Watchtower Labs, a Bellevue-based startup building artificial intelligence software for military planners, publicly announced itself on Oct. 21 after operating quietly, and revealed it has raised $35 million from investors in its first funding round. The company plans to double its headcount, with Bellevue at the center of its hiring.
The company is moving from a smaller space at Bellefield Office Park into a larger office, according to a Watchtower representative. More than a dozen of Watchtower’s roughly 30 employees work in Bellevue, GeekWire reported, with the rest in the Bay Area, Hawaii and the Washington, D.C., region.
Watchtower is recruiting engineers to work on site in Bellevue on its simulation, distributed systems and machine learning technology. CEO Akhil Iyer told GeekWire the company is concentrating its hiring in the Seattle area because the region has many “very technical folks that maybe wanted to work on things with a little bit more mission impact.”
The Investors
Shield Capital and Conviction led the $35 million round, with Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel, which backs technology for U.S. intelligence agencies, also investing. Watchtower got its start inside Shield Capital.
Iyer said the money will go first toward growing the team, then toward fulfilling contracts the company has already secured and expanding its platform.
How the Software Works
A planner can ask the system a question in everyday language. Watchtower then simulates hundreds of ways a situation could unfold, checks each against real-world limits, and presents options along with the assumptions and tradeoffs that shape them. People, not the software, make the final decision.
The first focus is military logistics, which covers when and where to move fuel, munitions, spare parts and personnel. The company intends to extend the software into wider operational planning.
In January 2026, the Defense Innovation Unit awarded Watchtower a prototype contract under a program to develop AI tools that predict military logistics needs several weeks out.
Who Founded It
Iyer is a former Marine Corps special operations officer who later invested in defense startups at Shield Capital. His co-founders, CTO Souren Aghajanyan and head of engineering John Morman, are longtime Microsoft engineering leaders.
A Growing Defense Tech Presence
Watchtower is one of several defense technology companies operating in the Seattle area. Anduril, for example, employs about 560 people across Bellevue and Seattle.
