Defense technology startup ai/”>ai Shield has expanded its latest funding round with another $300 million in equity and debt, bringing its Series F total to $500 million, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
This total amount reflects $200 million in equity closed in November, $100 million in new equity raised at the Series F price, and $200 million in debt. The debt provider is Hercules Capital; Shield declined to specify the source of the additional capital. The company's valuation now stands at $2.8 billion, up from $2.7 billion in November.
Shield ai is building an “ai pilot” to turn planes into autonomous systems. Its flagship product, Hivemind, will allow aircraft equipment to operate independently of remote operators, communications or GPS. Shield CEO and co-founder Ryan Tseng attributes the capability to recent advances in computing.
“ai pilots are becoming a strategic conventional deterrent in their class with our aircraft carriers and
submarines with guided missiles,” he said in a statement. “But interestingly, it is the first software-defined strategic deterrent and has only recently been made possible by advances in artificial intelligence and computing power. “This is a huge paradigm shift for the aerospace and defense industry.”
While venture debt plays a bad role, it can make a lot of sense, especially for late-stage companies that need an injection of capital to reach the goal (such as profitability or exit). Rather than being a last-ditch survival mechanism for struggling companies (as it can sometimes be for early-stage startups), later-stage venture debt can be a smart way to capitalize on a growing company in the future. the last stage.
The San Diego-based company recently launched V-BAT Teams, a software product that operates with Hivemind and enables V-BAT drone teams to execute missions autonomously and in a coordinated manner.
In recent testimony before the US Senate, President and Co-Founder Brandon Tseng highlighted the importance of ai-piloted systems to the country's overall deterrence strategy, saying: “We believe that ai-piloted systems will be the biggest element of our generation's military deterrent. We must do it well.” However, he added that incorporating ai pilots into the DOD force structure had been “difficult and murky.”
“As we see new types of warfare, where the large exceptional military arsenals we have built can be incapacitated by small, cheap adversary weaponry, we need the Department of Defense to change the way it builds its force of the future: moving away from the paradigm of what worked in the past and focus your resources on the next game-changing technology assets,” he said. “Adopt ai pilots that are too slow and we will fail. Bold actions are required if we want to win.”
