AI Decision Software for Drone Teams Secures $2.1M Pre-Seed Funding

Mutable Tactics, a UK-based robotics autonomy company, has secured $2.1 million in pre-seed funding led by Seraphim Space, with backing from the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Koro, Entrepreneurs First, and Transpose.

The funding will support the development of AI software that enables unmanned systems, including aerial, maritime, and ground drones, to continue operating and making decisions even when communications are lost or unreliable.

Defence forces are deploying growing numbers of unmanned systems across land, sea, and air. While sensors and platforms have advanced rapidly, autonomous decision-making has not progressed at the same pace. As a result, deployments often still rely on a one-operator-per-system model, limiting how many drones can be used effectively at any given time. In contested environments where communications may be degraded, denied, or disrupted, systems that depend on continuous human control quickly reach their limits.

Colin MacLeod, CEO and Co‑Founder of Mutable Tactics, stated, “Increasingly, the constraint is no longer hardware but human attention. We can deploy more drones than ever before, yet we still ask operators to control them one by one, often in environments where communications are unreliable. True autonomy breaks that one‑to‑one link, allowing humans to supervise and direct teams of systems rather than individual machines. That shift is essential for supporting modern military missions, where scale, speed and resilience matter, and where operators must remain focused on intent and outcomes rather than manual control.”

Mutable Tactics is addressing this challenge by enabling mixed fleets of drones to operate as coordinated teams rather than individually piloted platforms. The company is developing an AI-powered decision layer that sits between the human operator and the robot, translating a commander’s high-level intent and constraints into locally executable actions. This approach allows drones to adapt to changing conditions and coordinate with one another even when communications or GPS are unreliable.

Rather than depending on constant human input or continuous connectivity, decisions are made locally at the tactical edge, within clearly defined boundaries set by the human operator. The result is scalable human‑machine teaming. One operator can supervise and direct multiple unmanned systems, rather than manually controlling each one. This removes the human bottleneck and allows forces to make effective use of larger numbers of drones in complex and contested environments.

Enrique Muñoz de Cote, CTO and Co-founder of Mutable Tactics, commented, “There is no single AI technique that solves autonomy. Deep learning allows systems to operate in uncertain, real-world environments, while deterministic AI ensures their behaviour remains explainable and aligned with a commander’s intent. Combining both enables autonomy that is resilient in contested environments while preserving meaningful human control – critical for military deployments. That fusion sits at the core of Mutable Tactics, and the UK’s leadership in probabilistic inference provides an essential foundation for this work.”

Crucially, Mutable Tactics is designed to ensure meaningful human oversight at all times. Military operators remain responsible for defining mission intent, rules, and constraints, and can intervene or take direct control whenever necessary. The system is built to respond smoothly to changing conditions, such as intermittent communications or GPS loss, without introducing autonomous behaviour that cannot be clearly understood or controlled.

Example

Imagine a unit with several drones but only one trained operator. The limitation isn’t the number of systems, but human attention, the operator can actively control only one drone at a time, leaving others underused at critical moments.

With Mutable Tactics, the operator focuses on the highest-priority task while the coordination software manages the remaining drones, guiding movement, adapting to conditions, and positioning them within the commander’s intent, even when communications or GPS are unreliable. Once the first task is complete, the operator can immediately take control of another drone, allowing one person to achieve far more while remaining fully in command.

Beyond defence, closing the decision gap is key to the next generation of robotics and physical AI, where systems must make reliable decisions in complex, real-world environments.

Use of Funds

The pre‑seed funding will be used to expand Mutable Tactics’ engineering team in Cambridge and accelerate development of its decision‑layer software. The funds will focus on developing and validating the technology in collaboration with two key European governments, supporting priority defence missions under real operational conditions. The funding will also support integration work with unmanned‑system partners and preparation for live demonstrations in demanding environments.

Maureen Haverty, Principal at Seraphim Space, said, “Mutable Tactics is building drone autonomy for modern conflicts: contested, jammed, and often GPS-denied environments. Most autonomy assumes clean communications and high-end platforms. Mutable’s software lets low-cost drones operate as coordinated teams when communications degrade, giving operators faster decisions and better outcomes without upgrading every platform. As space investors, we like that the system is designed to keep working across satellite, alternative navigation, and manual modes without changing kit. Colin and Enrique bring a rare mix of battlefield insight and true robotics autonomy expertise.”

An NSSIF spokesperson added, ‘We are delighted to invest in Mutable Tactics, a UK company that is addressing a critical bottleneck with an approach designed for real operational constraints. Mutable Tactics’ technology ensures that the UK remains a leader in the development of resilient, explainable and strategic autonomy that can operate in the most challenging environments.’

Mutable Tactics is a Cambridge-based deep-tech company specializing in agentic AI for defense and security. By focusing on the “Decide” layer of the sense-decide-act loop, they enable true multi-domain autonomy and resilient, explainable decision-making at the edge.