AI Vets Raise $32M to Build a Digital Shield for National Security

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – March 02, 2026 – Smack Technologies, an artificial intelligence startup founded by military special operations veterans, has secured $32 million in Series A funding to accelerate the development of what it calls a 'Decision Dominance' platform for the U.S. Department of War and its allies. The funding round signals a significant vote of confidence from Silicon Valley in a new wave of defense technology companies aiming to reshape national security.

The round was co-led by Geodesic Capital and Costanoa Ventures, firms with increasingly deep commitments to the defense tech sector. They were joined by a syndicate of investors including Point72 Ventures, which led the company's seed round, Felicis, Scribble Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta. Smack Technologies states its singular purpose is to build AI capable of "either deterring WWIII or winning it if necessary," a mission that is attracting both capital and scrutiny as AI's role in warfare expands.

From Battlefield to Boardroom: A Mission Forged in Combat

At the heart of Smack Technologies are its co-founders, Andrew Markoff and Clint Alanis, two Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) veterans with over two decades of combined combat experience. Their time on the front lines of the War on Terror directly informs the company's urgent mission. They argue that the U.S. military's decision-making processes, honed over the last twenty years, are ill-suited for the speed and scale of a potential conflict with a peer adversary.

This perspective of "earned insight" is a key differentiator in the burgeoning defense tech space and a major draw for investors. Venture firms like Costanoa Ventures explicitly seek founders with "unmatched operational credibility" to tackle what they call "companies of consequence." Smack's leadership embodies this thesis, translating direct battlefield experience into a clear technological roadmap.

"In the short term, Decision Dominance will be the deciding factor in preventing WWIII because it’s the only achievable goal before 2027,” said Andrew Markoff, Smack's Co-Founder and CEO, in a statement. “Not enough has changed in how we run our decision-making processes in over a decade. In the age of AI and autonomous systems, that’s a significant problem." Markoff's sense of urgency is palpable, framing the company's work not as a business opportunity, but as a national security imperative against a ticking clock.

Inside 'Decision Dominance': The Technology to Deter Conflict

Smack Technologies aims to deliver what it calls 'Decision Dominance'—the ability to process massive, real-time streams of multimodal sensor data and convert them into actionable military decisions faster than an opponent. The company is developing domain-specific AI models, powered by deep reinforcement learning, to achieve this goal.

Its dual product suites, Omega and Alpha, are designed to dismantle the information silos that often plague large military commands. The platforms enable planning across vastly different time horizons simultaneously, from strategic campaign plans months in the future to immediate tactical adjustments in the next few minutes. By creating reasoning models rooted in physics, the system can calculate complex time-space allocations of precious resources in seconds, a task that would take teams of humans hours or days.

This is not merely a theoretical exercise. Smack has already secured contracts with key military innovation hubs, including the Joint Fires Network (JFN) and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL). These early partnerships provide critical real-world data and operational feedback, allowing the company to refine its models for practical battlefield application. The new infusion of capital will be used to scale these efforts, expanding research and development to serve all branches of the U.S. military.

"Smack brings together a deep understanding of sensors and complex systems, physics-based modeling, and advanced reinforcement learning to enable planning, adaptation, and real-time decision-making under pressure," noted Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Partner at Costanoa Ventures. His comments underscore the technical depth required to meaningfully change how critical decisions are made under fire.

The New Arms Race: A Strategic Investment in Defense Tech

The $32 million funding round is more than just a validation of one company; it's a reflection of a broader strategic shift in venture capital. Firms like Geodesic Capital and Point72 Ventures are building entire investment theses around national security, driven by the belief that software, AI, and autonomy will define the next era of global competition.

Geodesic Capital, for instance, recently launched a $250 million fund to bolster U.S.-Japan technology and security collaboration, targeting dual-use technologies like AI and autonomous systems. Point72 Ventures is actively raising a dedicated $400 million "Deterrence" fund for defense and security investments, building a portfolio that already includes other major players like Shield AI. These firms are not just writing checks; they are building ecosystems of innovation aimed at outpacing strategic rivals.

"By embedding national security domain expertise directly into AI models, Smack is building the frontier AI lab that delivers an intelligence layer focused on protecting our country and allies,” said Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, Partner at Geodesic Capital. This statement highlights the core investment thesis: that true advancement in defense AI requires a fusion of deep technical expertise and authentic domain knowledge, a combination Smack's veteran-led team provides.

This trend represents a significant evolution of the military-industrial base, with nimble, venture-backed startups now working in parallel with traditional defense contractors to provide cutting-edge capabilities to the warfighter.

The Ethical Frontier of an AI-Powered Military

As Smack Technologies and its peers push the boundaries of military AI, they also bring complex ethical questions to the forefront. The very mission—to build AI to help win a war—forces a confrontation with the role of autonomous systems in life-and-death decisions. Deep reinforcement learning, the core technology Smack employs, involves models that learn and adapt on their own, raising concerns about predictability, control, and accountability in the chaos of conflict.

Policy analysts and ethicists continue to debate the necessity and structure of maintaining a "human-in-the-loop" for lethal decision-making. While platforms like Smack's are designed as decision-support tools to augment human commanders, the speed at which they operate could pressure humans to cede more and more control to the machine simply to keep pace.

The concept of achieving 'Decision Dominance' itself implies a speed and complexity that may outstrip traditional oversight and legal frameworks for armed conflict. The challenge for the Department of War and its partners is to develop and deploy these powerful new tools while simultaneously building the ethical guardrails and policies to govern their use. As this new generation of AI technology is integrated into the armed forces, the debate over its responsible application will become a central issue for policymakers, military leaders, and the public alike.