With its swarms of connected cockroaches, Swarm Biotactics intends to make living insects intelligence relays in denied environment. This promise, at the crossroads of biology and robotics, has just attracted several international investors, who inject 10 million euros into seed to go from laboratory to the field.
When the living becomes robot
Founded in 2024 in Kassel, the German startup Swarm Biotactics develops bio-robotics technology where insects, mainly cockroaches, are equipped with micro-interfaces allowing them to be guided remotely, collect data, and to communicate with their operator. These miniature “backpacks” incorporate sensors, secure communication modules, and on -board artificial intelligence to ensure autonomous navigation in extreme environments.
In reverse of classic robotics dogmas, the startup is focusing on the intrinsic properties of the living, namely robustness, the ability to evolve in complex environments, the marginal cost of production, and natural camouflage.
Based on living things rather than fully artificial agents, Swarm Biotactics questions the border between nature and technology. Where robots try to reproduce the biological functions, the startup makes the opposite bet by increasing the living by grafting programmable autonomy. An approach that marries the constraints of the terrain rather than trying to dominate them, and which places organic at the service of algorithmic in a logic of distributed resilience.
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A dual-use positioning assumed
The company targets the defense, civil security, industrial inspection sectors as a priority, with a clear positioning on duals (civil and military) uses. It plans to collaborate with European and North American government agencies for pilot deployments on the ground, in particular in the contexts of natural disasters, electronic war areas, or recognition in collapsed urban areas.
Among the use cases envisaged: recognition in a mined or contaminated environment, support for tactical lure operations, electronic war relays, or discreet urban map using neuro-diairigated swarms. The objective is to allow the massive employment of autonomous units, capable of acting in swarm while remaining cheap enough to be considered as “lost”. A logic of operational awarding which is part of the emerging doctrines of projection under duress.
The architecture envisaged by Swarm Biotactics provides for a double chain of command by means of a decentralized interface on the ground allowing operators to assign missions located per unit, and a strategic control orchestrated from a central post, capable of piloting whole groups on the basis of planned scenarios. This model of intelligence in swarms authorizes complex interactions between agents, without using full automation of critical decisions.
From Deep Tech to operational doctrine
Swarm Biotactics plans to use the funds raised for:
- industrialize its neural sensors and interfaces;
- Establish engineering and marketing hubs in Europe and the United States;
- Recruit experts in neurobiology, field robotics and on -board systems;
- And above all, launch the first operational demonstrators with strategic partners in the public sector.
The approach is inspired by the doctrinal models developed in the United States as part of programs such as replicator, betting on swarms of heterogeneous and complementary robots, operating on the outskirts of human units, in a logic of concentric circle of capacities: ISR, electronic war, lure, logistics, neutralization, etc. Interoperability is a major challenge, as well as securing communications: cybersecurity is designed from the design (“Security by architecture”) in order to avoid any capture or alteration in the blurred environment.
This type of system also requires a new operational culture in order to release operators from the fear of “losing the equipment”, and assuming loss as an integral part of the strategy. For which it is necessary to bring out a doctrine where the mass, the attribitability and the agility take precedence over unitary sophistication.
A strategic lifting for an emerging category
This 10 million euros table has been led by Vetex Ventures US and possible Ventures, with the participation of the German Fund Capnamic. Several historic investors have also strengthened their position. This lifting brings the company’s total funding to 13 million euros, including a pre-seed of 3 million euros.
Swarm Biotactics was founded in 2024 by Stefan Wilhelm (CEO) and Moritz Strube (CTO). The company is based in Kassel, Germany, with a subsidiary in San Francisco.n
