London-based Occam Industries raised €3 million in a pre-seed round led by Presto Tech Horizons. The company has been cleared for integration testing by Ukraine’s defense tech cluster Brave1, as Vestbee was informed.
- Occam Industries, established in 2024 by Gui Wainwright, develops OccamX, a retrofit computer-vision autopilot for first-person-view (FPV) drones. The firm creates software that can be integrated into existing, mass-manufactured drone platforms without modifying their airframes or supply chains.
- Its system uses onboard computer vision for perception, target tracking, and navigation, enabling drones to operate with bounded autonomy and reduced reliance on continuous manual control, GPS, or external communications. The software is designed to lower operator workload while keeping command responsibility within the military chain of command.
“Every assumption is tested under pressure: latency, reliability, operator load, decision-making. What we build at Occam is shaped by that reality and then honed in combat conditions. Fundamentally, if a system cannot perform at the zero-line, we cannot trust troops or security to it, and it has no place in modern defense," explains Gui Wainwright, co-founder and CEO of Occam.
- Following the field tests, Brave1 is moving to collaborate with Occam and selected Ukrainian manufacturers to deploy the technology domestically, marking one of the first instances of Western AI being integrated into Ukraine’s unmanned systems.
Details of the deal
- The €3 million pre-seed round was led by Presto Tech Horizons, with participation from Antler, Freedom Fund, TYR.vc, and several experienced defense and security industry angel investors.
“Occam impressed us with their ability to turn ambition into operational reality at an incredible pace. They deploy, learn, and iterate under conditions dictated by the front line. Gui has an exceptional ability to rally people around a clear mission, and the team executes on it with urgency and discipline. Combined with a software-only autonomy stack that works without GPS or external connectivity, this is a solution that is not just novel, but fundamentally different," claims Matej Luhovy, Partner at Presto Tech Horizons.
- The startup plans to accelerate adoption of their autonomous drone software across the Ukrainian front line, develop additional support capabilities for autonomous systems, and begin paid adoption projects with European defense primes this year.
