Occam Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous drone operations, has raised €3 million (£2.6M) in a Pre-Seed funding round after completing assessment for integration testing with Ukraine’s defense tech cluster, Brave1.
The round was led by Presto Tech Horizons, a resilience-focused venture fund backed by defense-industrial partner Czechoslovak Group. Additional participation came from Antler, US-based Freedom Fund, Copenhagen-based TYR.vc, and a group of defense and security sector angel investors.
The funding will support further deployment in Ukraine, continued product development, and collaboration with European defense partners.
Moving beyond human-controlled drone operations
Despite the widespread use of low-cost drones in modern conflicts, most systems still rely heavily on continuous human control, limiting scalability. Occam aims to remove that bottleneck with a software-only autonomy stack.
Its platform enables drones to operate independently of GPS or external communications, making them resilient to signal interference and jamming. Systems that previously required live piloting can instead be deployed rapidly and operate autonomously once launched.
Ukraine has become one of the most demanding environments for testing such capabilities. In 2025 alone, tens of thousands of drone attacks were recorded, with unmanned systems accounting for the overwhelming majority of aerial weapons deployed. Within this context, Occam’s participation in Brave1 field evaluations marked a shift from controlled demonstrations to validation under live operational conditions.
Gui Wainwright, Co-founder and CEO of Occam, described Ukraine as the most challenging environment globally for autonomous systems, where reliability, latency, and operator load are tested under real combat pressure.
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Accelerating adoption and European partnerships
Following its evaluation through Brave1, collaboration is now being explored between Occam and selected Ukrainian manufacturers. This represents one of the early examples of Western-developed AI autonomy being integrated into Ukrainian unmanned platforms.
Capital from the Pre-Seed round will be used to accelerate adoption across the Ukrainian front line and expand autonomous support capabilities. In parallel, Occam has begun paid pilot projects with European defense primes, with deployments expected within the year.
Matej Luhovy, Partner at Presto Tech Horizons, emphasized the company’s ability to deploy and iterate rapidly under real-world constraints, highlighting its GPS-independent, connectivity-free autonomy stack as a differentiated capability in modern defense.
From experimental autonomy to operational deployment
Bridging the gap between experimental AI autonomy and reliable battlefield deployment remains one of the central challenges in defense innovation. Occam’s team, drawing from backgrounds in robotics, logistics, and defense, is focused on operational trust and reliability rather than short-term technological novelty.
Field tests conducted in late January through Ukraine’s TEST in Ukraine platform paved the way for a Proof of Concept based on a Ukrainian unmanned system. Successful validation could lead to scaled deployment with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Andrii Hrytseniuk, CEO of Brave1, described Ukraine as a proving ground for emerging defense technologies, particularly AI-enabled systems, and emphasized the importance of collaboration with international partners.
Beyond Ukraine, Occam is building strategic relationships with European defense companies seeking to strengthen NATO-aligned capabilities.
Sir Alex Younger, former Director General of MI6 and advisor to Occam, framed autonomous defense systems as part of a broader shift toward innovation-driven security capabilities in modern warfare.
About Occam Industries
Occam Industries is a defense technology company developing software-only autonomous systems for unmanned platforms. By enabling drones to operate without GPS or external communications, Occam aims to deliver resilient, scalable autonomy designed for high-pressure operational environments.
