Raft

Defense Software · AI · Aerospace & Defense

Acquisition

Leonardo DRS to acquire AI data-fusion startup Raft for $450M

European defense primes are increasingly buying American command-and-control software makers to close AI gaps fast rather than build them.

• Leonardo DRS, the U.S. arm of Italian defense giant Leonardo, agreed to acquire Raft in an all-cash deal valued at $450 million, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 pending regulatory approval.
• Raft, founded in 2018 and based in McLean, Virginia, builds open-architecture mission software that fuses data from sensors and systems across domains for real-time battlefield decision-making.
• Its core products include the Raft Data Platform, which unifies data from disparate sensors and vendors, and the Raft AI Mission System, which lets operators build agentic workflows for battle management and predictive analysis.
• Raft had raised $60 million from Washington Harbor Partners in 2024 and won a $349 million IDIQ contract with SOCOM in 2025, working with more than 25 defense agencies.
• Raft was a founding member of Lockheed's Next Generation Command and Control prototyping team and has supported the Army's C2 push in the Pacific, even as the Army's broader common data baseline contract went to Anduril in June.
• The deal follows a pattern of European primes acquiring U.S. defense startups, echoing Norwegian firm Kongsberg's purchase of drone maker Zone 5 Technologies, which closed last month.
• The purchase signals that hardware-centric primes are racing to buy software and AI talent outright rather than build it in-house, as the Pentagon pushes for open architectures over vendor lock-in.