Navigation and autonomous systems company Advanced Navigation has successfully raised £83-million, or about €95-million, in a Series C funding round, marking a definitive shift in the global autonomy race as national demand for alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies reaches an all-time high.

The round was led by venture capital firm Airtree Ventures, with strategic participation from private equity firm Quadrant Private Equity and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC), in Australia.

Advanced Navigation, in a media release, explains that these investors join a cohort of existing backers including Main Sequence, KKR, In-Q-Tel,  Alpha Intelligence Capital and OIF Ventures, as well as former Australia PM Malcolm Turnbull.

“As autonomous vehicles scale into contested and high-stakes frontiers, the world’s reliance on any single navigation technology has evolved from a technical limitation into a systemic vulnerability.

“To power the next generation of autonomous systems, Advanced Navigation is combining deep learning software with high-precision hardware to help systems conquer the extremes across sea, land, air and space,” says Advanced Navigation CEO and co-founder Chris Shaw.

The company says this “hard tech” approach to navigation has made the company a trusted partner to the world’s largest defence and technology giants, including Anduril, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Hanwha, BHP, Rheinmetall and Intuitive Machines.

Following a year of triple-digit growth, the company notes that it is accelerating its global expansion, significantly scaling its deep-tech operational and engineering presence across the European and US markets.

In today’s landscape, Advanced Navigation posits that GPS is no longer a reliable single source of truth, arguing that challenges once considered "edge cases" – electronic warfare threats, GPS spoofing and infrastructure-denied regions – are now a daily reality.

“The era of relying on a single silver bullet for navigation is over. Across defence, energy transition, humanitarian response and autonomous missions, certainty is required where GPS can no longer be trusted.

“The future belongs to intelligent systems that can sense, adapt and navigate independently. At Advanced Navigation, we are building the resilient foundation by fusing high-precision inertial hardware with onboard intelligence, ensuring autonomous systems behave predictably in unpredictable environments.

“Joined by new world-class investors, we are accelerating this capability to set the global benchmark for assured PNT. As autonomy becomes the new reality, we are not just participating in the market. We are defining it,” continues Shaw.

Leveraging a deep heritage in robotics, AI and high-precision sensing, Advanced Navigation says it is deploying a layered, multi-sensor architecture designed to operate with total autonomy, even when GPS signals are degraded or lost.

At the core of this architecture is AdNav Intelligence, the company’s software fusion engine.

It continuously combines and cross checks data from multiple sensors in real-time, while adapting to each mission’s requirements.

This ensures autonomous vehicles, aircraft, ships and robots understand exactly where they are and keep moving with confidence, no matter the environment.

With more than 100 000 systems deployed across the world, Advanced Navigation says its market presence has reached critical mass, with over 80% of revenue generated in Europe and the US.

The company says this investment will accelerate the establishment of PNT Centres of Excellence across these priority markets, anchoring the company’s next phase of global growth.

It explains that the centres will embed highly specialised engineering teams directly within key regions, building trusted, on-the-ground capability that strengthens national resilience, secures supply chains and reinforces long-term technical leadership.

In parallel, the centres will enable targeted technology acquisitions, expanding Advanced Navigation’s sensor stack across robotics, photonics, vision, AI and quantum sensing.

“Advanced Navigation has built the leading solution in the positioning field and their rapid expansion into the US and Europe marks a definitive shift for mission-critical industries as global demand converges around the precise use case they solve.

“We are excited to partner with Chris and the team as they scale into the next chapter,” says Airtree partner Kelland Reilly.

“This future will not be won by a single breakthrough, but by the bridge between classical physics and next-generation intelligence. Advanced Navigation is engineering that bridge through resilient systems that improve lives, deliver positioning in hazardous environments and protect communities.

“Beneath the ocean, its technologies are advancing undersea surveillance. Beyond Earth, its technology is proving performance where failure is not an option. Advanced Navigation is catalysing the autonomy revolution. As the world evolves, navigation must evolve with it. The time to build resilience is now,” Advanced Navigation says.