We told you everyone was making the great leap across the pond. Yesterday, vehicle autonomy software company Applied Intuition announced that it’s officially launching in the UK. The company—which just last week announced two new defense autonomy products—plans to invest £50M ($67M) in the country and open a research and development office in central London.
Tristam Constant, Head of European Government and Defence for Applied Intuition UK, told Tectonic that the office will enable Applied to build bespoke products for the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and expand partnerships on the European continent.
“Europe is rearming. Europe is broadly uplifting defense spending. Here in the UK…[we have a] government that is catalyzed to create an AI powerhouse,” he said, “I think that Applied Intuition’s technology and products are a great fit for that.”
Applied Intuition is a dual-use company, but its UK office will be defense-first, Constant added. The company already has offices in Germany and Sweden.
AI take the wheel: We’ve talked about Applied Intuition before, but here’s a quick rundown. The company:
- Was founded in 2017 as a commercial business and expanded into defense in 2018.
- Started out building software that helps autonomous vehicle companies test their own tech in synthetic environments.
- Works with most major commercial vehicle companies, including Toyota, Volkswagen, and Audi.
- Acquired EpiSci back in December, which expanded the company’s in-house autonomy software footprint
- Was awarded a $171.1M contract with the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) in January to help the DoD develop and test its autonomy software.
Last week, the company unveiled two new product families: Axion and Acuity. The former is a developer resource that helps companies build autonomous systems, and the latter is Applied Intuition’s own autonomy software (built on top of EpiSci’s stack).
Transatlantic: The double whammy of the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s return to office have pushed Europe to, like, majorly reconsider their stance towards defense.
- The EU has just agreed to launch a €150B ($169.5B) loans-for-arms fund that allows countries to borrow from the bloc to buy new and advanced weapons systems. Importantly for our purposes, UK-based companies will be allowed to benefit from the fund.
- Countries across the continent are ramping up spending. The EU’s collective defense spend is expected to reach over €425B ($479B) by 2027. (Right now, it’s €326B)
- The UK in its spring budget announcement allocated £400 million ($538M) towards defense innovation.
- The UK is set to release its Strategic Defense Review next week, which is also likely to push resources toward automated and cutting-edge tech.
This ramp-up has pushed a lot of US defense companies to expand in Europe. Saronic announced an expansion to the UK and Australia last week, and Anduril has floated the idea of building a factory in the UK.
Upgrade ya: When he was appointed last summer, the British Army’s Chief of the General Staff Gen. Sir Roland Walker said he would be laser-focused on modernizing the country’s military to “double lethality.” In particular, he said he would work to upgrade existing, legacy kit with modern software in the shorter term—that’s Applied Intuition’s bread and butter.
“This is why we can help the UK and MoD upgrade. We have the ability to retrofit legacy systems with autonomy, and…we also have the ability to help people develop new autonomous systems,” Constant said.
Constant said that the company had already had “early engagements” with the British Army, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy, but he couldn’t specify what tech had been tested. However, he thinks Applied’s software can work “across all domains,” all the way up to advanced aircraft.
“[We’d] love to support some of those major next-generation fighter jet programs,” Constant said, ”We’ve had successes in that domain in the US and would like to be replicating that here and across Europe.”
Barrier to entry: Export controls around defense capabilities can be tricky (ITAR, anyone?) but Constant said that Applied will keep things above board using AUKUS and the UK-US defense agreement, as well as developing new capabilities domestically in the UK.
- Pillar II of AUKUS calls for member states to mutually develop and share advanced defense technologies.
- The company will also use the core of Applied’s commercial tech to build defense capabilities in-country that are purpose-built for the MoD and European governments.