ARX Robotics, a manufacturer of scalable robotic systems for mass deployment in both defence and commercial applications, announced the successful closure of a €9 million seed funding round. This is the largest seed funding round to date for a European DefenceTech company.
The new funding round will be used to expand the team and scale production capabilities in Europe. With the NATO Innovation Fund as lead investor supported by Project A Ventures and Discovery Ventures, ARX is well positioned to fulfil its mission of contributing to European tech resilience and sovereignty.
According to the German startup, Europe and the Western Allies are lacking mass autonomous unmanned systems to future-proof armed forces in a rapidly changing technological environment. ARX robotic systems want to fill this gap by providing a robust and scalable solution capable of supporting and protecting troops in mission-critical tasks.
At the heart of ARX is the modular GEREON unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) series which can be easily outfitted for a variety of defence scenarios including live fire training and simulation, transport and medical evacuation, or specialised sensor applications in reconnaissance missions. The modularity enables a large variety of mission-specific use cases offering flexibility with add-on and payload solutions.
“The armies of Western democracies are not prepared for robotic warfare. To significantly enhance the capabilities of our armed forces and serve as a force multiplier, an interconnected critical mass of autonomous unmanned ground systems is required. These systems must be simple to manufacture in a decentralized manner and deployable in critical mass. ARX is committed to contributing to European technological sovereignty by scaling up the production of these systems, generating software-defined systems, and developing adaptive hardware to meet the demand for robust and autonomous unmanned systems,” said Marc Wietfeld, CEO and Co-Founder of ARX.
ARX was founded by soldiers-turned-entrepreneurs. The founding team of Marc Wietfeld, Stefan Röbel and Maximilian Wied combines years of military knowledge, engineering skills and business experience.
“We are honored to support ARX and to help them scale production across Europe. As the need to prepare for a future of unmanned warfare continues, ground autonomy remains a difficult problem to solve. Informed by insights from serving in the armed forces, the team at ARX has developed a leading, cost-effective, modular ground system that can be mass-produced and easily deployed in defence, humanitarian crises, and beyond,” Chris O’Connor, NATO Innovation Fund
“We believed in ARX’s potential early on, when we supported their ideation process in our Studio and subsequently led their pre-seed round. Autonomous robots will be a game changer in terms of increasing safety, efficiency and capabilities. The team has demonstrated a remarkable ability to address robust and modular ground robotics at scale in dual-use scenarios for both government and civil customers,” added Uwe Horstmann, Project A Ventures.
