It’s been quite the week for our friends across the pond at Eurosatory this week, and by the sounds of it, the continent’s defense buildup is showing no signs of slowing down.
At least not if French planning and C2 company Comand AI has anything to do with it.
This morning, the Paris-based startup announced in an exclusive interview with Tectonic at Eurosatory that it’s raised a $32M Series A led by Blossom Capital (with participation from Expeditions) and inked a deal (and scored some strategic investment) from Saab.
Comand AI CEO Loïc Mougeolle told Tectonic that the plan is to scale up and build their platform—starting with their AI-native battlefield management and planning tool, Prevail—into the leading C2 tool in Europe (and around the world).
“We are moving from a battlefield governed by words to a battlefield governed by mathematics. Operations where orders were given by speech and text are giving way to operations where perception, decision and action are defined and executed by algorithms,” Mougeolle said in a statement. “We are honoured to be collaborating with Saab to set a new state-of-the-art in C5ISR and deliver it at scale to NATO forces and allies.”
Plan it out: Comand has quietly been making some pretty big moves in the European defense tech space since it was founded by Mougeolle and Antoine Chassang back in 2023.
- The premise the company is built around is that most C2 and battlefield management tools are actually, like, pretty old, with new tech (like AI and data fusion) just tacked on top. Comand AI has built its stack as AI-native from the ground up.
- The company’s flagship tool—Prevail—takes the very annoying and arduous task of battlefield management and mission planning and uses AI to make it faster and (at least in theory) better.
- The tool analyzes terrain and mission data, synthesizes intelligence feeds, and suggests courses of action and operational plans for users. After all is said and done, it can also do after-action reviews and pull out lessons learned.
And their stuff is, like, actually being used.
- Prevail is on “programs of record in Europe,” per Mougeolle (though he couldn’t say which).
- They’ve deployed it in France, with the German armed forces, and in Ukraine through a team-up with Ukrainian company Griselda—all in the past 12 months.
- Mougeolle says—in particular in Ukraine—they work with users to tweak the tool to meet their needs and fit it within their existing C2 stack. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.
BFFs: But the company isn’t stopping with the battlefield management stuff. Planning is just the beginning, per Mougeolle, and it sounds like the partnership with Saab will be a big step towards expanding the scope of the platform.
The team-up has “three threads,” Mougeolle said.
- First, they will build Prevail into Saab’s C2 system (already deployed with military users).
- Second, they will work with Saab to build new software capabilities for GlobalEye, Saab’s multi-role airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.
- They will also work with the company “on the foundations of a next-generation C2 ecosystem.”
It’s a bird, it’s a plane: Along with the raise (and partnership), they’re also going cross-domain—with the Saab partnership, Comand is officially expanding from land into air, and will push into maritime later this year. All of this will help the team build towards that end-to-end C2 solution.
“We are building all the key building blocks of the C2,” Mougeolle said. “Specifically, the common operating picture, the targeting, and also we are looking at different [areas], like logistics, for instance.”
Growth spurt: A lot of this new cash money, it sounds like, will help the company scale up real quick.
- Mougeolle says they’ll triple the size of the team from about 30 to 90.
- They’re opening a German office and plan to expand further (like, across Europe and to NATO allies) soon. Mougeolle says he also sees a lot of opportunity in East Asia.
Mr. Worldwide status, here we come.