Europe is betting big on artificial intelligence playing a significant role in how defence will be planned and executed in the future, and today a European startup announced a significant funding round to improve its aim in the field. Comand AI, a French company developing AI-based command-and-control software, has closed a Series A of €32 million. The deal was announced and signed earlier today in Paris at the Eurosatory defence conference.
London firm Blossom Capital is leading the round, with Sweden’s Saab coming in as a strategic investor and previous backer Expeditions also participating. Expeditions this week got a boost in its coffers from a new LP, BAE Systems, so technically you could argue there are several strategics involved here. The company is not disclosing its valuation. It previously had raised around $12 million, per PitchBook figures.
The company will use the funding for hiring but also product development: it’s already offering mission planning, analytics and an operations overview that integrates sensor data, outside data feeds and other data readouts from equipment in the field; it plans also to bring in geolocation and force tracking in electronic warfare environments.
The funding is coming at a heady time for defence, and specifically AI in defence, amid larger conversations around resilience and sovereignty.
Commonly abbreviated as “C2”, platforms for command and control are essentially the operating systems underpinning military operations. They bring in disparate data sources to develop larger operational pictures, give information on what is being used and where, operate remote equipment, communicate with people in the field, understand what the adversary’s position is, plan manoeuvres, and run analytics on events to make sense of them. These have existed for a long time, but the newest generation of C2 platforms are being supercharged with AI to bring in more functionality to the user, and to bring in more data sources — often from AI-powered hardware.
Platform players have come to dominate the technology landscape, and many believe that a similar scenario might play out in defence tech, so this is leading not only a range of startups like Comand AI to build C2, but also the biggest players in the space, such as Anduril (Lattice), Palantir (Maven), Helsing (Altra), Shield AI (Commander) and more.
Companies building AI-powered hardware are seeing a boost of interest as European militaries — watching how war is playing out in Ukraine — look to update their stocks with more modern, and less expensive, alternatives. That has led to startups like Helsing AI joining the ranks of the most valuable companies in Europe. The same is now playing out in command-and-control, with AI presenting a chance to update and improve the systems that people use to run campaigns.
But one big question that has been arising is if European upgrades are resilient and sovereign enough. Notably, some have highlighted recent projects, like NATO’s to roll out Palantir’s Maven system to deliver AI capability to warfighters, as examples of how Europe still lacks viable, homegrown alternatives, if ultimately the aim is to have systems in place that are less dependent on tech from the US and China.
This is where a company like Comand AI could come into play.
“We are moving from a battlefield governed by words to a battlefield governed by mathematics. Operations where orders were given by speech and text are giving way to operations where perception, decision and action are defined and executed by algorithms,” said Loïc Mougeolle, co-founder and CEO of Comand AI, in a statement. “The nations that adapt fastest will prevail. We need deep European partnerships that can have global impact between established leaders and next-generation players. We are honoured to be collaborating with Saab to set a new state of the art in C5ISR and deliver it at scale to NATO forces and allies.”
The landscape for using AI on the battlefield is becoming an increasingly crowded one and so AI companies are in a land grab right now to sign up integration partners and the seeds of customers in hopes of growing them into much bigger trees.
Comand AI says that in the last year its Prevail platform has been “deployed “with operational units in France, Germany, Ukraine and other unnamed allied nations — although it is not specific about how extensive those deployments are.
In addition to Palantir — which is also deploying a number of other AI services in Ukraine — other companies building AI tooling for command and control and other military functions include another French company, Harmattan; Oxford Dynamics out of the UK; and the US-based Anduril, which is seeing its Lattice platform deployed in the region.
A lot of startups are tying up with larger primes and other industrial giants to help scale up and sell to governments, with the larger partners tying up to bring more innovation into the legacy mix.
Saab said it will work with Comand AI to develop new software for GlobalEye, Saab’s multi-role airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft; as well as “work on the foundations of a next-generation C2 ecosystem” by integrating Prevail.
“C5ISR systems are central to modern multi-domain operations, and advanced AI is an important enabler for future capability,” said Carl-Johan Bergholm, head of business area surveillance at Saab, in a statement. “By partnering with Comand AI, we are strengthening the development of Saab’s C2 and C5ISR capabilities while bringing Swedish defence expertise and French AI innovation together. This collaboration also underlines the value of European cooperation in support of long-term security.”
