A tech startup founded by two British military veterans has raised $20 million to expand its secure coordination and payments platform for defence, humanitarian and disaster response teams.
Labrys Technologies, co-founded by Royal Marines veteran August “Gus” Lersten and former army linguistics specialist Luke Wattam, developed its flagship platform Axiom to address growing concerns over “shadow IT” in high-risk environments — where official secure systems are bypassed by quick-fix tools like WhatsApp, Signal or Wickr.
The platform has already been approved for use by the UK Ministry of Defence and deployed by NATO member states and humanitarian agencies, including the Ukrainian emergency services during the Kakhovka dam disaster in 2023.
“A lot of the public sector and adjacent organisations rely heavily on chat apps that weren’t built for this purpose,” said Lersten, now CEO of Labrys. “You don’t always know who’s on the other end, there are no checks or task verification, and you can’t ensure compliance. That’s a massive trust and security gap.”
Labrys aims to bridge that gap with a platform that blends military-grade security with real-time coordination tools, user verification, and secure payments infrastructure. The $20 million Series A round was led by Plural, the investment firm co-founded by Wise’s Taavet Hinrikus. The latest raise brings Labrys’s total funding to $25.5 million.
Plural partner Sten Tamkivi said the firm backed Labrys because it addressed a critical blind spot in modern defence and resilience operations. “So much innovation in this space is hardware-driven. But coordination — who’s where, doing what, and being paid — is just as important. Labrys brings order and trust to those chaotic environments.”
Rather than replace encrypted chat apps entirely, Axiom works alongside them. The system can recognise approved participants on a call and alert users to any unfamiliar or unauthorised presence — avoiding scenarios like the recent incident where a journalist was accidentally added to a Signal chat used by US defence officials.
Lersten said the real-world use cases are growing. “We live in a world where the police may need to collaborate with the army, who may need to coordinate with 1,200 civilian volunteers to respond to a flood. If your solution requires a 16-day onboarding process for a secure system, you lose the ability to act quickly.”
The platform also includes tools for HR, task management and compliance monitoring, with payment infrastructure that can support cryptocurrency-based transactions using stablecoins such as USDC and USDT. It is already being used by logistics, aid and development agencies to securely manage teams and transfer funds in real time, even in remote or high-risk locations.
Labrys currently employs 21 people and reports seven-figure annual revenues. It plans to expand its team and scale the platform’s adoption within both public and private sector organisations.
Lersten believes the technology has long-term potential beyond the defence and humanitarian sectors. “We’re starting with high-trust, high-stakes environments, but the need for secure, distributed coordination is growing everywhere. As companies go global and workforces become more mobile, they need systems that can manage verification, workflows, and compliance across borders and time zones.”
The investment comes as UK defence policy undergoes a major overhaul. On Monday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer unveiled the government’s latest defence review, promising to move the UK towards a state of “warfighting readiness” and “mobilise the nation in a common cause”.
For Labrys, the timing could not be better. As public and private organisations rethink how they coordinate people on the ground — whether in war zones, flood zones or supply chains — the company is positioning itself as the connective tissue between security, flexibility and speed.
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Ex-military founders raise $20m to scale secure defence and disaster response platform