A London startup building the training grounds for Europe’s autonomous weapons has come out of stealth with $30mn. It is one of the region’s largest defence-tech seed rounds this year.
Agon is not building the weapons themselves. It is building the infrastructure that trains them: a synthetic combat arena for AI-powered drones, missiles and uncrewed vehicles. There they can practise, take hits and harden before reaching a real battlefield, Resilience Media reported.
The raise splits into a $7mn pre-seed and a $23mn seed. Lakestar, Lux Capital, Northzone and XYZ Venture Capital are among the backers, with 201 Ventures and D3 in the earlier tranche. Lakestar’s Klaus Hommels has joined the board, tech.eu reported. The news was first reported by The Times.
The data bottleneck
The problem Agon is chasing is a shortage of the right data. Modern defence systems run on AI, from command software to the navigation and decision-making inside drones and missiles. All of it needs training data to improve. In defence, that data is scarce, often classified, and scattered across countries reluctant to share it.
