# Vannevar Labs Palo Alto-based defense AI startup building agentic AI for national security, pre-trained for intelligence missions. Named after [[Vannevar Bush]], the WWII-era science advisor who conceived the modern military-industrial research complex. ## Key Facts - **Total raised:** $91.5M across 3 rounds. - **$99M DIU production contract** (2025) to bring intelligence tech to more military units. - **125+ deployments** across DOD and U.S. government as of 2026. - Building toward a unified platform for "agentic warfare" — AI agents tailored to specific missions. ## Focus Areas - Disrupting Russian and Chinese misinformation campaigns - Maritime intelligence and surveillance - Nontraditional intelligence collection - De-escalation and conflict deterrence ## Significance Vannevar Labs represents the "quiet disruptor" archetype — less flashy than [[Anduril]] or [[Palantir]] but deeply embedded in intelligence operations. Their focus on agentic warfare (autonomous AI agents making intelligence decisions) is the bleeding edge of military AI, going beyond the analytics-focused approach of [[Palantir]] and into territory where AI agents actively conduct intelligence operations. MIT Technology Review profiled them under the headline "Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military." ## Katherine Boyle Connection [[Katherine Boyle]] invested in Vannevar Labs' inception round while at [[General Catalyst]] — one of the two investments (alongside [[Anduril]]'s seed round) that defined her career before launching [[American Dynamism]] at [[Andreessen Horowitz]]. Vannevar Labs is thus part of the origin story of the entire American Dynamism thesis, even though it's not clear the company is in a16z's current portfolio. ## See Also - [[Palantir]] - [[Scale AI]] - [[Dual-Use AI]] - [[Defense Innovation Unit]] - [[Katherine Boyle]] - [[Andreessen Horowitz]] - [[American Dynamism]]