A tech firm co-founded by former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s son has raised £15m in private equity funding.
Nick Blair’s Skyral, a supplier to the British Army, has secured Series A funding to accelerate its modelling and simulation technology.
His brother Euan Blair is the entrepreneur behind EdTech unicorn Multiverse.
The round into Skyral was led by European venture capital firm NOIA Capital.
Led jointly by co-founders and executive directors Jason Kennedy and Naomi Hulme – with Blair serving as chair – Skyral has quickly established itself as an international leader in advanced modelling and simulation technology.
The firm creates strategic digital twins that model human behaviours alongside real-time and projected infrastructure systems such as transit, power, and telecommunications networks of entire cities and countries.
Skyral’s software-driven approach and cross-sector partnerships have led to rapid market adoption across defence, national security, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors globally.
The company has built a strong track record working with the UK, US, and NATO partners while successfully diversifying its services, with over 60% of contracts now coming from both the public and private sectors.
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“This investment is a strong endorsement of both Skyral’s technology and its ability to solve complex global challenges, as well as the excellence of UK innovation,” said Blair.
“Our digital twin software is at the forefront of a new era in decision-making, where virtual models power real-world transformation.
“With the backing of NOIA and our other investors, we are well-positioned to scale faster, deepen the capabilities of our platform, and deliver greater value to our customers worldwide.”
Skyral’s mission is to help governments and businesses face unprecedented challenges by experimenting in the virtual world before making critical decisions in the real one.
Its technology helped shape the requirements for the Collective Training Transformation Programme (CTTP) during a pathfinder with the British Army and has now been downselected as part of the Omnia Training consortium alongside Raytheon, Rheinmetall, Capita, and Cervus, paving the way for the next generation of collective training.
Skyral’s digital twins have been deployed to tackle complex public health challenges such as modelling the impact of COVID scenarios for the UK government during the pandemic, identifying clinical and policy pathways to reduce child stunting in Indonesia over 50 times faster than conventional methods, and large-scale infrastructure programmes.
Skyral intends to use the new capital to expand its team, accelerate product development, and strengthen its position in key markets across Europe, North America, and Asia.
Jérôme Lhoist, partner at NOIA Capital, said: “We believe Skyral represents the next generation of AI-enabled strategic modelling and simulation technology.
“Their unique combination of digital twin capabilities and AI-powered analytics offers transformative potential across defence, national security, healthcare and infrastructure. We’re excited to support their vision and help scale their impact globally.”
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