The Pulse
Primordial Labs raises $18M for military command platform
Primordial Labs raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Ballistic Ventures. The funding will be used to expand Anura deployments and its engineering, product and growth teams.
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Funding and product
Primordial Labs raised $18 million in a Series A round to expand the deployment of Anura, its natural-language command-and-control platform for military systems. Ballistic Ventures led the round, with existing investors Squadra Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures also participating.
The funding will support Anura deployments across Department of War programs and further its work on human-machine teaming. Anura is Primordial Labs’ product for letting crews interact with onboard systems through natural language.
How Anura works
Primordial Labs describes Anura as a virtual teammate that lets crews direct onboard sensors, communications, displays and connected uncrewed systems, and says the platform gives machines an understanding of the real-time operating environment so crews and systems can work from a shared picture.
Operators give systems goals and constraints in natural language, Primordial Labs says. Anura then breaks that intent into tasks, coordinates and carries them out, checks the outcome and adjusts when conditions change.
Co-founder and CEO Lee Ritholtz said crews are being asked to use more capabilities with fewer people, at greater speed and with less training time. He said the company is delivering licenses to the Army and SOCOM and sees demand across ground vehicle crew stations, aircraft cockpits and dismounted soldiers.
Current military work
Anura is integrated on more than a dozen crewed and uncrewed platforms across land and air, Primordial Labs says. On land, a master teaming agreement announced with General Dynamics Land Systems on Oct. 7, which Primordial Labs says is intended to bring Anura to ground combat vehicles across General Dynamics Land Systems’ portfolio, includes the Abrams tank.
The company is delivering licenses for small uncrewed aircraft systems to multiple Army and special operations units, and sells them through the Army’s UAS Marketplace. Two 2026 Small Business Innovation Research Phase III awards extend that work to Army rotary-wing aircrews and the Air Force’s MQ-9 ground control station, the company says.
Expansion plans and origins
The new funding is intended to expand Primordial Labs’ engineering, product and growth teams, support delivery of Anura across Department of War programs already under contract, and extend the product to new platforms, domains and allied markets. The company says it is focused on the warfighter today, and that the same interface burden is emerging wherever people work alongside intelligent machines, from mining and energy to logistics and public safety.
Ritholtz and co-founder and CTO Adrian Pope met at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, where they built and deployed small uncrewed aircraft systems and payloads. They later helped found the Lockheed Martin Artificial Intelligence Center; their work also included autonomous platform control, special mission payloads and human-machine teaming.
Primordial Labs was founded in 2021 by former Lockheed Martin Skunk Works engineers and is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. The team includes engineers and former special operators with experience deploying technology, Primordial Labs says.