A British defence startup founded by a former Anduril director, which is building virtual battlefields where AI-powered autonomous weapons practice fighting, has today launched, supported by $30m in funding.
The $30m funding round marks one of Europe’s biggest defence technology seed rounds this year and comes amid increased appetite from European governments to embrace modern defence technology, as seen in the war in Ukraine.
The $30m is made of $7m pre-seed funding from Lakestar, 201 Ventures and D3 and angel investors.
This was followed by a $23m seed round from XYZ, Lux Capital and Northzone, with existing investors doubling down significantly and Lakestar’s Klaus Hommels joining the company’s board of directors.
Founded in 2026, Agon is pitching itself as a startup that builds the infrastructure that designs, trains and iterates AI systems faster than adversaries. Its tech will provide its customers with AI training data to help in combat.
Its “synthetic” battlefield is aimed at helping its customers train their weapons to repel enemies, so for instance, using AI technology, counterdrone weapons can practice downing drone swarms. It claims that its technology gives defence companies, AI developers and governments the best chance of success on the battlefield.
UK-founded Agon, which has offices in London and Berlin, was founded by former soldier and former Anduril director Tristam Constant and Junaid Hussain, who is the co-founder of another British defence startup, Cambridge Aerospace and Google-backed AI and gaming company Iconic.
The Agon team includes individuals from Applied Intuition, Google, Helsing, Palantir, Amazon and Unity.
News of the launch of Agon, which says it has signed initial partnerships with European defence autonomy companies, was first reported by The Times.
Constant said: “We have spent the last six months quietly building, partnering with operationally proven platform builders and assembling a world-class team. We are in an AI arms race – Agon is developing the infrastructure that will ensure European defence can iterate and orchestrate systems at the pace of the threat.”
Hussain said: “Our launch today reflects the critical need for Europe to establish its own sovereign defence AI capability and the significant investor confidence in what we are building. With this investment we will now scale and iterate our platform for European end users.”
