Smack Technologies has raised $32 million in seed and Series A funding to build what it describes as the first frontier AI lab built specifically for national security. The Series A round was led by Geodesic Capital and Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Felicis, First In, Scribble Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Washington Harbor Partners, Palumni VC, Fulcrum Venture Group, Anomaly Fund, and Fortitude Ventures. The seed round was led by Point72 Ventures.

The company’s stated purpose is direct: deliver what it calls Decision Dominance to the U.S. Department of War, its allies, and partners.

That concept refers to the ability to process large volumes of multimodal sensor data in real time and convert those inputs into the right decisions across the Kill Chain faster than adversaries can.

The Problem Smack Was Built to Solve

After two decades of counterterrorism operations, the U.S. military’s decision-making infrastructure has not kept pace with the speed that modern conflict demands. Smack’s founders argue that three things are needed to prepare for a potential large-scale confrontation with a peer adversary: rebuilding the military industrial base, scaling autonomous systems, and achieving Decision Dominance. The company was founded to address the third.

The window to act is narrow. Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Markoff has been direct about the urgency.

“Decision Dominance will be the deciding factor in preventing WWIII because it’s the only goal that’s achievable before 2027. 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.”

Andrew Markoff, Co-Founder and CEO at Smack Technologies

How the Funds Will Be Used

The new capital will go toward expanding Smack’s technical team and accelerating research and development across its two product suites, Omega and Alpha. Both are designed to remove siloed decision-making within the Department of War and enable campaign-informed planning across three time horizons: one to six months ahead, one to four days ahead, and in real time.

Smack has already moved beyond the concept stage. The company has secured contracts with multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces, including the Joint Fires Network and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. The funding will allow it to scale those relationships and expand to serve all military branches.

About Smack Technologies

Smack Technologies was co-founded in 2024 by Andrew Markoff and Clint Alanis, both veterans of MARSOC, the Marine Special Operations Command. Together, they bring more than twenty years of combined combat experience. Their time in the field gave them a firsthand understanding of where military decision-making breaks down, and that experience directly shaped what Smack is building.

The company’s core technology is domain-specific AI powered by deep reinforcement learning. Unlike general-purpose AI systems, Smack’s models are built for the specific demands of military planning and real-time operational decisions. The physics-based reasoning approach the team is developing is designed to handle time-space calculations with limited resources under pressure.

The Investors Behind the Round

The Series A introduced several new backers alongside returning investors. Scribble Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Washington Harbor Partners, and Fortitude Ventures joined the round for the first time. The seed round had already established a foundation with Point72 Ventures at the lead.

“Andrew and his team demonstrate a level of technical leadership and operational judgment that very few achieve. 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, meaningfully changing how critical decisions get made when it matters most.”

Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Partner at Costanoa Ventures

Origianl Creator: Ekaterina Pisareva
Original Link: https://justainews.com/companies/funding-news/smack-technologies-raises-32m-for-defense-ai/
Originally Posted: Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:22:18 +0000