C2GRID Raises Pre-Seed to Reinvent Situational Awareness

• Estonian-Ukrainian defense tech startup C2GRID closed Pre-Seed round led by Sunfish Partners
• C2GRID’s platform transforms drone footage into near-real-time 3D battlefield environments
• The solution is specifically designed for GPS-denied, security-sensitive, frontline operational conditions
• The startup’s future expansion targets AI-driven planning, simulation, and autonomous integration

Last November, C2GRID—the Estonian-Ukrainian 3D geospatial situational-awareness platform for the military—closed its Pre-Seed round of investment. The lead investor of the round was the famous VC firm Sunfish Partners (invested in CodeAlly, among others), joined by another well-known investor BSV Ventures (invested in FirstQFM, among others) and Mike Oliinyk of Montonio as an angel investor.

From Research Environment to Real-World Urgency

C2GRID was incorporated in 2024 but the team was formed earlier at TalTech’s Industrial Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab, led by Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Vladimir Kuts.

This lab focuses on systems modelling and autonomous platforms. Having worked closely with students and researchers in the lab environment for years, the core team naturally formed around people with strong technical backgrounds and the willingness to take this forward. Since several lab members are from Ukraine, they were motivated to apply their skills in a situation where their homeland is facing Russian aggression.

‘Our team wanted to do something with the potential to save lives in Ukraine,’ C2GRID’s CMO Saamuel Stepanov tells ITKeyMedia.

‘One of TalTech’s goals is to encourage and support employees’ entrepreneurial initiatives, as spin-off companies are a clear example of the impact of the university’s research and knowledge on society. We are very pleased that C2GRID has grown out of TalTech and has managed to secure an investment that creates the conditions for faster growth and market success,’ TalTech’s technology transfer expert Andri Sokka adds.

Frontline Validation and Early Momentum

The first major milestone for the company was direct engagement with Ukrainian frontline units. C2GRID attended Darkstar’s hackathon to test the idea with well-known units. They responded positively, and that gave the team the confirmation to pursue what they were building.

Following that validation, C2GRID formalized the company and secured initial funding in September 2025. This allowed the startup to move from early experimentation to structured product development and begin expanding its operations in Ukraine.

Since then, the young company has widened its engagement with Ukrainian units – deepening cooperation, collecting field feedback, and adapting the solution to real operational constraints. In parallel, C2GRID has engaged Estonian and NATO structures, as well as several defence primes, to ensure interoperability and long-term integration potential.

Getting selected into NATO DIANA marked another important milestone. It provided recognition within the Alliance innovation ecosystem and connected C2GRID to a broader international network of partners and stakeholders.

Turning Raw Footage into Spatial Intelligence

‘Opportunities in 3D mapping for defence and civilian use are expanding rapidly, with new ones emerging almost daily and no sign of slowing, quite the opposite. With massive amounts of video generated on today’s battlefields, our near real-time 3D solution handles virtually any footage, giving those on the front lines better tools to defend freedom – today or whenever necessary,’ Mr Kuts states.

Essentially, C2GRID is a deep-tech geospatial awareness platform that transforms raw battlefield video, particularly drone feeds, into accurate, near-real-time 3D operational environments to support situational awareness and decision-making for defence and security users. It fuses multiple sensor data sources and layers, applies AI-based automation (including threat detection), and creates unified, multilayered maps that help analysts and commanders plan missions and respond faster in complex environments. Being co-developed with real frontline units, the system is designed to be hardware-agnostic and usable in contested settings without reliance on GPS.

‘What C2GRID is building is the next step on the battlefield. Instantly duplicating the environment into a 3D virtual space that benefits from data fusion opens an entirely new layer of possibilities — from better situational understanding to faster planning, training, and more efficient use of unmanned and autonomous systems,’ Mr Kuts summarizes.

Engineering for Imperfect Conditions

As with any computer vision and 3D reconstruction system, input quality influences output fidelity and higher resolution, stable footage, and clear visual references naturally improve model accuracy. Operational environments, however, introduce additional complexity. Weather conditions, lighting variability, terrain characteristics, and signal constraints can all affect data capture and processing. On the battlefield, speed and efficient data flow are often as critical as raw image quality.

‘Our focus is on optimising performance under real-world conditions rather than ideal ones. We continuously refine our algorithms, processing pipelines, and system architecture to maximise usability across diverse scenarios. Close cooperation with operational partners ensures that feedback is rapidly incorporated into product development,’ Mr Stepanov argues.

Navigating Without GPS

Maintaining spatial accuracy in GPS-denied or GPS-spoofed environments requires alternative referencing methods. Rather than relying solely on satellite positioning, C2GRID primarily uses vision-based spatial reconstruction and relative positioning derived from the video itself.

The system can anchor reconstructed models to geographic reference points or pre-existing maps when available. In operational scenarios, approximate coordinates can be introduced to align the model within a broader geospatial framework, with users able to fine-tune positioning if required.

‘The tradeoff is that absolute global accuracy may vary depending on available reference data and environmental conditions. However, for many operational use cases, relative spatial accuracy and structural coherence are more critical than centimetre-level global precision. Our focus is on delivering reliable, actionable spatial awareness under conditions where GPS cannot be used,’ Mr Stepanov tells ITKeyMedia.

Security as Architecture

Given the sensitivity of the data involved, including video from frontline operations, potentially featuring civilians, C2GRID needs to address security, data protection, encryption, and the risk of data falling into the wrong hands. According to the team, security and data protection are foundational design principles for C2GRID. From the outset, the platform has been architected with secure deployment models in mind, including on-premise configurations to ensure full control over sensitive operational data.

The platform’s development is aligned with relevant NATO security and interoperability standards and closely monitored evolving compliance requirements within allied defence ecosystems. Participation in exercises such as CWIX is part of C2GRID’s roadmap to validate interoperability and security in real operational environments.

‘Given the sensitivity of frontline video, including potential civilian exposure, encryption, access control, and controlled data handling are treated as core system requirements, not add-ons. This is an area that requires continuous attention, and we have prioritised security from day one of development,’ Mr Stepanov assures.

Human Judgment in the Loop

Another challenge is to ensure that commanders, analysts, or on-the-ground units trust the AI-driven output and effectively interpret it. De facto this presupposes market education under extreme stress. Seeing how critical trust is especially when decisions are made under stress, C2GRID’s approach is to position its AI as a supportive tool rather than a possible replacement for human judgment.

The system highlights detected changes and objects in the areas of interest, ensuring that outputs remain transparent and traceable to the underlying data. Analysts and commanders retain full control over interpretation and decision-making, with the ability to verify findings directly within the reconstructed environment. Human oversight is embedded into the workflow by design, and the platform is built to augment situational awareness, not to automate critical decisions without supervision.

‘As capabilities evolve, we continue to evaluate explainability, user interface clarity, and training requirements to ensure outputs remain interpretable and trusted in real-world conditions,’ Mr Stepanov comments.

From Validated Prototype to Deployable Product

With the new funding, C2GRID can focus on maturing the product and transitioning from a validated prototype to a robust, commercially deployable product. This includes hardening the system architecture, improving performance and stability under operational constraints, refining the user interface based on frontline feedback, and standardising deployment workflows. The goal for Q1 2026 is an operationally validated, deployable, and commercially ready product.

‘C2GRID’s ability to turn raw battlefield data into actionable intelligence in near real time is not just a breakthrough for defence – it is a transformative step for how humans interact with complex environments. The team strengthens European security and pioneers applications that could one day extend far beyond the battlefield,’ Sunfish Partners’ partner Max Moldenhauer firmly believes.

‘For today’s defence operators, raw video alone doesn’t cut it — situational awareness is what they really need. That depends on rapidly turning footage into something actionable. C2GRID’s approach directly addresses this. Vladimir and his team combine both deep technical capability and real operational understanding, which is crucial to solving problems in the field. They’ve already proven results on the front lines and are building on that momentum. This team can deliver, and we’re committed to enabling their growth in serving European and NATO-allied defence and security goals,’ BSV Ventures’ general partner Erik Bhullar adds.

Beyond 3D: The Next Layer of Capability

While 3D reconstruction and situational awareness form the foundation of the platform, our longer-term direction includes expanding AI-supported capabilities across the operational workflow. C2GRID envisions extending beyond 3D reconstruction and situational awareness and into automated mission-planning, predictive simulation, or even coordination of autonomous/unmanned systems. 

This includes deeper analytical tools, enhanced change detection, automated pattern recognition, and decision-support features that build on the spatial data layer that C2GRID is already generating. The focus is on augmenting planning, coordination, and information flow.

In parallel, C2GRID is developing a streaming and integration layer designed to unify video feeds, spatial models, and additional sensor inputs into a single operational environment. The goal is to create a cohesive platform that supports analysis, planning, and coordination without fragmenting workflows across multiple systems.

Future extensions may include tighter integration with autonomous and unmanned systems, but these developments can only be driven by operational demand and validated use-cases.

‘Vladimir and his C2GRID team combine deep technical capability and real operational understanding which is crucial to solving problems in the field. They’ve already proven results on the front lines, and are building on that momentum. This team can deliver, and we’re committed to enabling their growth in serving European and NATO-allied defence and security goals,’ BSV Ventures’ general partner Andrius Milinavičius concludes.

C2GRID sits at a peculiar and pivotal intersection of computer vision, geospatial science, and the brutal realities of modern warfare, where information speed can mean the difference between chaos and coordination. By transforming raw, fragmented battlefield video into coherent, navigable 3D environments, the company is reshaping how decisions are made under pressure, where clarity is scarce and time is unforgiving. Succeeding in turning this from a promising prototype into a trusted operational standard will define C2GRID’s new layer of digital infrastructure for defence, where data is not merely collected, but truly understood.