Primordial Labs Raises $18M Series A to Scale Natural Language Command and Control

Led by Ballistic Ventures, the round follows master teaming agreement with General Dynamics Land Systems and license deliveries to Army and special operations units

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Nov. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Primordial Labs, developer of Anura, the natural language command and control (NLC2) platform for military systems, today announced that it has raised $18 million in Series A funding, led by Ballistic Ventures, with participation from existing investors Squadra Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures. This funding will accelerate the deployment of Anura across Department of War programs, and advance Primordial Labs' mission to enable human-machine teaming.

Each sensor, radio, and robotic system added to a platform brings its own interface and demands on the operator. Anura serves as a virtual teammate, allowing crews to direct onboard sensors, communications, displays, and connected uncrewed systems just as they would a human.

"Crews on every platform are being asked to employ more capability with fewer people, much faster, and with less time for training. Anura provides humans and machines with a shared understanding of the mission and operating context, making systems easier to field, use, and learn," said Lee Ritholtz, co-founder and CEO of Primordial Labs. "We're delivering licenses to the Army and SOCOM today, and this round lets us meet the demand we're seeing across domains, from ground vehicle crew stations to the cockpit to the dismounted soldier."

Anura brings an understanding of the real-time operating environment to machines, so crews and their systems work from the same picture of the world. With that shared picture, operators task systems with natural language goals and constraints. Anura decomposes that intent into tasks, orchestrates them, carries them out, confirms the outcome, and adjusts when conditions change.

Platform-agnostic by design, Anura is integrated on more than a dozen crewed and uncrewed platforms across the land and air domains. On land, Primordial Labs announced a master teaming agreement with General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) on Oct. 7 to bring Anura to ground combat vehicles across the GDLS portfolio, including the Abrams tank. In the air, the company is delivering licenses for small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) to multiple Army and special operations units and sells them through the Army's UAS Marketplace. Two 2026 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III awards extend that work to Army rotary-wing aircrews and the Air Force's MQ-9 ground control station.

"The military doesn't need another proprietary interface for every new system. It needs technology that makes existing and future capabilities work together," said General Timothy Haugh, USAF (Ret.), Strategic Advisor to Ballistic Ventures. "Primordial's use of the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) is particularly compelling because it allows Anura to integrate across sophisticated military platforms without requiring them to be redesigned. Combined with the ability to translate a warfighter's natural expression of intent into action, this represents a potentially important advance in human-machine teaming."

Ritholtz and co-founder and CTO Adrian Pope met at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, where they built and deployed small uncrewed aircraft systems and payloads, and went on to help found the Lockheed Martin Artificial Intelligence Center (LAIC). Their work spanned autonomous platform control, special mission payloads, and human-machine teaming, including Lockheed Martin's entry in DARPA's AlphaDogfight Trials. The Primordial Labs team is made up of engineers and former special operators, all experienced in deploying capability and committed to delivering for the warfighter.

The company will use this funding to expand its engineering, product, and growth teams, deliver Anura across Department of War programs already under contract, and extend it into new platforms, domains, and allied markets. Primordial Labs is focused on the warfighter today. The same interface burden is emerging wherever humans work alongside intelligent machines, from mining and energy to logistics and public safety.

"At Ballistic, it always starts with the team, and Lee and Adrian are exceptional technical founders who have spent years solving the hardest problems in autonomous systems," said Roger Thornton, co-founder and general partner at Ballistic Ventures. "As machines become more capable and more numerous, the limiting factor is how well people can work with them. Primordial makes the technology adapt to the human, not the other way around. We believe the approach that lets warfighters direct machines in the field will eventually do the same across the commercial world, and Primordial has the opportunity to build the foundational software platform for that future."

About Primordial Labs

Primordial Labs builds Anura, the natural language command and control (NLC2) layer between warfighters and the machines they rely on. Anura acts as a virtual teammate, taking on the tasks that pull attention from the mission and giving warfighters a unified way to command every system they operate. Platform-agnostic by design, it integrates across every domain, sitting above onboard subsystems, uncrewed systems, and the autonomy that drives them. Founded in 2021 by former Lockheed Martin Skunk Works engineers, Primordial Labs is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut.

Learn more at primordial-labs.com.

About Ballistic Ventures

Ballistic Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in and incubates entrepreneurs and innovations in cybersecurity and related mission-critical technologies. Founded by experienced cybersecurity entrepreneurs, operators, and investors, Ballistic partners with exceptional founders building technologies that address consequential security and technology challenges.

Learn more at ballisticventures.com.

SOURCE Primordial Labs, Inc.