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The defense tech start-up Allen Control Systems is opening an office in Mountain View.
Founded in 2022, Allen Control System merges artificial intelligence capabilities with defensive weapons. Its headquarters are in Austin, Texas, and its new Mountain View office will be located near Mountain View’s Whisman light rail station in a 16,000-square-foot office, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. The exact location was not disclosed due to security concerns, and a Mountain View spokesperson could not confirm the location. It is also not clear when the Mountain View office will open.
Allen Control System’s flagship product is the Bullfrog: an autonomous robotic weapon that can detect a drone using computer vision and other technology, track it, and automatically aim a machine gun at the drone. The weapon has been adopted by the U.S. Marine Corps for countering drone threats.
Luke Allen, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, told the Business Journal that Silicon Valley was a natural choice for ACS’s expansion, given the region’s deep pool of robotics talent.
ACS has recently raised $200 million in a Series B funding round in June, bringing its reported valuation to $2.2 billion, according to a company press release.
The company joins a growing field of both new and incumbent defense companies with a presence in Silicon Valley. Some of the industry’s largest traditional defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, have long maintained operations in the region, although both companies are headquartered elsewhere. Lockheed Martin, for example, has a major presence in Sunnyvale and an advanced technology center in Palo Alto, while Northrop Grumman has operations in Sunnyvale.
The region’s defense industry is also evolving as newer companies bring Silicon Valley’s strengths in software, artificial intelligence and robotics to national security. Palantir Technologies, a software company whose products are used by government agencies and the military, was founded in Palo Alto before moving its headquarters to Denver and then Miami. Other newer companies, including autonomous-drone maker Skydio and defense-intelligence startup Vannevar Labs, are headquartered in San Mateo and Palo Alto respectively.
AI-powered systems have been increasingly deployed in modern warfare. Michael Brown, an official in the U.S. Department of Defense, has characterized the conflict in Iran as the “First AI War” due to the use of weapons like Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which combines various intelligence feeds to allow military officials to make quicker decisions such as classifying targets or recommending decisions. In Ukraine and Russia, military members are using AI-enabled drones that can recognize and track targets, Reuters reported.
