Thought the AI mergers were over? Think again. Today, autonomous vehicle software developer Applied Intuition announced that it’s acquiring EpiSci, a software company that builds autonomous systems for everything from drones to surface vessels to fighter jets.
Applied Intuition CTO and co-founder Peter Ludwig told Tectonic that the deal would enable the company to expand beyond ground-based operations (its bread and butter so far). “It is a perfect marriage,” he said. “EpiSci’s products and offerings are exactly in aerial, maritime, and space. They do what we don’t do, and vice versa.”
Self-driving software: Applied Intuition was founded in 2017 by CEO Qasar Younis and Ludwig, who started out building testing software for autonomous vehicles. In 2018, the company expanded into defense.
- The company provides a virtual testing ground where developers can test autonomous software in a range of simulated environments.
- It also develops the autonomous vehicle software itself, including an off-road autonomy stack that maps rough terrain and adapts in real-time to obstacles and unmapped environments (read: conflict zones).
Applied Intuition has worked with General Dynamics and other defense primes and has secured several military contracts, including with AFWERX, DIU, and the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The company is backed by heavy-hitting VCs including Lux Capital, a16z, and General Catalyst. In 2024, it was valued at $6B.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane: Where Applied Intuition has kept its feet on the ground, EpiSci has had its head in the clouds (and at sea). The company—founded in 2012—builds autonomy software for military vehicles, drones, and fighter jets.
- The company’s TacticalAI software is an autonomous “co-pilot” that helps fighter jets and drones make real-time decisions without human input.
- EpiSci software also helps control swarms of unmanned vehicles, including UAVs, USVs, and UUVs.
- The company has secured contracts with DARPA, AFWERX, and the US Navy.
- Merlin Labs, which develops autonomy software for fixed-wing aircraft, announced last summer that it planned to acquire EpiSci, but the deal fell through a few months later.
Like attracts like: Now, you might be asking, shouldn’t two autonomous software companies be rivals? Younis and Ludwig see it more as a complementary relationship. The Applied Intuition team sees multi-domain software as the future, and EpiSci helps get them there, with its systems soon to be incorporated into the flagship software.
The cash also helps. Ludwig said EpiSci has been “somewhat resource-constrained.” Younis told Tectonic that they’ll be able to provide EpiSci—now a fully-owned subsidiary of Applied Intuition—with everything from employees, to tools, to compute, to testing grounds.
“I think we’re going to be able to accelerate a lot of the work that EpiSci is already doing,” he said.