Advanced Navigation has raised AU$158 million in a Series C funding round as governments and defence primes seek alternatives to GPS in environments affected by jamming and spoofing.
The round was led by Airtree Ventures, with participation from Quadrant Private Equity and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC). Existing backers named in the announcement include Main Sequence, KKR, In-Q-Tel, Alpha Intelligence Capital, former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and OIF Ventures.
The Sydney-headquartered company said it will use the capital to scale its positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) offering across defence applications, including air defence systems, mobile radar, counter-drone systems, armoured vehicles and other tactical platforms.
Advanced Navigation’s pitch centres on combining high-precision inertial sensors with onboard software to maintain navigation performance when satellite signals are degraded or unavailable. The company argued that reliance on GPS has become a vulnerability as electronic warfare and spoofing become more common in conflict zones and other contested environments.
Chief executive and co-founder Chris Shaw said the company is combining deep-learning software with high-precision hardware to support autonomous systems across “sea, land, air and space”.
The announcement also flagged expanded manufacturing and production in Australia and plans to establish PNT “Centres of Excellence” in the United States and Europe. The company said it expects these centres to support customers locally, strengthen supply-chain resilience and enable targeted acquisitions across areas including robotics, photonics, vision, AI and quantum sensing.
Advanced Navigation said it has deployed more than 100,000 systems and that more than 80% of revenue is generated in the US and Europe.
NRFC chief executive David Gall said the investment would support Australian-developed inertial navigation technology, skilled manufacturing and STEM jobs, and help bring the company’s products to international markets.
Barrenjoey acted as strategic financial adviser to Advanced Navigation on the transaction.
