Automation Developer

The US Department of the Navy has awarded Leidos $875 million for the second option year of a contract to manage critical military networks worldwide. The company will support more than 650,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel by managing over 425,000 devices at more than 2,500 sites globally. Leidos is responsible for all aspects of user support, operations and IT transformation on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, Outside the Continental United States Navy Enterprise Network and Marine Corps Enterprise Network. Since winning the initial contract in 2020, the company has introduced automation that delivers patches to network devices 93% faster and accelerates enterprise-wide patching by 94%. The award supports Leidos' NorthStar 2030 strategy, focusing on digital modernisation, cyber capabilities and mission software.

Creoir gets seed funding - but fielded voice AI is still the milestone. September 11, 2026 at 10:41 AM | Updated: September 11, 2026 at 12:51 PM | Author: QUASA Editorial Team | 4 min read | 2 Finnish defence-technology company Creoir secured a seed investment from Swedish venture fund Gungnir Capital through its September 3, 2026 funding notice, issued from Stockholm and Oulu. The capital is intended to commercialise EdgeVUI and Operator Assistant for European defence customers, but the notice gives no investment amount, valuation or other financial terms. The amount committed by Gungnir therefore remains unknown. EU-Startups' September 4 coverage identifies Gungnir as the lead investor in an ongoing seed round targeting €2 million; that target is not evidence of a completed €2 million raise. The investment supports two offline voice products. EdgeVUI is designed to let defence operators control complex systems through hands-free speech in their native language. Operator Assistant is an AI-powered knowledge-base product for retrieving mission-critical information by voice. The disclosed use cases include command-and-control and combat-management systems, vehicles, sonar equipment and radios. Both products run on the device without a cloud connection and are intended for noisy, security-sensitive settings. The proposition is consequently narrower than a general-purpose conversational assistant: Creoir is developing an interface for systems in which connectivity may be unavailable or unsuitable and operators may need to keep their hands on controls and their attention on operational displays. The financing is directed at commercial delivery, rather than presented as proof that wide operational deployment has already been achieved. The stated transition runs from validated pilot projects toward fielded capability, making fielding the next commercial and technical milestone even though the investor uses broader deployment language elsewhere. Projects, pilots and fielded systems remain distinct. The available disclosures establish customer activity but do not provide enough detail to classify every engagement by procurement stage or operational status. Separating the claims produces a more precise evidence map: * Named customer projects: Public materials identify ongoing work involving Saab, Leidos and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, or TKMS. They do not identify the programmes, end users, contract values, delivery volumes or acceptance milestones. * Validated pilots: The disclosed transition begins with validated pilot projects, but no public document maps individual pilots to the three named companies. Test methods, acceptance criteria, performance results and completion dates are also absent. * Live integrations and deployment claims: Gungnir's Creoir portfolio entry calls EdgeVUI and Operator Assistant integrated into live projects with Saab, Leidos and TKMS and also labels the technology deployed in naval and mission-critical environments. It does not classify each engagement as a pilot, development integration, production contract or accepted operational system. * Fielded systems: No receiving unit, named platform, installation count or operational-acceptance milestone is disclosed. The public record therefore cannot establish the scope, permanence or repeatability of fielded capability. These descriptions are not necessarily contradictory. Software can be deployed within a bounded trial or customer integration while its supplier continues working toward repeatable fielding across programmes. The unresolved question is whether any disclosed installation has passed from technical validation into an accepted, sustained operational role. The cheque size and final round total are still open. Gungnir invests in early-stage European defence, security and resilience companies, covering stages from pre-seed through Series A. In Creoir's case, the available financing materials identify Gungnir as the new backer and lead investor but do not name additional participants or describe the ownership acquired. Dealroom's September 4 report records a Gungnir-led seed round and explicitly notes that Creoir did not disclose the amount. It does not establish how much has closed, whether other investors have participated or whether the continuing round has reached the separately published €2 million target. The defensible financial conclusion is limited: Creoir received seed capital from Gungnir, while Gungnir's cheque size, the round's closed total and the company's valuation remain undisclosed. Treating the fundraising target as money already secured would overstate the available evidence. Fielding would materially change the evidence. The products address a concrete operational constraint. Hands-free interaction could reduce the need to shift attention between controls and displays, while local processing removes dependence on remote cloud infrastructure for the core voice workflow. Those characteristics help explain the investment case, but product design, customer projects and investor backing do not independently demonstrate operational adoption at scale. A named programme, production order, customer-acceptance milestone or deployment tied to a defined platform and scope would clarify the commercial stage. Published measurements for the complete system under specified noise, hardware and operating conditions would provide stronger evidence of technical maturity. None accompanied the financing disclosure. The established facts are therefore narrower than the broadest deployment language: Gungnir has made a seed investment to support commercialisation of Creoir's offline EdgeVUI and Operator Assistant products, and customer work involving three named defence companies is public. The amount invested, the final round size and the precise operational maturity of those projects are still unknown, leaving repeatable fielded capability as the milestone to watch.