A Bellevue startup founded by a former Marine special operations officer and two Microsoft engineering veterans has emerged from stealth with seed financing to build artificial intelligence software meant to help the military plan logistics faster and more predictively. Watchtower Labs says its platform pairs agentic AI with mathematical analysis, letting planners ask questions in plain language while the system models hundreds of possible futures against real-world constraints.
The company's own announcement puts the seed round at $35 million, led by Shield Capital and Conviction with participation from Founders Fund, according to Watchtower Labs. Shield Capital, one of the lead investors, describes the same round at $30 million in its own announcement of the deal, a discrepancy the two sources have not resolved. GeekWire, which first reported on the company's launch, noted GeekWire that the raise marks Watchtower's first outside funding, and that the company was incubated inside Shield Capital itself.
Watchtower is based in Bellevue, Washington, and is starting with logistics planning for transport, spare parts, fuel, munitions, routes and time-sensitive operations, according to the company's release. The software is designed to generate executable options for commanders while displaying the assumptions and tradeoffs behind each one, and the company emphasizes that human decision-makers retain final decision authority over outcomes, per GeekWire's reporting.
Marine Corps Roots and a Microsoft Pedigree
CEO Akhil Iyer is a former Marine Corps infantry and special operations officer who later worked on counter-drone technology and invested in defense startups at Shield Capital, according to GeekWire. Iyer has said that allocating scarce resources across the globe is a key planning problem the military faces, and that commercial smartphone-era technology has not been reaching troops in the field, the outlet reported. Iyer is based in San Francisco, per the same report.
He co-founded the company alongside CTO Souren Aghajanyan and head of engineering John Morman, both Microsoft engineering leaders who worked on large distributed systems and fraud protection, according to Watchtower's own announcement. GeekWire's reporting adds that Aghajanyan and Morman worked on a team under Lou Manousos, who founded the security company RiskIQ before Microsoft acquired it in 2021 and Manousos became a Microsoft corporate vice president.
A Foothold With the Defense Innovation Unit
Watchtower already has traction inside the Pentagon's innovation apparatus. In January 2026, the Defense Innovation Unit selected the company under the Joint Sustainment Decision Tool program, according to Watchtower's release. GeekWire's reporting adds that Watchtower and Air Space Intelligence were chosen after a competitive process, with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command serving as the program's lead partner and the Defense Logistics Agency and U.S. Northern Command also participating; the tool is designed to track and forecast munitions, fuel, medical materiel and spare parts and to help the military forecast logistics needs weeks in advance, per the same report.
The broader Joint Sustainment Decision Tool effort is meant to use AI to move the military toward predictive logistics by anticipating challenges before they become crises, according to Federal News Network. The outlet reports the Defense Department plans to test the tool with logisticians at U.S. Pacific Command, the Defense Logistics Agency, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, and U.S. Northern Command, and that U.S. Northern Command expects the system to speed up the process of identifying shortfalls and vulnerabilities without human bias. Federal News Network also reports that the initial performance period for the program's prototype contracts, which the Defense Innovation Unit awarded in January, is scheduled to run until at least March of next year.
Watchtower is not the only company working this angle. Gallatin AI, founded in 2024 and headquartered in El Segundo, California, won a separate Defense Innovation Unit contract under the same Joint Sustainment Decision Tool program in July to bring AI-driven sustainment planning to U.S. Army Europe and Africa, according to a report from Yahoo Finance. That outlet reported Gallatin's Navigator platform uses machine learning to forecast demand and recommend supply and movement plans, with Scale AI joining as a named teammate for course-of-action validation.
Betting on Bellevue
Watchtower has about 30 employees, more than a dozen of them in Bellevue, along with offices in the Bay Area, Hawaii and the Washington, D.C., area, GeekWire reported. The company is moving to a larger Bellevue office and prioritizing hiring in the Seattle area, with Iyer telling the outlet that Watchtower hopes to double its headcount and that recruits do not need a military background. Watchtower's own careers page lists open engineering roles focused on agents, simulation modeling and distributed systems, and GeekWire reported the company is specifically seeking engineers for simulation engine, distributed systems and machine learning work, with some in-person Bellevue roles requiring U.S. citizenship.
The company says it already has revenue, though it has not disclosed figures, according to GeekWire's reporting. Watchtower says the new financing will first go toward building out its team, and next toward delivering on its contracts and expanding its platform beyond logistics into broader operational planning, a trajectory the company's own release also describes. The Bellevue launch adds to a wave of defense-tech activity in the Seattle area that GeekWire has chronicled, including Overland AI's $100 million raise this year and nearly $20 million Marine Corps production contract, Shield AI's selection of Des Moines, Washington, to build its X-BAT autonomous fighter jet, and Anduril's roughly 560 employees across Bellevue and Seattle with a stated path toward 1,000 local engineers.
