As NATO boosts defence spending, Tiberius embraces business model innovation and launches GRAIL to turn bigger budgets into faster delivery, stronger domestic supply chains and better value for taxpayers

LONDON, Sept. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- With NATO governments moving from a 2% floor on defence spending to a higher long-term ambition (3.5% for core defence plus 1.5% for enablers), the imperative is clear: translate rising budgets into capability at speed and at lower cost. While Ministries of Defence and governments are challenged to keep up with the pace of change of technology, business model innovation is required to allow adoption of the latest technology at the speed of relevance. Next-generation defence technology company, Tiberius Aerospace, has unveiled GRAIL, an AI platform that does exactly that—bringing software-era transparency and competition to weapons procurement and manufacturing.

NATO leaders and independent analysts have warned that allied industry must produce more, faster—from ammunition to advanced systems—or risk falling behind adversaries. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in June, Russia's ammunition output in months can match NATO's in a year, underscoring the scale and urgency of the challenge. Europe is now racing to expand shell production and industrial capacity. But while the announcements of new munitions factories are welcome, GRAIL gives governments a way to channel this surge of spending into measurable performance, resilient supply chains and lower unit costs, delivering transparency and accountability to a process previously shrouded in conjecture and subjectivity.

Earlier this month, Tiberius closed an oversubscribed $4.5 million Founders Round backed by Never Lift Ventures, Blacklake, firedrop VC, Beaten Zone Ventures and other strategic investors. The funding will accelerate product development, expand engineering and manufacturing capacity, deepen partnerships with allied governments and support the launch of GRAIL, providing Defence as a Service (DaaS), revolutionising both capability development and scaling.

GRAIL already underpins Tiberius's Sceptre programme, which is engineered for mass-manufacturability with a simplified parts count and an open architecture, demonstrating how data-led design, modular open components and sovereign production can deliver deep-strike capability at pace while anchoring spend and jobs in allied economies.

Tiberius has already secured a UK Ministry of Defence contract to accelerate trials and development of Sceptre (TRBM-155HG), a next-generation 155mm ramjet extended-range, precision-guided ballistic munition designed to reach speeds of up to Mach 3.5 and altitudes in excess of 65,000 feet—beyond typical jamming envelopes. The U.S. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is facilitating independent verification and validation, underscoring the company's rapid progression from concept to programme. 

GRAIL unites two breakthrough capabilities while defining metrics for previously subjective qualities. Lethality introduces a new era for making procurement measurable by turning complex performance data into measurable, objective and actionable information —how likely a system is to achieve its mission and what that effect costs. For the first time, allied nations can objectively compare the Lethality performance between different capabilities for multiple objectives in rapidly evolving battle environments. Agility then treats every system as a modular digital twin, opening up a vetted marketplace where thousands of suppliers can compete to improve individual components—like guidance units or power systems—and see instantly how an upgrade changes performance and price across thousands of scenarios. For example, a twofold increase in battery life and a threefold reduction in casing weight can combine to produce a tenfold improvement in capability. Decision-making then shifts from slideware and conjecture to auditable metrics and transparent competition.

"Defence supremacy isn't about the biggest, most expensive programme—it's about who adapts fastest," said Andy Baynes, Co-founder at Tiberius Aerospace. "GRAIL fuses breakthrough design with mobilised national supply chains—bringing Silicon Valley speed, agility and continuous innovation to allied defence."

For citizens, the promise is straightforward: better value for taxpayers. Agility's component-level competitions increase supplier participation and drive down costs, with suppliers paying regulated fees to test and certify their upgrades—at no cost to Ministries of Defence. For officials, Lethality's shared definitions and automated reporting make choices easier to explain to oversight bodies and the public—why this system, at this price, for this effect—speeding approvals and cutting delay. And for industry, linking design, testing and certification directly to manufacturing compresses timelines from years to months, while opening a route for small, innovative firms to break into major programmes on the strength of their technology.

Because supply chains are now as strategic as the systems themselves, GRAIL is built to expand each nation's sovereign industrial base and reduce risk associated with single-sourced suppliers. Specifications can be opened to vetted domestic suppliers; winning components can be licensed for in-country manufacturing; and progressive delivery schedules can start within months, not years. Security and intellectual property are protected by design: customers can run GRAIL as a sovereign deployment, enforce 'need-to-know' access down to the object level and retain control of their models and data.

Launching alongside the platform, the GRAIL Alliance brings together primes, SMEs, manufacturers, labs and government users under a securely managed framework of protected intellectual property (IP). "Grail will be the world's largest mobilised supply chain of cutting edge defence technologies. It provides allied nations with a simplified one-stop shop to rapidly test and integrate next generation capabilities," said Andy Baynes, Co-founder at Tiberius Aerospace. 

For primes and neo-primes, it unlocks a broader ecosystem of best-in-class components from suppliers who continuously compete on price and performance. For SMEs and labs, it replaces subjectivity and opaque, protracted funding frameworks with a transparent Target Addressable Market (TAM), tightly controlled IP protection and a single point of access to opportunities across multiple allied nations. For governments, it offers enormous cost savings, innovation, speed and a continuously evolving cycle of best-in-class capability. 

As Europe and North America expand ammunition output and invest in new industrial capacity, GRAIL provides the connective tissue: objective scoring to choose what to buy and a live marketplace to improve how it's built. Bigger budgets are only half the story; GRAIL is designed to make them count—faster, cheaper and more resiliently—so democracies can deter and defend without waste.

About GRAIL:

GRAIL is an AI platform that unifies data, models and manufacturing into a single, secure workflow for defence acquisition. Its Lethality module provides objective, auditable scoring to guide investment and contracting. Its Agility module powers a vetted supplier marketplace that continuously improves performance and reduces cost—expanding the sovereign industrial base across allied nations. https://www.tiberius.com/grail

About Tiberius Aerospace:

Tiberius Aerospace is a next-generation defence technology company, founded in response to a new era of conflict, where the rate of innovation, manufacturing agility and cost-effective capability are essential to national security. Through its unique Defence-as-a-Service model, Tiberius decouples innovation from manufacturing—enabling rapid iteration, sovereign collaboration and continuous evolution of capability for the UK, the US and their closest allies. Guided by the ethos of Strength and Honor, we deliver precision-guided munitions, advanced missile systems, autonomous platforms and AI-enabled innovation and capability across a globally distributed supply chain that empowers sovereign self-reliance and innovation. www.tiberius.com

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