Each time a GPS sign goes darkish – jammed in battle, spoofed by hostile actors, or just absent beneath the ocean – Superior Navigation has been the answer for defence and others discovering their method on land, sea and within the air, and even house.
The Sydney startup has bagged one among Australia’s largest deep tech raises with a $158 million Sequence C.
The spherical was led by Airtree Ventures, with strategic participation from Quadrant Non-public Fairness and the Nationwide Reconstruction Fund Company (NRFC).
The corporate has now deployed greater than 100,000 techniques globally, with triple-digit income progress over the previous 12 months and greater than 80% of that revenue coming from the US and Europe from a buyer checklist that’s a who’s who of the worldwide defence and deep tech.
Earlier this yr, Superior Navigation nailed a GPS-jamming test with US Defence. It’s LUNA system can even be deployed next year on NASA’s mission to the Moon.
The contemporary capital is to ascertain PNT (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) Centres of Excellence in each areas as engineering hubs to embed Australian-built functionality instantly into the availability chains of allied nations.
Cofounder and CEO Chris Shaw mentioned autonomy is the brand new actuality in navigation and his firm is defining it.
“The period of counting on a single silver bullet for navigation is over. Throughout defence, power transition, humanitarian response, and autonomous missions, certainty is required the place GPS can not be trusted,” he mentioned.
“The long run belongs to clever techniques that may sense, adapt, and navigate independently. At Superior Navigation, we’re constructing the resilient basis by fusing high-precision inertial {hardware} with onboard intelligence, guaranteeing autonomous techniques behave predictably in unpredictable environments.”
His perception has been validated by battle zones from Ukraine to the South China Sea — the place GPS jamming and spoofing have develop into customary operational apply, not edge circumstances.
The corporate’s AdNav Intelligence – a software program fusion engine that blends inertial navigation, AI and high-precision {hardware} to maintain autonomous automobiles, plane, ships and robots oriented even when satellite tv for pc indicators vanish fully. It’s the navigation equal of lifeless reckoning, supercharged with deep studying.
Airtree companion Kelland Reilly mentioned Superior Navigation has constructed the main resolution within the positioning area.
“Their speedy growth into the US and Europe marks a definitive shift for mission-critical industries as world demand converges across the exact use case they clear up,” she mentioned.
David Gall, CEO of the federal authorities’s manufacturing funding fund, the NRFC mentioned their funding will hold the corporate’s headquarters, core R&D, and high-precision manufacturing capabilities in Australia.
“Superior Navigation’s expertise is exact, safe, dependable, and environment friendly, and its merchandise are already getting used within the mining, marine, and defence industries,” he mentioned.
