The boys in Bozeman are back with some news.
Yesterday, Montana-based mapping and intelligence startup Reveal Technology announced that it’s snapped up Anomaly Six (A6), a “a multi-domain digital intelligence company,” and will integrate “A6’s global location and behavioral-pattern solutions with Reveal’s autonomous tactical ecosystem.”
In normal-people speak? Reveal is folding A6’s ability to track and analyze where people and devices are in the real world into its own mapping and domain awareness software—giving commanders a clearer picture of what’s happening on the ground.
Map it out: Reveal is one of those companies founded by ex-military to try and fix the really annoying stuff operators have to do on the battlefield—in this case, mapping with pen and paper.
- CEO Garrett Smith set up the company in 2018 based on his experience in the Marines. “We’d have to go around a corner or over a hill, and the terrain on the other side was in no way represented on that map,” Smith told Tectonic in an interview last summer. “You’re making all these crazy, impactful decisions on the fly with almost no situational awareness.”
- The company’s flagship Farsight software—developed with USSOCOM—turns drone video into high-resolution 3D maps on mobile devices within minutes (and offline). Good for those particularly edgy environments.
- It can import and export maps and data to platforms like the Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK), has been deployed with USSOCOM since 2021 and is in operational use with the Army, Marines, and international partners, including Ukraine and the UK.
- Last year, the company acquired DFL Technologies and rolled out a mobile, offline biometric identity verification platform called Identifi.
And the company has been low-key minting. They raised a $11.2M Series A in December 2024, then a $30M Series B last summer.
Out of the shadows: A6’s software will bring more of the human element into Reveal’s tech mix.
- The slightly shadowy company was founded back in 2018 by two former military intelligence officers and is based in Alexandria, VA.
- A6’s software basically uses mobile phones and applications to spy on people. The software is embedded in over 500 mobile applications, according to the company, and gives users the ability to track hundreds of millions of phones. In one presentation, according to reporting in The Intercept, the company said it could track 3B phones in real time.
- The company has drawn some scrutiny for, well, using phones to track people—A6 once demonstrated the efficacy of its tech by tracking the phones of people in the CIA and NSA.
- In 2020, SOCOM paid A6 about $500K for a “Commercial Telemetry Feed” (and Vice wrote a very Vice-like article about it). A SOCOM spokesperson told Vice that “the purpose of the contract was to evaluate the technical feasibility of using Anomaly 6 telemetry services in an overseas operating environment” and that they did not extend it.
Stay vigilant: Put simply, it sounds like Reveal will build this tracking software into its mapping tech, giving operators a view of not only the physical terrain, but the people wandering about it. “Together, the companies are delivering one of the few platforms purpose-built for the tactical edge, unifying physical, human, and digital terrain into a single operational capability,” the companies wrote in a statement.
Reveal will “integrate Anomaly Six’s capabilities into its broader platform in a phased manner, with enhanced digital terrain and multi-domain intelligence features becoming available to government and allied customers over time.” A6 will keep operating out of Virginia and “serving its current customer base without disruption.”
The companies did not reveal the value of the deal.