Autonomous army plane maker Defend AI has raised $1.5 billion in Collection G funding at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, the corporate announced on Tuesday. The deal was led by PE agency Creation (which has a $1 billion price range to spend money on protection tech, it says) and a JPMorganChase funding group.
As well as, Defend AI bought $500 million of most popular shares to funds managed by Blackstone (and likewise lined up a $250 million mortgage that it will possibly draw on later). This capital helps Defend purchase Aechelon Know-how, maker of flight simulation tech used to coach U.S. army pilots. Phrases of that acquisition weren’t disclosed.
The brand new spherical comes after Defend raised $240 million at a $5.3 billion valuation in March 2025. Which means its worth leaped 140% in a single 12 months. There’s an excellent purpose for that: Defend AI’s Hivemind autonomy software program was selected in February as a supplier for the U.S. Air Power Collaborative Fight Plane drone prototype program.
Apparently, Defend’s software program was chosen to work with competitor Anduril for its “Fury” autonomous fighter jet. Anduril, after all, has its personal software program, referred to as Lattice, to command its Fury plane. However the Air Power clearly doesn’t need to be locked right into a single vendor for the entire stack of its next-gen warfighter drone fleet.
Nonetheless, Anduril will hardly be phased by sharing a few of the spoils. It final raised $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation in June and phrase on the road is that it’s seeking to elevate as much as $8 billion at $60 billion valuation.
Different buyers collaborating in Defend’s Collection G embody Snowpoint Ventures, InnovationX, Riot Ventures, Disruptive, and Apandion.
