Baykar Technologies is Turkey's premier defense technology company and the manufacturer of the Bayraktar TB2 — the armed drone that fundamentally altered the geopolitical calculus of drone warfare. What Baykar achieved is remarkable: a privately held Turkish company with no Silicon Valley pedigree built a weapons platform that has been operationally decisive in four separate conflicts across three continents.
The company was founded in 1984 as an automotive software provider and gradually pivoted to defense technology. The decisive inflection point came with the hiring of Selcuk Bayraktar, a MIT-educated engineer who became CTO and married into the Erdogan family in 2016. Under his technical leadership, Baykar transformed from a component supplier into a full-stack drone manufacturer.
The TB2's combat debut in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict — where Azerbaijani TB2s destroyed Armenian armor at will — demonstrated that cheap, AI-guided armed drones could decisively defeat conventional military formations. Ukraine's subsequent use of TB2s against Russian forces in 2022 made Bayraktar a global symbol of asymmetric warfare capability.
Baykar's next-generation systems — the Akinci heavy UCAV and the Kizilelma jet-powered autonomous fighter — represent the company's push toward AI-native autonomous combat aircraft at strategic range.
Baykar is privately held and family-controlled with no stated intention to list publicly. Revenue is estimated at $600M-$1B annually, driven by export contracts. Indirect exposure is available through Turkish defense sector ETFs and through suppliers of TB2 components. The company's geopolitical significance exceeds its financial scale — Baykar has done more to reshape modern warfare doctrine than any company ten times its size. Comparable public companies: Textron (TXT), General Atomics (private), Kratos Defense (KTOS).