Watchtower Labs Emerges From Stealth With $35 Million to Build AI-Native Decision Tools for Military Operations

Watchtower uses AI, simulation, and optimization to help military planners anticipate what happens next and evaluate options while there is still time to act

SEATTLE, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Watchtower Labs today emerged from stealth with $35 million in seed financing led by Shield Capital and Conviction, with participation from Founders Fund. The company is building AI-native applications that help military leaders and planners anticipate what happens next in an operation, evaluate their options, and make decisions while there is still time to act.

Watchtower is starting with logistics planning, where transport, spare parts, fuel, munitions, routes, and time can determine whether a mission is executable. "We started this company on the vision of leaders who understood what AI could bring to our most consequential decisions," said Akhil Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Watchtower Labs. "These conditions can change faster than traditional planning processes can keep pace, forcing staff to continually reassess plans under increasing time pressure."

Watchtower models hundreds of possible futures against real-world operational constraints, generates executable options, and shows the assumptions and tradeoffs behind each one. Planners can ask questions in plain language, while decision makers remain in control of what happens next.

In 2025, Watchtower Labs partnered with the Naval Postgraduate School to inform the system's development through operations research, operationally relevant data, and collaboration with defense practitioners. In January 2026, the Defense Innovation Unit selected Watchtower under the Joint Sustainment Decision Tool program, designed to support operational and joint commands with advanced decision-support capabilities.

"An entire generation of companies is being built from scratch on what AI can now do, against the most challenging geopolitical environment in decades," said Raj Shah, Founder and Managing Partner at Shield Capital and Chairman of Watchtower Labs. "Shield Capital sits at that intersection, bringing frontier technology together with teams that understand the mission."

Watchtower Labs was incubated within Shield Capital and co-founded by Iyer, a former Marine special operations officer and Shield Capital investor, alongside Souren Aghajanyan and John Morman, seasoned Microsoft engineering leaders who spent years building large-scale distributed systems. The combination brings together engineers who have built systems at scale with operators who have lived the planning problems Watchtower is designed to solve.

"AI is accelerating the pace, quality and communication of decision-making across the commercial realm," said Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction. "Its impact is still nascent in the realm of national security, but it will be decisive. Logistics is the backbone of our military's power, and yet we're stuck in the Stone Age. Our ability to simulate our capabilities, our adversaries, and our options remains painfully inadequate. The Watchtower team uniquely understands this problem, and is prepared to solve it for decisive advantage."

The financing will support team growth, an expanding set of applications built on Watchtower's core platform, and continued testing and deployment as the technology extends beyond sustainment into broader operational planning.

About Watchtower Labs
Watchtower Labs builds software that helps decision makers and planners understand what happens next and determine what to do about it. Its AI-native decision environment combines simulation, optimization and AI to model real-world constraints, generate and stress-test executable courses of action across hundreds of possible futures, and help teams adapt as conditions change. Developed initially for military sustainment alongside operational users, Watchtower is expanding across high-stakes operations where conditions change quickly, resources are constrained and plans must adapt. For more information, visit www.watchtowerlabs.ai.

About Shield Capital
Shield Capital is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies building technology in artificial intelligence, autonomy, cybersecurity and space. SHIELD's experienced team of company founders, investors and national security leaders is mission-focused to support the entrepreneurs addressing challenges and opportunities at the nexus of commercial industry and national security. At SHIELD, the Mission Matters. Learn more at www.shieldcap.com.

About Conviction Partners
Conviction Partners was founded in 2022 to help extraordinary founders build the most important companies of tomorrow. They are early partners to the world's leading AI companies — including Baseten, Cognition, Harvey, Instinct, OpenEvidence, Sierra and Thinking Machines.

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SOURCE Watchtower