EdgeRunner AI lands $17.5M to build air-gapped LLMs for offline edge AI

“Our mission is to build domain-specific AI agents that increase the probability of our warfighters winning the fight and bringing them home,” says Tyler Saltsman, Co-Founder & CEO at EdgeRunner AI. “With this new funding, we will grow our team, invest in product development, and execute on our vision.”

The company specializes in hyper-personalized, on-device AI assistants that operate without internet connectivity, enhancing security, privacy, and efficiency in challenging environments. The platform uses open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) optimized for local devices and offers features like chat, Q&A, translation, transcription, and tool integrations. 

EdgeRunner AI has partnered with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop AI agents tailored to Air Force occupational specialties. The company was designated as an “Awardable” vendor for the Department of Defense’s Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, supporting critical DoD missions. 

Recent partnerships include collaborations with Intel to deliver on-device AI agents for Intel AI PCs.

EdgeRunner represents a vanguard for secure, autonomous, and hyper-localized AI at the edge. Their model is not only a technological milestone for the military, but also a harbinger for broader enterprise adoption of sovereign edge AI, particularly where connectivity is unreliable, latency is intolerant, or data must never leave the device.

EdgeRunner pioneers secure, autonomous, and hyper-localized AI at the edge. This technological advancement signifies a key development for military applications and foreshadows widespread enterprise integration of sovereign edge AI, especially in environments with poor connectivity, strict latency requirements, or critical data security needs.

Article Topics

AI/ML  |  air-gapped computing  |  defense technology  |  edge AI  |  EdgeRunner AI  |  LLM inference  |  sovereign AI