Watchtower Labs raises $35m for scenario-simulation platform for military planners

Watchtower Labs announced a $35m round. Company founder Akhil said it was led by Neptune Capital; other named participants included Sarah at Conviction, Trey at Founders and Inky Tales.

The company is building a platform for military planners and decision-makers that combines AI and simulation to model possible future scenarios and support decisions in conflict, competition and crisis. Akhil said the initial focus is logistics and supply-chain constraints that could limit future operations.

The platform uses natural language to lower the barrier to creating multiple courses of action and exploring disruptions and what-if factors. Akhil stressed that simulation does not make “black swans” impossible: the tool is meant to help planners discuss options and prepare. The company has developed an in-house simulation tool that connects a frontier model to a suitable harness and produces outputs interpretable by everyday users. Deployment with government customers, he said, depends on available infrastructure and the particularities of their systems; frontier models are accelerating work in some areas, but progress is uneven.

Akhil also said the team works across Washington, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Hawaii. Most of the team is not in Washington; the core engineering team had previously been based mainly in the Bay Area and Seattle.