Yurts seizes the lead in AI integration for public sector, government & defense
As AI saturates every area of tech, there’s one category that’s been harder to infiltrate than others — the public sector. And for good reasons: the regulatory density, the security and privacy demands, and the uncompromising need for precision and accuracy. There’s no room for error or missteps when the Air Force is depending on the data you surface. It takes a specific approach, one that could only be informed by a team with lived experience and deep connections in government and defense.
That’s where Yurts comes in. Co-founded by Ben Van Roo, a CEO who’s on the advisory council to the Global Special Operations Forces Foundation, Yurts is an AI integration platform that can be deployed inside of high-security environments of government, defense, and enterprises that have the same standards. Today we’re so thrilled to announce that we’ve led their $40 million Series B to take their lead in this area and turn it into unmatchable momentum.
Our Managing Partner Ross Fubini first met Ben on a run — which really gives you a sense of the grit on this team already. It was immediately clear to us that Yurts had unique insight into what AI would need to be able to do for government agencies and companies that require a different magnitude of data protection and exactness. Some of this come from Ben’s background, growing up in a military family and helping the RAND corporation analyze military supply chains. And much of it comes from deep and dedicated research (nearly 25% of the team has security clearances that give them a rare window into what’s important). All of this combined has made Yurts one of the largest distributors of LLMs for the Department of Defense, and landed it contracts with the U.S. Department of Energy, the Army and the Air Force.
Yurts’ platform unlocks operational insights and new decision-making capabilities for customers that need to be able to move fast with reliable data. It also automates a lot of new workflows that were never possible before. It does this by sitting between LLMs and the AI applications that are used by agencies and enterprises to access AI tools — ensuring the high levels of compliance mandatory for handling classified information. For many customers throughout the public sector, Yurts is the only solution that can do this.
Here at XYZ, we’ve been fortunate to work with many of the emerging giants in the defense and public sectors — from Anduril to Apex Space to TurbineOne, and 14 other companies coming out of the Palantir diaspora. We knew that AI was going to start making headway in these areas, but it wasn’t until we met Yurts that we saw how this would be realistic within such a fast timeframe.
We feel lucky to back Ben and his Co-founders Jason Schnitzer and Guruprasad Raghavan, and we can’t wait to be there for the chapter ahead. This Series B will open up unprecedented scale for the team and product development velocity. And, ultimately, it will help our military and government do things better. There are few things more important.
As part of this announcement Ross got to sit down with Ben for a conversation about Yurts’ new round, what the team has learned, and where it will go from here. Watch the full video here!
