UK-based defence AI startup Agon has launched with $30m (£22.5m) of seed investment.
Agon is building infrastructure that designs, trains and iterates dominant AI systems faster than adversaries. Its synthetic battle arena gives defence companies, AI developers and government evaluators the ability to optimise capability in realistic, contested environments.
Agon says recent conflicts have shown the decisiveness of AI and autonomous systems on the battlefield.
Defence organisations worldwide are spending hundreds of billions building autonomous weapon systems like drones, interceptors and intelligent munitions, but Agon believes the critical infrastructure to train, validate and evolve the AI that controls them does not exist.
Agon’s platform is a synthetic battle arena where autonomous weapon systems learn to fight and are trained against adaptive adversaries drawn from live conflict intelligence at a scale that the firm says the real world cannot provide.
“We have spent the last six months quietly building, partnering with operationally-proven platform builders and assembling a world-class team,” says Tristam Constant, CEO and co-founder at Agon.
“We are in an AI arms race. Agon is developing the infrastructure that will ensure European defence can iterate and orchestrate systems at the pace of the threat.”
The raise and launch of Agon follows a flurry of activity in the UK’s defence sector. In May, thirteen British businesses were awarded contracts of up to £4m to work with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to boost procurement and delivery of cutting-edge technology to the UK Armed Forces.
A few weeks later, BAE Systems committed £43.2m to VC funds focused on backing European defence tech startups.
