LendurAI secures €5.7 million seed funding to scale drones

LendurAI, an Estonian company that produces autonomy stacks for drones that enable them to operate in GPS-denied environments, has secured €5.7 million ( (£4.8 million/$6.5 million) in seed funding, according to a 5th June press release.

The funding has been equally provided by Expeditions Fund, HCVC, and Vsquared Ventures, the funding will enable the company to scale its production of its autonomy stacks. “European defence can’t wait,” Siim Maivel, the LendurAI CEO and co-founder said, echoing feelings that are common across Europe. 

The company produces computer-vision enabled navigation systems, which enable drones to “think faster, react smarter, and deliver reliable effects – even in the most challenging electronic warfare environments,” Siim explained. Drones equipped with the LendurAI autonomy stack have undergone testing in a range of challenging environments, including active war zones, the press release states. 

“While First-Person View (FPV) drones are appealing due to their low unit cost, they often come with substantial overhead— typically requiring a team of four operators on the field, plus a separate support team of eight technicians, engineers, and programmers to prepare the drones for deployment,” it adds. This is an interesting element to draw upon and an issue that has been reflected with other systems like howitzers and MALE UAVs – yes, there may be reduced crew, or no crew in the vehicle itself, but the other support needed to make that system work may equal or exceed the numbers of personnel required for a conventionally crewed platform. 

It appears that LendurAI is seeking to change that paradigm, and FPVs carrying its autonomy solution need only two days of operator training compared with the more usual eight weeks, according to the press release. 

Another issue of concern in the drone supply chain is the origin of parts and expertise, with one CEO recently telling Calibre Defence that, “we started to source every part outside of China two years ago. That took a while, the parts from China are brilliantly engineered and they are hard to beat in terms of quality and volume.” There is a drive to correct this and move away from components produced in China within drone supply chains. Even in Ukraine where scale and pace of production are more important than ever, companies are working to diversify their supply chains away from China. 

LendurAI is aware of this and proudly states that its products are made “in Estonia with European components and fully NDAA-compliant.” NDAA stands for the National Defense Authorization Act, a US law that requires defence companies trading with the US to ensure that their supply chains do not include components from blacklisted manufacturers. 

Company profile: LendurAI

LendurAI is led by three co-founders, Siim Maivel, Mark Cowan, and Sergii Kharagorgiiev. Siim is the CEO and was formerly the head of AI at the company Bolt, the ride hailing and transport company. Sergii is LendurAI’s head of AI research and former computer vision lead at Starship Technologies, a company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. And finally Mark is the CTO and former lead software engineer at Open Cosmos, 

Investor profile

Three funds have provided this injection of capital, and their profiles are broadly reflective of a growing investment trend in the defence ecosystem. There are a select few defence specialist investors, Expedition Fund in this case, that work with other defence-adjacent funds – those focused on AI or robotics for instance – to raise capital for promising defence startups. This process is always helped if the company’s products are dual-use, which opens up additional revenue streams outside of the potentially unreliable world of MoDs. 

Expeditions Fund

Expeditions Fund is an early-stage, specialist, research-driven investment firm focused on European security since 2021. Based in Warsaw, London and Paris, the fund invests in deep tech and dual-use companies in defence, autonomy, AI, and other fields. The fund’s portfolio includes companies like Alpine Eagle and Disruptive Industries. 

HCVC

HCVC is an early-stage venture capital firm, founded in 2015, that backs founders on a mission to industrialise scientific and technological progress.

Vsquared Ventures

Vsquared Ventures focuses on new space, new computing, energy transition, robotics and manufacturing, new computing and sensing, AI and next-gen software and tech-bio. Its portfolio includes Isar Aerospace, IQM Quantum Computing, Zama.ai and others. 

Calibre comment

There is a significant push for autonomous systems that can be reliably deployed during GPS outages. Satellite navigation links are particularly vulnerable to jamming because of the distances that they have to travel to reach the ground receiver. This means that the signals have often lost a lot of power by the time they reach the earth and can be easily jammed. Some systems like M-Code are designed to address this, with smarter, more powerful receivers and transmitters. However, the loss of GPS for a drone will often cause it to crash or return to the last place at which it had a reliable signal. It is also increasingly possible to spoof GPS, which can convince a drone or missile that it is somewhere else, leading it to miss its target. So, GPS-free forms of navigation are seeing a lot of interest, because they may be able to overcome the counter-measures that adversary forces have developed. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on 6th June, 2025. The featured image shows the three founders of LendurAI, from left to right: Mark Cowan, Siim Maivel, and Sergii Kharagorgiiev. Credit: LendurAI.