Military veterans have raised £14.7m to help humanitarian organisations, logistics providers and militaries verify, track and pay globally dispersed teams.
Humanitarian organisations, defence forces, crisis response teams and logistics providers are operating in some of the most volatile places on Earth. Yet many are flying blind when it comes to managing people on the ground, relying on insecure and unreliable emails, spreadsheets and messaging apps to coordinate and remunerate workforces.
This dangerous status quo can have catastrophic failures, from millions in aid going missing to 60,000-strong security forces being directed over WhatsApp and more.
Labrys’s Axiom platform is the first in a suite of products being developed and combines HR and task-management tools with encrypted communications and global payment tools.
It uses biometric identity checks to verify that people are who they say they are, with geo-tagged tasks and built-in audits to track missions, tasks and teams.
Its stablecoin disbursement allows payments to be made in the rapidly expanding cryptocurrency anywhere in the world, which is critical when working with people in regions with little to no banking infrastructure.
Having spent a combined 20+ years on the frontline, Royal Marine veteran August Lersten (CEO) and former Army Officer Luke Wattam (COO) say they have built the world’s first military-grade, end-to-end command and control platform, capable of verifying and coordinating teams across the world’s most complex environments.
The round was led by Plural. AlbionVC and Superangel also participated, alongside previous investors Project A, MDOne, Expeditions Fund and Marque Ventures.
The funding, which brings the total raised to $25.5 million, will be used to scale Labrys’ engineering and operations teams, add advanced AI-driven capabilities and new deployment models to address the urgent need for trustworthy operational tools as global crises escalate.
Since raising its seed round in 2023, Labrys has secured seven-figure annual revenues, including contracts with government clients and customers across logistics and humanitarian disaster response, including in Ukraine.
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“Being unable to verify if a person can be trusted, if a task has been completed or work out how to pay them has been preventing successful humanitarian, aid and military missions for too long,” said Lersten.
“Yet solving the issues has historically been considered too complex and too difficult, leaving organisations stuck using disparate and insecure platforms. We created Labrys to solve these tough workforce and team coordination problems in logistics, risk and humanitarian crisis response and we’ve built a talented team to tackle the hardest technical problems in this space.
“We’re delighted to be backed by investors who understand this mission and want to build the future of trusted infrastructure right alongside us.”
Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, said: “A lot of defense and resilience innovation focuses on hardware assets. Yet, there’s been a gap around secure, reliable system for human coordination when it matters most – until now.
“August and Luke’s experience on the literal front lines means they know exactly the challenges experienced on the ground and are building Labrys to solve these challenges once and for all. This is exactly the kind of mission we want to support at Plural and I look forward to working with them to grow Labrys.”