Arondite
London-based startup building Cobalt, a hardware-agnostic AI orchestration layer that unifies drones, robots, and sensors under a single human operator interface.
Background
Arondite was founded in December 2023 by Will Blyth, a former British Army officer, and Rob Underhill (CTO), who brings prior defense-technology experience.
The company's founding thesis is that the proliferation of autonomous systems creates a fragmentation problem — operators face dozens of incompatible platforms — and that the critical gap is orchestration software, not hardware.
Its core product is the Cobalt platform, a hardware-agnostic integration layer that ingests data from disparate drones, ground robots, and sensor networks and presents a unified operating picture with AI-driven analytics.
Use cases include minefield clearance, counter-intrusion perimeter defense, and protection of critical infrastructure such as transport and energy networks.
Arondite sells primarily into UK defense and critical-infrastructure channels, with pilot deployments underway across both sectors.
The company tripled headcount in 2025 and is targeting approximately 100 employees by end-2026, up from a 21–50 band in early 2025. Estimated annual revenue stood at roughly $2.31 million as of early 2025.