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NEWS In undersea news, Anduril released an AI-powered undersea sensor for submarine detection. The undersea nodes are designed to be dropped on the sea floor and networked together. A few days later it also released a novel autonomous torpedo, designed to launch from torpedo tubes of regular submarines or uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs). The two announcements are a clear statement of intent. Having laid claim to the skies, Anduril now wants to own the undersea domain. And rightly so. The battle for underwater dominance went out of fashion after the Cold War, but it is back. In February the UK announced Project CABOT, a plan to deploy an autonomous anti-submarine screen in the North Atlantic. Last week Russia announced plans to build eight new multi-purpose submarines, and China has recently developed a deep-water cable cutting device. This is underwater warfare, but not as we know it. Recent developments in autonomous technology are transforming what was once the realm of high-cost, slow-build traditional submarines. That shift opens up a huge market opportunity. Anduril is looking to modularise undersea capability the way it has with drone systems, but it is not alone. The race is on to build the infrastructure layer for autonomous subsea operations. In quantum computing news, DARPA has dramatically expanded its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, adding 20 new companies. The programme is designed to determine if any quantum computing approach could become utility-scale by 2033. Most of the world’s top quantum computing companies are now included. That, in itself, is quite an achievement. Companies building quantum computers are notoriously secretive about their technology. By and large they don’t like working with other quantum companies. But the potential funding on offer - reportedly in the hundreds of millions - is too large to ignore. This has a uniquely DARPA edge to it though. Initial funding is relatively small: to unlock the full amount a company must progress through all phases of the programme, which will mean offering up a lot of its technological secret sauce to the Pentagon. The potential prize, however, is a long-term contract with the US government. That is a difficult opportunity to pass up. In disinformation news, Russian networks are apparently flooding the internet with propaganda, aiming to corrupt AI chatbots so that they reproduce disinformation and propaganda. This is a different approach to China, which has developed its own LLM, Deepseek. While Deepseek has been tuned to reflect Chinese state propaganda, Russia’s strategy seeks to compromise the Western models which often curate and validate information for their users. This is a test case for the resilience of LLMs that are still in their formative stages, heavily reliant on unfiltered datasets and continuously evolving algorithms. These efforts to deliberately poison their training data are an innovative variation on traditional Russian disinformation strategy. It will be interesting to see if they work. FUNDRAISING SandboxAQ, a US-based developer of AI and quantum software, raised a $150m Series E extension at a $5.8bn valuation. Cyberhaven, a US-based developer of AI-powered data protection software, raised a $100m Series D round. Aetherflux, a US-based developer of low earth orbit satellite constellation designed to transmit solar energy to earth, raised a $50m Series A round. Portal Space Systems, a US-based developer of a novel spacecraft, raised a $17.5m Seed round. SpinLaunch, a US-based developer of novel space launch technology, received a $12m investment from Kongsberg. YRIKKA, a US-based developer of AI red teaming tools for cybersecurity teams, raised a $1.5m Pre-seed round.
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