AI Startup Modern Intelligence Raises $5M to Launch Innovative Maritime Surveillance AI

Press Releases

Mar 16, 2022

Cutlass offers new standard in defense, unmatched accuracy and resilience; deployment on existing military platform

AUSTIN, Texas, March 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — AI startup Modern Intelligence has secured a $5 million seed round, the company announced today. Led by Bedrock founder and managing partner Geoff Lewis, with participation of Vine Ventures, Air Street Capital, and Contrary Capital, the investment will be used to deliver and test the company’s AI-based maritime surveillance solution to defense users at Naval Special Warfare’s Trident Specter exercise this summer and on the companies’ groundbreaking low data AI research.

Modern Intelligence, a defense-first AI firm, announces a strong seed raise, advisorial staff, and initial product line.

Cutlass, Modern Intelligence’s pioneering AI product, will help bring modular AI to every maritime problem by performing real-time sensor fusion. Unlike full stack solutions, it is a “turnkey AI solution” to allow existing military hardware and command & control systems to track, analyze, and learn about their maritime targets on missions such as drug interdiction, vessel boarding & seizure, and fleet combat.

Although starting in maritime sensor fusion, Modern Intelligence’s AI research is ambitious. While current solutions require thousands of data samples to provide rudimentary vessel recognition and poor reliability, Modern’s research techniques “learn targets, rather than memorize them,” says John Dulin, the company’s CEO. “Defense has high standards for AI. It needs explainability, reliability, and high fidelity. So we focus on building low data AI models that learn the fundamental features rather than memorize them. This has the promise to solve all of those problems at once.”

Modern Intelligence offers solutions to defense industry AI problems with a focus on licensed AI products that have differentiated R&D. And with Cutlass, Modern Intelligence promises a pure AI model that can be deployed on existing infrastructure with little integration cost, making it easily adaptable and significantly more economical for DoD consumers.

MI’s advisory board boasts three highly-recognized AI and defense experts: Hon. Ellen Lord, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions and Sustainment and former CEO of Textron Systems; Jason Yosinski, co-founder of Uber AI Labs; and Jacqueline Tame, former Deputy Director of the DoD’s Joint AI Centerand a former member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

“For a year and a half, prior to joining Modern, I had a front-row seat via leadership roles at the DoD’s Joint AI Center… I sat with and heard from hundreds of companies. Many played buzzword bingo and rightly anticipated that few in the Department would be technically discerning enough to ask the right follow-on questions… Not a single company offered an entirely new way of doing business with or thinking about architecting for national security clients. Until I met the founding team at Modern. This small company is doing everything right. Their models are performing at levels I have never seen, consistently. And their fundamentally different approach to AI for defense sold me immediately – not just because it was abundantly clear they could pull it off, but because it is the right thing to do for national security,” says Jacqueline Tame.

“I am excited to join the Modern Intelligence Advisory Board and work on cutting edge AI for national security applications. The Modern Intelligence team has leveraged neural network technology to develop uniquely dynamic AI that is quick to implement, needs minimal training and will deliver incomparable capability. Working with the highly skilled business, technical and operational analysis teams in a quick-paced environment to apply AI to Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Homeland Defense missions is an opportunity to contribute to our nation in many ways. I look forward to capturing contracts and executing multiple missions with Modern’s AI during 2022,” Ellen Lord remarks.

About Modern Intelligence
Modern Intelligence is an artificial intelligence company based in Austin, Texas, focused on creating AI that uses proprietary advances in information and complexity theory, with specific applications to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence in the defense industry. This new form of AI uses a hierarchical approach that enables very high accuracy and the ability in many cases to solve previously unsolvable problems. MI was founded in 2021 by investment and software engineer John Dulin; developer and former CEO of Whiteboard Dynamics Joe Cieslik; and AI scientist and mathematician Tristan Tager.

About Bedrock Capital

Bedrock Capital is an investment firm that supports and finances ‘one-of-a-kind companies.’ Founded in 2018 by Geoff Lewis and Eric Stromberg, the company focuses on radical open-mindedness, and looks for promising companies that are underestimated or don’t fit the mainstream narrative. Bedrock currently manages nearly $1 billion in assets across several funds.