35 millió dolláros tőkével indult el a katonai AI-t fejlesztő Watchtower

Early last year, Raj Shah and Akhil Iyer were in Hawaii meeting with the man entrusted with protecting American defense interests across 14 time zones when they heard a request for a startup. As the leader of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo is responsible for a fleet of about 200 ships and hundreds of thousands of personnel, from Indian Ocean waters where his fleet has faced off with Iranian ships, to waters off Taiwan. TIME recently called him “The Admiral Who Must Prevent War With China” in a September cover story. And as Admiral Paparo met with the investors from Shield Capital, a defense-focused venture capital firm, he highlighted a particular need: logistics, and logistics planning. Despite recent advances in AI and data software, important troop or ship movements still got decided in Excel spreadsheets, then emailed around. It was a problem that resonated with Shah, Shield’s founder and a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, and Iyer, a combat veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps’ special operations command who served tours in Iraq. “There was a very clear signal and demand from the partner warfighter,” Iyer says. “We don’t have the resources that we would like to be able to defend across this space, so we have to optimize as best and as fast as possible.” But when they looked around for an investment to bring back to the admiral, they couldn’t find one. So they decided to build it. Upstarts Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, become a free or paid subscriber. Nearly two years later, that startup is decloaking out of stealth: Watchtower Labs. Incubated out of Shield Capital with Iyer as its CEO, Watchtower launches today with $35 million in funding co-led by Shield and Conviction, with participation from U.S. government-linked In-Q-Tel (IQT), and Founders Fund. What Watchtower is building: a software suite that combines advances in AI with in-house simulation work to help defense planners make critical logistical decisions. Users – picture the officers who report up to senior command with recommended actions or contingency plans – ask questions in natural language, and Watchtower’s locally run software uses LLMs to find and process the corresponding data, to best understand the scenario and its context. Watchtower then runs simulations by the thousands to return likely contingencies or suggested actions via a custom dashboard or an easily sharable artifact, like a presentation. What happens if anti-air missile supplies run short, or there’s a cyber disruption? What does protracted conflict with Iran mean for capabilities in a hypothetical escalation with China? “We’re building a product that peers into the future, at the distribution of outcomes that could be,” Iyer says. “Ideally, it’s early enough where you can do something about it.” With a distributed team of nearly 30 across the Bay Area, Hawaii, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., Watchtower already has several early, prototype-style contracts with major operational commands, the startup says, as well as several other pilot customers that Iyer says he has to keep even more vague. 🎧 The Upstarts Podcast 🎧 is back, and last week we chatted with Neko Health CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne about his novel 1-hour, full body health scan. Check it out on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions and record venture investment in defense startups, Watchtower is interesting for several reasons. First, there’s its technological approach: leveraging the latest in AI, but not a pure AI play itself, that slots in alongside (but purports not to compete directly with) other tools popular with defense buyers, like Anduril or Palantir. “You cannot LLM your way to supply chain optimization,” says Iyer. Second, there’s the urgency that Iyer describes his prospective buyer as feeling. Resources feel scarce, he says. And while he doesn’t name specifics, recent