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UK Startups and Innovation
21MAY

All3 lands $25m for agentic defence factories

2 min read
10:13UTC

All3 raised a $25m seed led by RTP Global on Wednesday 29 April to build agentic factories for defence, robotics and aerospace clients, with planned expansion into France, Germany and Ukraine following the round.

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TechnologyDeveloping
Key takeaway

All3 raised $25m on 29 April for agentic defence factories spanning Birmingham, France, Germany and Ukraine.

All3 raised a $25 million seed on 29 April 2026 led by RTP Global, with SuperSeed, Begin Capital, s16vc and VNV Global participating 1. The Birmingham-based company plans to build agentic factories for defence, robotics and aerospace clients, with declared expansion into France, Germany and Ukraine.

All3's customer set tracks directly onto the British procurement architecture stood up over the last six weeks. Sprint and Zig-Zag, the private-finance mechanisms made permanent within the Defence Investors' Advisory Group on 22 April , are designed to catalyse precisely this customer base. The MOD's £20m fund underwrites the same group of buyers; All3 is reading the policy stack and pricing accordingly.

An All3 agentic factory in Birmingham looks much the same as one deployed forward in Mariupol, which is why the planned geography spans Ukraine alongside German and French customers. NATO-adjacent aerospace primes are increasingly placing build capacity close to operational theatres; the company is positioning to win procurement in both directions across The Alliance.

RTP Global leading reflects the international-VC anchor pattern visible elsewhere this window. The named investor mix sits alongside Forest's specialist mobility-VC stack and the British Business Bank regional vehicle behind Third Space Learning, suggesting the post-VCT-cut market is sorting into discrete capital pools by sector rather than collapsing into one dominant template. Defence-tech is becoming an asset class with its own anchor funds, not a niche of generalist venture.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

An agentic factory is a manufacturing facility where software makes most of the production decisions, such as when to switch between parts, how to adjust a robot's movements for different tolerances, and when to flag quality problems, without a human operator authorising each step. All3 builds the software that runs these decisions. Its target customers are defence, robotics and aerospace manufacturers: companies that need very precise parts made in relatively small batches, which is exactly where manual processes are slowest and most error-prone. The Birmingham base is not coincidental: the West Midlands has a dense cluster of precision engineering companies supplying the UK aerospace and defence sector. All3 is building its product where its first customers already operate.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

All3's Birmingham location and defence focus reflect a specific industrial geography. The West Midlands hosts roughly 60% of UK aerospace tier-two and tier-three suppliers, mostly small factories making precision components for Rolls-Royce, GKN and BAE Systems. Those factories run on manual processes and proprietary CNC programs because upgrading them requires stopping production for 6-18 months, which no tier-two supplier can afford while fulfilling live contracts.

Agentic factory software that layers on top of existing CNC and robotic equipment without a full production stop is the only commercially viable entry point. All3's model targets this integration layer rather than greenfield automated manufacturing.

What could happen next?
  • Opportunity

    All3's planned expansion into Ukraine creates an unusual dual revenue model: commercial manufacturing automation in the UK, and battlefield repair and rapid-manufacture contracts in Ukraine, where the Sprint and Zig-Zag procurement tools (ID:2704) provide the contractual pathway.

Sources:UKTN
Mentions:SuperSeed →Begin Capital →VNV Global →All3 →RTP Global →Third Space Learning →Defence Investors' Advisory Group →DSIT →NATO →Zig-Zag →Sprint →Germany →France →Forest →British Business Bank →Ukraine →
First Reported In

Update #3 · SAIU rides $1.1bn Ineffable seed; hardware looms

UKTN· 1 May 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Healey makes DIAG permanent, launches Sprint and Zig-Zag
Sprint and Zig-Zag provide private-finance mechanisms for defence startups; All3 targets the same defence, robotics and aerospace customer base.
Occurred 21 Apr 2026
Read story →
This Event
All3 lands $25m for agentic defence factories
The customer list and target geography map directly onto the British and NATO procurement instruments now functioning as seed-stage capital.
Different Perspectives
Australian Department of Defence (AUKUS partner, Rowden Technologies)
Australian Department of Defence (AUKUS partner, Rowden Technologies)
Rowden Technologies holds active AUKUS AI for Acoustics contracts with the UK, US and Australian defence establishments. The NWF's £25m investment in Rowden on 13 May places UK sovereign capital directly into a trilateral programme Australia co-funds; from Canberra's perspective, the NWF cheque increases UK government skin-in-the-game on a programme where Australia has already committed co-development resources.
Temasek (Singapore sovereign co-investor, Isomorphic Series B)
Temasek (Singapore sovereign co-investor, Isomorphic Series B)
Temasek co-invested with the SAIU in Isomorphic's $2.1bn Series B the previous week, treating a majority Alphabet-owned company as a valid sovereign co-investment target. Fractile's round, without a UK sovereign co-investor, reads differently from Singapore's vantage: allied state capital (NATO-IF, In-Q-Tel) is now competing with Asian sovereign funds for early positions in UK deeptech.
KfW IPEX-Bank (German state development bank)
KfW IPEX-Bank (German state development bank)
KfW's participation in the £250m InstaVolt facility alongside the NWF on 18 May is the first documented post-Brexit co-investment between a German state development bank and a UK sovereign vehicle on green infrastructure. It establishes a replicable bilateral instrument that neither government has publicised as policy, operating below the threshold of formal UK-EU financial cooperation.
In-Q-Tel / NATO Innovation Fund (allied national-security capital)
In-Q-Tel / NATO Innovation Fund (allied national-security capital)
Their joint appearance on Fractile's Series B, without any UK sovereign vehicle present, signals that allied national-security funds are moving faster into UK dual-use chip startups than UK state programmes. In-Q-Tel's Series B entry implies Fractile's SRAM in-memory compute is being read as a dual-use national-security capability.
DSIT / Liz Kendall (Secretary of State for Science)
DSIT / Liz Kendall (Secretary of State for Science)
Kendall launched the AI and Future of Work Unit on 18 May and framed the £36m DAWN investment as proof the government's compute infrastructure is operational. DSIT has not publicly addressed the absence of any UK sovereign vehicle on Fractile's cap table, or whether the AI Hardware Plan's first-customer pledge will reach companies already carrying NATO-IF and In-Q-Tel stakes.
Australian Department of Defence (AUKUS AI for Acoustics partner)
Australian Department of Defence (AUKUS AI for Acoustics partner)
Rowden Technologies holds active AUKUS AI for Acoustics contracts with the UK, US, and Australian defence establishments. The NWF's £25m investment in Rowden on 13 May brings UK sovereign capital directly into a trilateral programme, which from Canberra's perspective places additional UK government skin-in-the-game on a programme Australia co-funds and co-develops.