The autonomous drone technology funding round was led by space specialist Seraphim Space and backed by the UK government’s defence VC fund.

British defence start-up Mutable Tactics has raised $2.1 million (£1.6 million) in a pre-seed funding round led by space tech investor Seraphim Space to develop AI software for autonomous drone coordination.

The technology, which aims to give fleets of drones autonomous decision-making abilities when communications with human operators are lost or unreliable, has received backing from the UK’s “deep tech” defence venture capital fund, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF). The NSSIF, which invests in early-stage dual-use technologies it deems commercially viable, was joined in the round by venture firms Koro Capital, Entrepreneurs First and Transpose Platform.

Still in its early stages, the pre-seed funding will be used to expand Mutable Tactics’ engineering team in Cambridge and validate its software with two unnamed European governments.

Colin MacLeod, CEO and Co-Founder of Mutable Tactics, said the main constraint in drone deployment is “no longer hardware but human attention,” and the software would allow humans to supervise and direct teams of drones rather than individual machines.

Unmanned systems have attracted significant investor and government attention in recent years, driven in part by their battlefield impact in Ukraine, where low-cost drones have reshaped frontline tactics and spurred defence procurement across Europe. Last week, Iran’s deployment of cheap unmanned drones across the Middle East in retaliation to US and Israeli strikes had a notable impact on listed European defence stocks.