Pentagon pressure to accelerate AI drives new Smack funding round, CEO says
Tactical decisions in future conflicts will need to be made on the battlefield before data reaches centralized systems.
Visitors stand near an artificial intelligence sign at an AI robots booth at Security China, an exhibition on public security, in Beijing, China June 7, 2023. – REUTERS
Smack Technologies, a defense technology startup that builds artificial intelligence decision-making tools for the military, is raising funds to accelerate production of its flagship product and make wearable AI hardware designed for the battlefield.
The $61 million Series B funding round comes months after the Department of Defense declared Anthropic a “supply chain risk” in March, a rift that sent military branches scrambling to diversify their AI suppliers and turned startups like Smack from afterthoughts into hot products.
Those anthropogenic consequences led Smack to hold talks in the spring with the Marine Corps and Navy, said co-founder and CEO Andy Markoff, and both branches of the military pressured the company to accelerate production.
The urgency arises from a broader concern he sees within the Pentagon: A future conflict with a peer adversary would be fought in a decentralized, communications-degraded environment, where troops cannot rely on constant relaying of data to well-connected operations centers, as the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read: The Pentagon reaches agreements with the main artificial intelligence companies
“The future of warfare… will be more decentralized than any conflict we have ever fought,” Markoff said, adding that most tactical decisions will have to be made on the battlefield before data reaches centralized systems.
Smack’s core technology, Omega, shortens the Marine Corps’ fire planning process: deciding what to target and how, and adapting in real time when munitions, sensors or shooters are left out of a battle plan.
In July, Smack announced it had won two prototyping contracts, from Joint Fires Network (JFN) and Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. The values were not disclosed, but the company said they were collectively worth more than seven figures.
The valuation used in the Series B round was not disclosed. Participants included Costanoa Ventures, First In, Point72 Ventures and Geodesic Capital, among others.
Read more: Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok was used in attacks on Iran: US government
The company said Omega uses real-time computer vision and reinforcement learning models to generate options in minutes and repair overturned battle plans in seconds, addressing a kill chain that the company describes as “vulnerable to disruption and too slow to adapt” in fast-moving combat.
The new funding will accelerate production of Omega and fund the development of Alpha, a flexible forearm AI display intended to replace the makeshift whiteboards that troops have historically strapped to their arms in the field.
The company has an office in Austin, Texas, dedicated to this effort and aims to build between 10 and 20 prototype units over the next six months.
Smack has grown from 19 employees in April to 51 today, with plans to reach approximately 85 by the end of the year.
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