CEO of iDrone, where he designed, built and piloted advanced UAV technology; it says he had been a drone test pilot since age 12, won a global drone competition at 16, and at 17 was manufacturing highly capable UAVs for consumer and commercial markets.⁠[16]

Xconomy wrote that the 20 fellows of this class had been chosen from 2,800 applicants and that each received $100,000 and a support network of mentors to help the former students turn their creative projects into startup companies; it listed him as a 17-year-old drone designer from Utah, in the same paragraph as fellow members of the class Cathy TieCathy TieCathy Tie is a Canadian biotechnology entrepreneur who was named a Thiel Fellow in 2015 and has founded or co-founded the genetic-variant research company Ranomics, the digital health platform Locke Bio, and the human embryo-editing ventures Manhattan Genomics and Origin Genomics; in 2025 she and the Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced their marriage, and a few months later she announced their separation.Open the full entry, Zach LattaZach LattaZach Latta is a programmer and the founder and executive director of Hack Club, a nonprofit that helps teenagers start coding clubs and run hackathons; he was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2015.Open the full entry and John Backus.⁠[17][17]

KSL.com wrote on July 16, 2015 that the 17-year-old had been chosen from thousands of applicants as one of the 20 members of the class; the two-year program, started by PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry co-founder Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, encourages college-age people to skip college and become entrepreneurs, and provides $100,000 in funding and access to mentors. In answers he sent KSL.com by email, he said that he had first come across the Thiel Foundation in early 2015 while presenting his drone technology at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry, and that he saw the fellowship as a chance to grow iDrone.⁠[12]

On his grade at the time, Waterford School and The Salt Lake Tribune write that he received the fellowship in his junior year of high school, while KSL.com wrote in 2016 that he was about to enter his senior year when he received it. Fortune wrote in 2016 that as a Thiel Fellow he was not attending college, and Waterford School wrote in 2017 that through the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry he was deferring college to run his business full-time. Quartz writes that he used the $100,000 to start Teal; The Christian Science Monitor writes that Peter Thiel later supplemented his funding.⁠[13][5][18][19][20][21]

In answers to KSL.com in 2015 he said that he looked up to Apple and Tesla and wanted iDrone to follow a similar path, and that he expected the drone industry to consolidate around a few leaders; iDrone was developing software and hardware focused on quality, performance, design and user experience, and he was prepared to pivot. He was then raising capital and preparing a multifunctional drone for beginners, serious hobbyists and commercial users; he served as chief executive, described the company as headquartered in his basement in Salt Lake City, and planned to expand to San Francisco and San Diego; he also mentioned joining the Mountain West Unmanned Systems Alliance and working with the Governor’s Office on drone initiatives. He thanked his family and Waterford School for their support and joked that, now that he was 17, he should get his driver’s license.⁠[12]

KSL.com wrote in 2016 that his fundraising came together after he met the Utah venture firm Pelion in August 2015; he recalled that it was hard at first because the vision was not fully developed and he had no prototypes, and described himself at the time as a 16- or 17-year-old with braces whose father drove him to meetings. Entrepreneur wrote in 2017 that until a year earlier, having no driver’s license, he had been driven by his father to meetings with venture capitalists, and that he then wore braces, lived at home and was still in high school.⁠[18][14]

Entrepreneur writes that Mark Harris, a board member at his private school, invested $150,000, and that Ben Lambert of Pelion, at first skeptical, offered a term sheet a few days before his 18th birthday, Pelion investing $1 million as part of a $2.8 million round; Pelion also set checks: he worked from Pelion’s offices and needed board approval for spending over $25,000. He said that the fundraising strained some of his friendships. Fortune writes that Mark Harris, a venture capitalist on his high school’s board, helped him raise the seed round.⁠[14][19]

KSL.com wrote in 2016 that after the fellowship his engineering, product development and team building accelerated; he sought investors and met clients in the San Francisco Bay Area and Salt Lake City, and over the following year raised $2.8 million from several firms, beyond his initial goal of $2 million, spending it on inventory, marketing and production without crowdfunding.⁠[18]

In May 2016 he graduated from Waterford School in Sandy, Utah, as a member of the class of 2016. Waterford School writes that he captained its Ravens Robotics team. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that his calculus teacher, Nancy Woller, recalled that his senior project featured aerial footage of the region of Slovakia that his family comes from, and that as a high school student in Sandy he met U.S. Department of DefenseU.S. Department of DefenseThe U.S. Department of Defense is an executive department of the United States federal government, formed in 1949 from the National Military Establishment created in 1947 and headquartered at the Pentagon. The department’s website describes it as America’s oldest and largest government agency.Open the full entry officials at Hill Air Force Base. KSL.com wrote in July 2016 that his former classmates would help beta-test the drone.⁠[19][22][23][13][5][18]

Quartz wrote in July 2016 that he had also built a robot and would appear on that season of BattleBots; Fortune writes that he competed on ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s BattleBots; Waterford School writes that he competed in the program’s second season; DroneLife wrote in July 2016 that he had competed on the ABC show the previous year.⁠[20][13][22][19]

On July 20, 2016 Teal launched and began taking preorders for its first drone. Fortune wrote that the battery-powered, camera-equipped drone could reach 70 mph, cost $1,299 and was expected to ship in early 2017, with three built-in apps for command and control, follow-me mode and gaming; the company then had 15 employees and contract workers. DroneLife wrote that the follow-me app had been co-developed with Neurala and used image recognition to follow a specific person, and that a racing app would let users race one another, record flights and climb a leaderboard; the company said that the drone was stable in winds of up to 40 mph, was water-resistant, was built in the United States and had flown at up to 85 mph under some conditions.⁠[19][22]

The Christian Science Monitor wrote that the drone fitted in a backpack and could take a thermal camera module for search and rescue, firefighting and farming, as well as a radar-based sense-and-avoid add-on; at its core was a credit-card-sized inertial navigation chip, and the company called it “a flying supercomputer” that could be connected to a monitor to run games; its hardware and software were open to modification, with removable arms and an open software development kit. The paper wrote that it was produced at a plant about 15 minutes from his parents’ home in Salt Lake City, and that it cost $1,299, against $1,399 for DJI’s Phantom 4. He stressed quality and “Made in the USA,” called his approach the “gamification of drones,” mentioned Pokémon GO and uses ranging from zombie-hunting games to search and rescue, and said that the goal was for this and later drones to be as ubiquitous as smartphones are today. Ryan Wood of Rocky Mountain Unmanned Systems, who had worked with him for more than a year, called him a “child prodigy.”⁠[21]

Quartz wrote that, unable to find a drone that did everything he wanted, he had written a wish list of functions and spent the past few years turning it into a product for sale, saying “This is the Swiss Army Knife of drones”; he considered it the first modular drone, flying at about 85 mph, nearly twice as fast as DJI’s Phantom line. The drone used an NVIDIANVIDIANVIDIA is an American semiconductor and computing technology company that provides graphics processing units, artificial intelligence infrastructure, networking interconnects, and computing software, and is listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NVDA.Open the full entry TX1 chip, which he planned to use for self-flight, real-time obstacle avoidance and following its owner; Quartz wrote that it could even be used for games such as augmented-reality laser tag against other Teal owners. Teal was releasing a software development kit and working on its own app store, Quartz commenting that “the future of drones is apps.” It had a beginner mode limiting how far and fast it could fly and could be flown by smartphone or a standard radio controller; Teal planned to start shipping at Christmas, with a first run of about 500 drones produced near his home in Utah, and he said: “This drone will grow with you, as you get better.”⁠[20]

KSL.com wrote on July 22, 2016 that the 18-year-old called the drone “the smartphone of drones,” which the company claimed was the fastest mass-production drone in the world; he noted that DJI held most of the market and said that Teal aimed to combine several types of drone in one product and sell it directly to consumers. The company then had three full-time employees and 15 full-time contractors. He said that the work felt like a hobby rather than work, and almost like a vacation compared with school. Fortune wrote that he averaged about six hours of sleep a night, relaxed by flying drones with FPV goggles, and predicted that within five to ten years most people would own drones as they own smartphones.⁠[18][19]

KSL.com wrote on October 28, 2016 that the 19-year-old had been named one of TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry’s most influential teens of 2016; Teal was then backed by $5.8 million in venture capital, had three full-time employees and 15 full-time contractors, and expected to begin shipping to consumers in early 2017. The article states that his father, an entrepreneur with his own businesses, had inspired him to start his own venture; he said, “I don't see being a young entrepreneur as a disadvantage,” and that investors understand that young founders may lack operating experience and fully formed ideas and can supply the resources and guidance needed.⁠[23]

KUTV wrote on December 15, 2016 that he had been named one of TIME’s 30 “Most Influential Teens,” an honor he called “absolutely surreal”; he described his product as “the first drone with a super computer built in,” which could be plugged into a monitor and used as a desktop computer, could be programmed to recognize its owner, flew at over 70 mph and was modular. The report states that he had no formal drone training and had not attended college, and that the company had raised $6 million from investors, had 14 employees and planned to launch the quadcopter in May 2017 at $1,299.⁠[15]

Entrepreneur wrote in September 2017 that Teal’s first product, the Teal Sport, had debuted in June 2017 at a retail price of $499 to $799, was the fastest production drone on the market at 80 mph, responded to Siri voice commands and sold out soon after launch. In June 2017 the 19-year-old drove a Mercedes SUV around the Salt Lake City suburbs where he lived; Teal had 20 employees, including a former Australian test pilot, and he said that he was learning to delegate and to defer to older, more experienced staff; the company planned to raise another $15 million to $20 million the following year.⁠[14]

The article states that the “flagship” drone planned for later in 2017 was priced at $1,299 and would include a software development kit for third-party apps, a computer for autonomous flight and deep learning, image and voice recognition and an optional obstacle-avoidance upgrade, and that Teal planned commercial partnerships in building supervision, search and rescue and emergency services. He dismissed concerns about regulation and predicted that drones would be as ubiquitous as smartphones; he said that he flew to relax and described his feeling in flight as “unflappable.”⁠[14]

On November 15, 2017 Waterford School announced that he had been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Consumer Technology; Teal Drones had by then built two drone models for amateur pilots and racers. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that he appeared on the 2018 list.⁠[13][5]

The Salt Lake Tribune writes that after the U.S. Army banned Chinese-made drones in 2017, he pivoted the company to military drones. The court’s November 2025 ruling states that Teal applied in 2018 to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program; Teal’s Golden Eagle drone was not selected for SRR Tranche 1, but the DIU added it to the Blue UAS Cleared List. The Deseret News wrote in 2021 that the Golden Eagle had been developed under an 18-month Defense Department contract under which six companies shared about $11 million to build prototypes to Army specifications, with the DIU as a partner.⁠[5][2][4]

In September 2020 Teal released the Golden Eagle, its first drone for government agencies and the military, designed mainly for short-range surveillance and reconnaissance. DroneDJ wrote that it carried a FLIR dual camera sensor on a two-axis stabilizer, recording 4K color video at 60 frames per second and thermal imagery, with a hot-swappable payload; it flew for up to 50 minutes at up to 50 mph with a range of two miles and could operate in winds of up to 30 mph and temperatures from −32°F to 110°F; it had forward obstacle avoidance and rear-facing visual-inertial odometry for navigation without GPS, used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip for autonomy, computer vision and AI detection of people and vehicles, used AES-256 encryption, complied with section 848 of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act and had been approved by the Department of Defense and the federal government as part of the DIU’s Blue sUAS project; its Air Control controller came with a 10-inch Android tablet running Teal’s QGroundControl app, supporting waypoint missions and photogrammetry. As Teal’s founder and chief executive, he said at the launch that the Golden Eagle was “the system we've always wanted to build,” the culmination of five years of work that kept the ethos of the Teal One. Red Cat Holdings wrote in 2021 that Teal had started with the Teal Sport and Teal One consumer drones, and that in 2020, with the Golden Eagle, Teal had been one of only five companies selected by the Department of Defense as approved small unmanned aircraft system vendors.⁠[24][7]

On July 13, 2021 Red Cat Holdings, listed on NasdaqNasdaqNasdaq is an exchange operator and financial technology company headquartered in New York. It runs The Nasdaq Stock Market and other markets and provides capital markets technology, regulatory technology, and data and index services. Founded in 1971, it combined with OMX AB in 2008, and in March 2026 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved its rules for trading tokenized securities.Open the full entry, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Teal Drones in an all-stock transaction, without disclosing a price. Red Cat Holdings chief executive Jeff Thompson said that Teal would help the company expand deeper into the enterprise and government markets; George Matus said: “We are incredibly excited to join Red Cat as Golden Eagle scales production and further applications are released.”⁠[7]

The Deseret News wrote the same day that Teal would become the flagship portfolio company of Red Cat Holdings, whose other holdings were Skypersonic, Dronebox, Fat Shark and Rotor Riot; Teal was one of five manufacturers approved by the Defense Department to supply drones to the armed services and other federal agencies, its drones were widely used by the military and other agencies and by private companies for infrastructure monitoring and livestock herding, and it planned to double its workforce within six months. He said that Red Cat’s proposal offered “the right combination of resources and capital access” and that the company would “grow the hell out of” the American-made drone industrial base, noting that the industry had been dominated by the Chinese manufacturer DJI and expressing the hope that 2020 had marked a “resurgence of the American drone industry.”⁠[4]

On September 1, 2021 Red Cat Holdings announced that it had completed its acquisition of Teal Drones, which together with Skypersonic would anchor the company’s Enterprise Segment. George Matus, Teal’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement that Teal’s original goals had been to rebuild the American drone industrial base and accelerate drone adoption in the enterprise and defense markets, a mission it would now pursue with Red Cat’s resources, “giving superhuman capabilities to commercial operators and military warfighters alike.”⁠[25]

The complaint filed by Red Cat Holdings and Teal Drones in 2025 states that the acquisition agreement was dated July 2021 and finalized in August 2021 for a total price of about $10 million, and that on September 1, 2021 he signed an employment agreement with Red Cat Holdings under which he continued as Teal’s chief executive. Courthouse News Service writes that he sold Teal to Red Cat for $10 million and stayed on as chief executive and chief technology officer; the Deseret News wrote in July 2021 that the value of the deal was not disclosed.⁠[1][26][4]

On August 22, 2023 Utah’s U.S. Senator Mitt Romney held a Teal 2 drone during a tour of Teal Drones; George Matus stands at left in the photograph.⁠[5]

On November 28, 2023 Red Cat Holdings announced his appointment as its chief technology officer. The announcement states that he had led the company’s efforts to secure the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance contract, for which Red Cat was one of three finalists; chief executive Jeff Thompson said: “I am excited to expand George's role in additional areas of the business.” The announcement adds that he believed it was “day one” for drones. The Drone Girl wrote that Teal’s flagship product was then the Teal 2 drone, built in partnership with the thermal camera maker FLIR, and quoted Jeff Thompson as also saying: “George's expertise in drone technology is evident in the development of a next generation system for the Army.”⁠[8][10]

The court’s September 2025 ruling states that Red Cat Holdings promoted him to chief technology officer in December 2023 while he remained Teal’s chief executive, and that several months later the two sides signed an Executive Employment Agreement that increased his compensation and included non-compete, non-solicitation, non-disclosure and return-of-confidential-information provisions. The complaint states that the agreement promised at least two years of employment, raised his salary to about $230,000 and granted 600,000 time-based stock units; the court’s September 2026 ruling states that it set a 12-month post-employment non-compete and non-solicitation covenant and that his work at Red Cat included pursuing mergers, acquisitions and strategic partnerships.⁠[27][1][3]

The Salt Lake Tribune writes that in 2024 the U.S. Army selected Teal’s Black Widow reconnaissance drone. The court’s November 2025 ruling states that the Black Widow was selected for the prototype phases of the Short Range Reconnaissance program’s Tranche 2, with research and development funding that began at $1.5 million and later rose to $5 million to $6 million. When Red Cat Holdings announced his departure in December 2024, it listed the production selection of the Black Widow for the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program among the achievements of his tenure.⁠[5][2][28]

Vector Defense (which calls itself Vector) states on its website that it was founded in 2024 by former special operators and defense technology experts, raised its seed round that year and grew from nine operators to nearly 100 employees within two years; its leadership comprises chief executive and co-founder Andy Yakulis, chief strategy officer and co-founder Matt Long, chief technology officer and co-founder George Matus, and co-founder Larsen Jensen, founder and managing partner of Harpoon Ventures. TechBuzz News wrote in 2025 that Andy Yakulis is a graduate of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a former U.S. Army Special Operations commander. The complaint describes Vector Defense as a DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry corporation based in Draper, Utah.⁠[29][30][1]

The court’s September 2025 ruling states that in November 2024 he notified Red Cat Holdings and Teal Drones of his resignation and that in December 2024 he left both roles and accepted the position of chief technology officer at Vector Defense. In December 2024 Red Cat Holdings announced that he was leaving to become chief technology officer at Vector, with chief executive Jeff Thompson saying: “George has been an invaluable asset to Red Cat and we fully support his transition to Chief Technology Officer at Vector”; Chris Rill, director of partner integration, became president of Teal Drones. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that he said he wanted to work on faster-paced projects that responded to service members’ needs in real time.⁠[27][28][5]

On July 11, 2025 Vector Defense publicly announced the Hammer, a first-person-view (FPV) drone. Vector’s funding announcement that September describes the Hammer as a multi-use FPV quadcopter for both deep sensing and deep strike, with a gimbaled camera able to detect threats or targets up to 20 kilometers away, capable of delivering droppable payloads or one-way kinetic strikes; the company says that it is the first FPV on the market with fiber-optic integration, making it more resistant to jamming, that it is designed for production in the tens of thousands, and that it received the Top Gun Trophy from the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.⁠[27][30]

On August 4, 2025 Red Cat Holdings and Teal Drones filed a verified complaint against George Matus and Vector Defense in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah (Case No. 2:25-cv-00646), demanding a jury trial, and the same day moved for a preliminary injunction and for expedited discovery; the plaintiffs’ counsel came from Parsons Behle & Latimer and Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. The nature of suit was recorded as a Defend Trade Secrets Act case; on August 6 the case was reassigned to District Judge Ted Stewart, and the motion for expedited discovery was referred to Magistrate Judge Jared C. Bennett.⁠[1][31]

The plaintiffs alleged in the complaint that as early as April 2024, while still employed by Red Cat, he had co-founded and joined Vector Defense (an allegation made upon information and belief); that in May 2024 he brought three of Vector’s other co-founders, including Andy Yakulis, to Teal’s office and factory in Salt Lake City; that Vector made military FPV drones competing with the plaintiffs’ products, contrary to his representations; and that he had solicited their employees to join Vector, had likely disclosed trade secrets and had deleted all work files from his work computer before returning it, causing a loss of more than $5,000. They also alleged that a non-binding memorandum of understanding signed in July 2024 by Red Cat and Teal with the Croatian drone company Orqa, for U.S. assembly and sale of FANG drones using Orqa components, collapsed in the fall of 2024 after negotiations in which he took part, that development of the FANG was then suspended, and that after resigning from Red Cat he pursued a deal with Orqa on behalf of Vector; the complaint puts Red Cat’s research and development investment at about $22 million. The court’s September 2026 ruling restates the complaint’s allegation that twelve Red Cat employees left Red Cat and Teal in March, April, May and July 2025, nine of whom said that they were joining Vector.⁠[1][27][3][26]

The court’s November 2025 ruling lists the plaintiffs’ nine claims: trade secret misappropriation under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Utah trade secrets statute against both defendants; breach of contract (the non-compete and non-solicitation clauses), breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of the Utah Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act and fraudulent misrepresentation against him; and tortious interference against both defendants. The plaintiffs asked the court to bar him for one year from working on drone technology with Vector, to bar Vector’s drone-related activities for one year, to bar use of the plaintiffs’ trade secrets and to bar solicitation of Red Cat employees for one year; the complaint also sought equitable and compensatory relief and punitive damages in an amount to be proven at trial.⁠[2][1]

He denies the allegations. On August 21, 2025 his attorneys Darren G. Reid, April M. Medley and Zachary D. Williams appeared, and he filed an opposition to the preliminary injunction with his own declaration (an amended declaration followed on August 25). The court’s November 2025 ruling states that he denied deleting anything and denied soliciting employees, and that the defendants said that the Hammer was meant for single-use explosive operations, had been developed by Kaleb Ellis rather than by him, and that the parties were not competitors. Courthouse News Service writes that he said the trade secret accusations were false, that he had not helped develop any drone directly competing with Red Cat’s products, that he had only referred the employees to Vector’s chief executive, and that the Hammer differs from Red Cat’s Black Widow and he did not work on it. The court’s September 2026 ruling states that he had informed the plaintiffs that Vector offered contracted training on warfare technology and leased drones bought from other companies, including the plaintiffs, and that in July 2025 Vector informed the plaintiffs that it was not competing and that its drones were single-use explosive systems. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that in court filings he said that the FANG was to be developed by a third party without Red Cat trade secrets and that the Black Widow and the Hammer serve different purposes and contracts. Vector chief executive Andy Yakulis said in September 2025 that the claims were “without merit” and that the company would defend itself vigorously.⁠[31][2][26][3][5][30]

On August 26, 2025 Magistrate Judge Jared C. Bennett held a video hearing on the motion for expedited discovery, at which the plaintiffs agreed to narrow their requests, including by limiting the period to April 2024 onward. On September 2 he denied the motion, finding that the plaintiffs had not shown good cause: the requests remained overbroad even as narrowed; they targeted mainly past conduct and speculative harm and showed no legitimate purpose; and responding to them and to depositions on tight deadlines would burden the defendants; the pending preliminary injunction motion favored the plaintiffs, while timing was neutral.⁠[27][31]

On September 3, 2025 Vector announced a $61 million Series A to scale production of the Hammer, led by Pelion Venture Partners with participation from Harpoon Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry, Run Ventures, Dauntless Ventures, GSB Backers, Alumni Ventures, Kickstart Fund, Shield Capital, R7, Cambria Group and Stony Lonesome Group; the announcement states that the company was about 14 months old, employed about 150 people and produced the Hammer at its Utah facility. Vector states on its website that in mid-2025 it moved its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, and began shifting from a pure integration company to a vertically integrated defense manufacturer.⁠[30][29]

On September 11, 2025 the two defendants each moved to dismiss the complaint. On October 23 the plaintiffs filed supplemental declarations for the injunction hearing stating that the FANG had been publicly debuted on October 8, 2025 and was “positioned for production at scale”; the defendants objected. On October 29 District Judge Ted Stewart held a hearing on the preliminary injunction.⁠[31][2]

On November 4, 2025 Ted Stewart denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction and overruled the defendants’ objections to the supplemental declarations. The ruling found that the plaintiffs had not shown certain and actual irreparable harm: their claims of unfair competition rested on speculation and disputed facts, with no evidence of lost customers or goodwill; any harm from employee solicitation had already occurred, with no ongoing solicitation alleged, and they had not shown that damages could not be calculated. Key facts, including whether the parties compete, the FANG development timeline, the solicitation, the file deletion and the Orqa deal, were disputed, so the plaintiffs’ right to relief was not “clear and unequivocal”; because their harm was speculative, the balance of hardships favored the defendants; and the court found that a competitive marketplace for warfare drones served the public interest, which an injunction would disturb. The defendants had argued that the requested injunction would “destroy Vector's business.”⁠[2]

Courthouse News Service writes that Ted Stewart, an appointee of Bill ClintonBill ClintonBill Clinton (born 1946) is an American politician and lawyer, a Democrat who served as attorney general and governor of Arkansas and as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001.Open the full entry, found the plaintiffs’ assertions that the defendants had gained an improper head start in the marketplace speculative; Paul Sampson of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (known as Wilson Sonsini) is a law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, founded in 1961 and known for serving technology, life sciences, and other growth companies and their investors; it served as counsel on the initial public offerings of companies including Apple, Netscape, Google, and Tesla. As of December 2025 the firm had more than 1,000 lawyers, and its 2025 revenue was $1.4 billion.Open the full entry, representing Vector, said that the court had correctly found that the plaintiffs “failed to present evidence” and that Vector was confident that “discovery will fully vindicate Vector”; Red Cat’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The article adds that Vector had recently announced a multimillion-dollar contract with U.S. Special Operations Command.⁠[26]

On March 3, 2026 Vector announced a $20 million loan from J.P. Morgan (JPMorgan Chase & Co.JPMorgan Chase & Co.JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a financial holding company headquartered in New York that operates investment banking, consumer and small business financial services, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands; its roots trace back to the Manhattan Company of 1799.Open the full entry) to expand domestic drone manufacturing, strengthen domestic supply chains, expand inventory and scale up the Hammer platform; the announcement states that the company supplies low-cost, attritable small unmanned aircraft systems to the U.S. military and law enforcement and also offers counter-drone services and sensor integration.⁠[32]

The Salt Lake Tribune published a long profile of him on May 15, 2026, writing that the 28-year-old had spent more than half his life working on drones. It writes that Vector produced about 1,000 drones a month in a 35,000-square-foot warehouse in Bluffdale, Utah, with a goal of more than 6,000 a month, planned a 120,000-square-foot facility, employed 125 people, had raised $61 million in Series A venture funding and a further $20 million loan, and held military contracts including one with U.S. Special Operations Command; its signature attack drone could travel more than 10 miles at up to 100 mph and cost about $2,000, and the company followed a “warfare-as-a-service” model including training and rapid modifications for units.⁠[5]

In the profile he said that the U.S. military’s dwindling stockpiles of missiles and bombs worried him, and that “I think if we don't do it, China will”; he summed up the company’s aims as deterrence, patriotism and technological urgency, and said that he still hoped drones would one day become an “aerial companion” for consumers. On the lawsuit, Red Cat declined to comment on it or on him; he declined to discuss it, saying only that he was “excited for that to be over.”⁠[5]

On September 28, 2026 District Judge Ted Stewart denied Vector Defense’s motion to dismiss in full and granted George Matus’s motion in part and denied it in part: the breach-of-contract claim based on the non-solicitation clause was dismissed with leave to amend, and the claim under the Utah Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act was dismissed, while the two trade secret claims against him and the claims for breach of the non-compete clause, breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, tortious interference and fraudulent misrepresentation went forward. The court gave the plaintiffs 14 days to file an amended complaint.⁠[3]

The ruling summarizes the parties’ arguments: he and Vector argued that the complaint named only broad categories such as business plans and drone design rather than a concrete trade secret, that the FANG had been developed by Orqa so that the plaintiffs did not own its design, and that deleting files did not show misappropriation; he also argued that the Hammer is used to “kill” while the plaintiffs’ drone is used to “hunt,” that the parties do not pursue the same contracts, that the solicitation allegations were conclusory and that he was authorized to use his computer. The court found that the complaint identified financial and strategic information such as budgets, forecasts, market strategies and bidding information, business development information and drone design and development, and described secrecy measures such as confidentiality agreements, need-to-know limits and password protection; it noted that the complaint did not allege that he had downloaded confidential information, but held that the totality of the allegations, including that plaintiffs’ employees, most of them drone engineers, had moved to Vector, that Vector had not been in drone development before he joined, and that he had represented that Vector would not compete and then developed an allegedly competing drone within a short time, plausibly supported misappropriation; that the solicitation allegations were conclusory and identified no specific conduct; that the alleged unauthorized wiping of the computer, together with the contract’s return-of-property terms and the alleged loss of more than $5,000, sufficed for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim; that the allegations about the Orqa deal sufficed for the fiduciary duty and tortious interference claims; and that the fraud claim was pleaded with enough particularity, the plaintiffs alleging harm from not enforcing the non-compete for about seven months.⁠[3]

The court wrote that at this stage it accepted the complaint’s well-pleaded facts as true and viewed them in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and that whether the defendants’ assertions about competition were correct would require weighing evidence that it could not consider at this stage, so it did not decide that question.⁠[3]

As of November 2026, the company page of Vector’s website lists him as chief technology officer and co-founder; its biography states that he focuses on delivering new technology to warfighters, began developing drone technology in high school, and over a decade scaled Teal into a leading drone manufacturer that won the U.S. Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program of record, before Teal was acquired by Red Cat Holdings; it also calls him one of the youngest executives to lead a public company and win a U.S. defense program of record.⁠[29]

His full name is George Matus Jr.; his family is from Slovakia, and his first language was Slovak. Entrepreneur writes that his parents met on a flight from Prague to New York, his mother a flight attendant and his father, George Matus Sr., a recent business school graduate; the family flew to Slovakia every summer to visit his maternal grandparents, and his mother’s job gave him access to airliner cockpits. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that his interest in flying began in airliner cockpits before 9/11, and prints a photograph of him at 12 posing with a remote-controlled plane in Slovakia. KSL.com wrote in 2016 that his father was an entrepreneur with his own businesses; The Christian Science Monitor calls him the son of an entrepreneur.⁠[5][14][23][21][12]

Entrepreneur writes that the family moved from San Diego to a Salt Lake City suburb when he was 10; Fortune writes that the family moved from San Diego to Salt Lake City when he was 11, and that the new backyard gave him a place to fly. KSL.com wrote in 2015 that he had flown remote-control planes, helicopters and other unmanned aircraft on a field behind his family’s home since the age of 6. On the age at which he took up flying, KSL.com in October 2016 gives 10, KUTV says that he became interested in drones at 10, Fortune, DroneLife and The Christian Science Monitor give 11, and Quartz says that he had flown drones since 12; The Christian Science Monitor adds that he began building his own drones at 14.⁠[14][19][12][23][15][22][21][20]

Entrepreneur writes that as a child he ran a lemonade stand and, in winter, a hot chocolate stand, and that when a customer bought his remaining inventory for $60 his parents grounded him for two months; the Deseret News writes that he earned the money for his first radio-controlled planes through lemonade stands, magic shows and babysitting. The Salt Lake Tribune writes that as a child he was interested in Pokémon and tennis before returning to remote-controlled planes. KSL.com wrote in 2016 that he saved money to enter the aircraft hobby community on his own and became a regular on hobby forums, and that seeing hobbyists modify their drones gave him the idea of a multi-use drone; Fortune writes that he found an online forum about fixing aircraft and RC planes, which grew into a serious hobby.⁠[14][4][5][23][19]

Entrepreneur writes that his father crashed the first remote-controlled plane he saved up for, that he repaired it and began modifying helicopters and planes, turning his bedroom and then the basement into a laboratory, and that he built a helicopter able to fly for two hours and a drone capable of more than 100 mph. Fortune writes that he bought a helicopter, modified it to fly upside down and posted the video on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry, and that the manufacturer, HorizonHobby, first asked him to take it down and then offered him a part-time job as a test pilot; while still in middle school he was building prototypes. KSL.com wrote in 2015 that he built his first flybarless helicopter at 11 and became a drone test pilot for a large company at 12; KUTV, the Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune also say that he became a test pilot at 12, The Salt Lake Tribune adding that he called it his “dream job”; DroneLife writes that he got his first drone job as a test pilot for a hobby store while in middle school.⁠[14][19][12][15][4][5][22]

On his competitions, KSL.com wrote in 2015 that at 16 he won a global race against 270 pilots; Entrepreneur writes that at 14 he won a world-championship drone race against engineers from Germany, Japan and Russia, and that at 16 he won several hackathons, including one at Stanford University, where he talked about the potential of drones beyond photos and video. KSL.com also wrote in 2015 that he had presented at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry and Stanford University.⁠[12][14]

In his author biography on the Utah Business website he writes that he developed drone technologies as a high school student, that Teal Drones raised several rounds of venture capital and launched four American-made products, and that he holds more than a dozen granted patents. The biography on Vector’s website states that he holds more than 20 granted patents.⁠[9][29]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

Red Cat Holdings: Official website: https://redcat.red/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]

Vector Defense: Official website: https://www.tfvector.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[35]