Advanced Navigation secures $158m funding to expand GPS‍-‍alternative tech

Advanced Navigation has announced it has successfully raised AU$158 million in a Series C funding round. The company says the raise marks a definitive shift in the global autonomy race for alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).

The round was led by Airtree Ventures, with strategic participation from Quadrant Private Equity and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC). These investors join a cohort of existing backers including Main Sequence, KKR, In-Q-Tel, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Malcolm Turnbull and OIF Ventures.

“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,” said Chris Shaw, CEO and Co-founder at Advanced Navigation. “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.”

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. The company is now accelerating its global expansion, significantly scaling its deep tech operational and engineering presence across the US and European markets.

In today’s landscape, GPS is no longer a reliable single source of truth. 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,” Shaw said. “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.”

Leveraging a heritage in robotics, AI and high-precision sensing, Advanced Navigation 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 (AI), 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.

“Advanced Navigation’s inertial navigation systems (INS) technology was originally developed in Australia, and we are proud to be investing in a company that commercialises Australian research while creating highly skilled STEM and manufacturing jobs,” said David Gall, CEO at National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC). “Advanced Navigation’s technology is precise, secure, reliable and efficient, and its products are already being used in the mining, marine and defence industries. The NRFC’s investment will help Advanced Navigation to bring its Australian-developed technology to international markets.”

Image: Chris Shaw, CEO and co-founder of Advanced Navigation. [Supplied.]