Coby Adcock’s Scout AI raises $100 million to train its models for war. We visited its bootcamp.
Scout AI, a defense-focused startup founded by Coby Adcock and Collin Otis, has raised $100 million to develop its AI model 'Fury' for military applications. The company is training its AI on autonomous all-terrain vehicles at a U.S. military base to operate in unstructured, off-road environments. Scout AI aims to first support military logistics and eventually enable autonomous weapons systems.
- ▪Scout AI has raised $100 million in a Series A round following a $15 million seed round in January 2025.
- ▪The company is developing an AI model called 'Fury' to operate and command military assets, starting with logistics and moving toward autonomous weapons.
- ▪Scout AI has secured $11 million in contracts from DARPA, the Army Applications Laboratory, and other Department of Defense customers.
- ▪The company's technology is being tested at a U.S. military base and is part of the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division’s training cycle at Fort Hood.
- ▪Scout AI uses Vision Language Action models based on large language models to control robots, a technology pioneered by Google DeepMind in 2023.
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At a U.S. military base in central California, four-seater all-terrain vehicles roam hillside trails. This is a training exercise, but not for the people in the vehicles: It’s an effort to train AI models to enter conflict zones. The autonomous military ATVs are operated by Scout AI, a startup founded in 2024 by Colby Adcock and Collin Otis that calls itself a “frontier lab for defense.” The company said on Wednesday that it has raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Align Ventures and Draper Associates, following its $15 million seed round in January 2025. Scout invited TechCrunch for an exclusive tour of its training operations at a military base it asked us not to name.
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