Scout AI has raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Align Ventures and Draper Associates to develop AI agents that enable individual soldiers to control autonomous military vehicles and drone swarms. Founded in 2024 by Coby Adcock and Collin Otis, the company has already secured $11 million in military contracts from DARPA and the Army Applications Laboratory, and is one of 20 autonomy companies being tested by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood. Scout AI is building an AI model called Fury using Vision Language Action technology and military-specific training data, with its first product Ox designed to allow soldiers to orchestrate multiple drones and ground vehicles through natural language prompts. The company's technology is intended initially for logistics but will extend to autonomous weapons systems, including munition drone swarms that could search for and attack enemy targets with programmable geographic restrictions and optional human confirmation requirements.
Scout AI's $100 Million Funding and Military Contracts
- ▪Scout AI is one of 20 autonomy companies whose technology is being used by the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division during its regular training cycle at Fort Hood in Texas
- ▪Scout AI has secured military technology development contracts totaling $11 million from organizations including DARPA, the Army Applications Laboratory, and other Department of Defense customers
- ▪Scout AI was founded in 2024 by Coby Adcock and Collin Otis
- ▪Scout AI raised $15 million in a seed round in January 2025
- ▪The U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division expects to bring along products that prove themselves when the unit next deploys in 2027
- ▪Scout AI raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Align Ventures and Draper Associates
Vision Language Action Models for Autonomous Military Vehicles
- ▪Scout AI's full stack includes deterministic systems and other flavors of AI in addition to Vision Language Action models
- ▪Vision Language Action models are based on LLMs and used to control robots
- ▪Collin Otis previously worked at autonomous trucking company Kodiak
- ▪Vision Language Action models were first released by Google DeepMind in 2023
- ▪At Scout AI's Foundry training range, drivers spend eight-hour shifts putting ATVs through their paces and work through a reinforcement learning system to log where they had to take over
- ▪Vision Language Action models are yet to be deployed by any company in an operational setting
- ▪Vision Language Action technology seeded robotics startups like Physical Intelligence and Figure.AI
Autonomous Weapons Development and Targeting Capabilities
- ▪Jay Adams is a retired U.S. Army Captain who leads Scout AI's operations team
- ▪Lt. Col. Nick Rinaldi supervises Scout AI's work for the Army Applications Laboratory
- ▪Stuart Young left DARPA in the month prior to the article's publication to join Field
- ▪Stuart Young is a former DARPA program manager who worked on ground vehicle autonomy
Perspective of U.S. military organizations
- ▪The U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division is evaluating Scout AI's technology alongside 19 other autonomy companies during regular training cycles
- ▪The U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division plans to deploy proven autonomous technologies when the unit next deploys in 2027
- ▪DARPA and Army Applications Laboratory have awarded Scout AI contracts totaling $11 million for military technology development
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