One of the big stories in defence tech these days is the role AI is playing in building the next generation of resilience. But so too will be whether countries can build the right hardware to meet whatever challenges are coming around the corner. Today, a startup called Isembard is making a pitch to power that next generation of manufacturing.
Isembard has developed a software platform it calls MasonOS to automate the precision manufacturing that is critical to building components for the next generation of hardware, used in weapons, drones, planes, satellites and much more. To sell Mason to the world, Isembard is adopting a franchising business model to tap the smaller and medium-sized of factories that are often independently owned and exist in countries across the UK, Europe and the US.
“We’re different from a typical manufacturer because of two things. One is that we actually build our own software and that’s what our factories are running on,” Alexander Fitzgerald, the CEO and founder, said in an interview. “The other difference is our business model. We’re building not one large centrifised factory, but a network of small -and medium-sized factories, doing that through a franchise business model.”
Isembard is launching Mason today on stage at the Resilience Conference in London. Fitzgerald said that it’s already signed on a few (undisclosed) large customers — that is, those buying the parts that are being manufactured. Longer term the plan will be to have a mixture of factory users on MasonOS: factories that Isembard might own itself; a wide range of factories that use it on the franchise model; and third parties that license the software as a white-label service to power their own factories.
MasonOS at its most basic is an enterprise resource planning platform to run factories in more integrated ways — and to allow for manufacturing across multiple factories in more integrated ways. Using machine learning and AI, it helps to produce quotes for would-be customers; scheduling to improve efficiency; supply chain automation to help manage inventory; AI inspection for quality control; and in the case of more modern machines, robotics integration to run processes. (It says it is certified for a variety of aerospace, defence and security standards, including AS9100, ISO 9001, ITAR, Cyber Essentials, and JOSCAR.)
Isembard claims that MasonOS increases factory throughput by between 40% and 60%, lowering operating costs by 30%.
The launch of Mason, and Isembard’s push to build out more factory activity comes at an interesting time in the UK.
Manufacturing once dominated the economy, but it’s been on a long decline for the last 70 years. According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, in 2023, manufacturing accounted for just 9% of GDP, down form 18% in 1990. Services, on the other hand, has picked up the slack, growing to contribute more than 80% to GDP in that period.
Yet the state of a country’s manufacturing industry is one of the key vectors to watch when considering the resilience profile of that country. How well it has set up its own economy? Can it safeguard its critical industries?
And in the case of Mason, the critical industry in question — defence — is about more than just economic growth. The geopolitical forces that have driven a lot of founders to think about how they can contribute to the defence economy are the same ones that are boosting defence spending overall — and driving more than 200% growth in VC investment into the sector. That too presents a big driver for Isembard.
Fitzgerald himself landed in defence tech by way of a unique journey. Studying biochemistry at university, he said he always loved to tinker with things as a hobby. He took a turn away from science when he leaned into the growth of deregulated internet in the UK and founded a fibre company called Cuckoo. That was then acquired by a larger competitor, Giganet, which was majority-owned by Octopus Investments.
As he was starting to think about the company that became Isembard and how he could apply the franchising model to resuscitate smaller factors in the UK, he first took a job at one of the biggest and most successful franchise operations in the world, McDonalds. He got onto the management training programme to really learn about how it all worked, and liked it so much that he even paused for a moment to consider whether he should just open some restaurants instead.
He didn’t in the end, and thus in 2024 Isembard was born.
In April 2025, Isembard announced $9 million in seed funding led by Notion Capital, the VC backed in part by the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) and the German Federal Government. 201 Ventures, Basis Capital, Forward Fund, Material Ventures, Never Lift Ventures and NP-Hard Ventures; as well as angel investors Andreas Klinger (Prototype Capital), Charlie Delingpole (ComplyAdvantage), Joshua Western (SpaceForge) and Salar al Khafaji (Monumental) all also participated.
It’s also raised an undisclosed amount of debt for its own factories, he said.
