Andy Markoff

I’m psyched to announce Smack has raised $32M in Seed and Series A funding. I’m genuinely grateful for the investors we have on our team. When Clint and I started the company in 2024, we didn’t know anything about venture capital. We didn’t know anything about government acquisitions or government relations. We didn’t even know how to talk about what we were building without spewing out streams of acronyms and the word “crayon.” We were two lost Marines, looking for funding to build the decision-making technology we knew our country’s warriors needed. Thanks to @p72vc for leading our Seed and for the early mentorship that helped get Smack off of the ground. Thanks also to @felicis, First In, @PalumniVc , Fulcrum VG, and Anomaly Fund for being part of the journey from the beginning. Thanks to @GeodesicsCap and @costanoavc for leading the Series A. Your support supercharged our ability to build the domain-specific frontier models needed to deliver decision dominance to the US DoW and our allies and partners. Thanks also to @ScribbleVC, Bloomberg Beta, Washington Harbour Partners, and Fortitude Ventures for joining the team. We’re lucky to have you. It’s now more apparent than ever that our country needs a frontier AI lab building domain-specific models by warriors, for warriors. That’s what Smack is.

@Nominal_io @traestephens @zebulgar @foundersfund Congrats. Well deserved.

Ambition is timeless. Tools are not. Today @nominal_io is announcing an $80M fundraise at a $1B valuation, led by @traestephens and @zebulgar at @foundersfund. Since our Series B 10 months ago: 7x revenue growth. 2x team growth. Hardware engineers are stuck between 1980s-era tools and .com software built to be replaced. We're fixing the data supply chain so the industrial sector can adopt AI and enter the next era of ambition. We’re also releasing Volume 1 of the Nominal Product Catalog: "Tools for Progress." catalog.nominal.io We're grateful for continued participation from @sequoia, @generalcatalyst, @Lux_Capital, @lightspeedvp, @redglassvc, @avenirgrowth, and @haystackvc. All Systems Nominal.

"There's been a lot of discussion about fully automating the kill chain. No one wants that. That's not even something I've heard anyone talking about." - Smack CEO @andymarkoff "What fundamentally people are trying to do is have the right amount of human in the loop. Have humans for high-value human touch points." "Intelligent autonomy is about removing humans from low-value human touch points, and bringing them back into the system for those touch points where they need to make a decision, whether for ethical or tactical reasons, and enabling them to make decisions that help move hundreds of thousands of autonomous systems, manned platforms, and other types of unmanned platforms towards common goals across what could be a 100-million-square-mile theater."

@tbpn Really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me on.

@tbpn @benthompson @zach_yadegari @jamesbeshara @jbqlaw @grinich @MatthiasWagner @joanrod_ai Excited to join @tbpn this afternoon.

We’re back. On today's show: - @benthompson (Stratechery) - @zach_yadegari (Cal AI) - @jamesbeshara (Magic Mind) - @jbqlaw (Quinn Emmanuel) - @grinich (WorkOS) - @MatthiasWagner (Flux AI) - @joanrod_ai (QuiverAI) - @andymarkoff (Smack) - Adam Simon (Immersion Economy) Join us:

@Jason We are building a frontier model at Smack with one purpose: serving the DoW and US allies and partners.

Anyone building a war-focused LLM that’s looking for funding?

"Decision Dominance will require a new form of autonomy, delivered by 'digital robots' that can perceive and decide without necessarily having physical bodies." At Stanford DEFCON 2025, Smack CEO @andymarkoff discussed the blurring line between autonomy and Decision Dominance, and the tremendous amount of support human warfighters need to both analyze multimodal data and recommend courses of action. This is why Smack is building the reasoning layer for the DoW — or as we like to call it, the Brain for the Kill Chain. Big thank you to @Stanford and moderator Abby Reinhold , as well as fellow panelists @notvert, @DanTadross, and @bk31 for the excellent discussion.

Becoming a warrior was all I ever wanted to do. To my brothers and sisters in arms: serving with you was the greatest privilege of my life. To those holding the line today: thank you. Happy Veterans Day. andyeatscrayons.substack.com/p/once-upon-a-…

“The artful integration of many different capabilities and technologies. That’s how you solve really hard problems.” Listen as Smack co-founder and CEO @andymarkoff talks about how lessons learned in the @USMC have informed Smack’s approach to delivering Decision Dominance to the @DeptofWar.

Smack CEO @andymarkoff talks about Decision Dominance, why it's necessary now, and the core products we're building to make it a reality. Big thanks to @PatrickJBlum and @AnomalyFund for the excellent conversation.

New Pod episode: "We didn't have enough Hellfire missiles for all of the ISIS suicide trucks we needed to destroy" Andy Markoff on running out of missiles during Mosul and why he's now building the brain for the kill chain at Smack Technologies Link to full episode in replies: