Vannevar Labs is a U.S.-based defense technology company founded in 2019 by Brett Granberg and Nini Hamrick in Palo Alto, California. The company defines its mission as providing modern and effective software tools to public personnel engaged in national security operations. Operating in areas such as intelligence collection, natural language processing, and AI-powered analytical systems, Vannevar Labs aims to integrate Silicon Valley’s technological capabilities into the defense sector.
Foundation and Management Team
Vannevar Labs was established by a team of professionals with experience in the defense and intelligence communities alongside software engineers. Co-founder Brett Granberg previously worked at In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Nini Hamrick, the other co-founder, served as an intelligence officer involved in U.S. counterterrorism operations. The company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is Scott Philips.
Headquarters and Operations
The company is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with satellite offices in New York and Washington, D.C. Vannevar Labs operates under a fully remote work model, employing all staff within that framework. As of 2025, the company has grown to over 110 employees.
Areas of Activity and Products
Vannevar Labs develops software systems for the defense and intelligence sectors. Its most well-known product is Decrypt, a natural language processing platform that automatically analyzes, translates, and summarizes foreign-language documents. Decrypt is primarily used to interpret foreign intelligence data and integrate findings into decision-support systems. The software is actively deployed by organizations such as the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps.
Since its initial launch in 2023, Decrypt has been deployed in more than ten institutional environments. It supports tactical decision-making by enabling pattern recognition, rapid content filtering, and multilingual analysis of text data.
Defense Technology Approach
Vannevar Labs does not simply adapt commercial technologies for military use; instead, it designs software products specifically tailored to the operational needs of defense and intelligence activities. The company maintains a critical stance toward the “dual-use” concept and argues that such technologies often fall short of meeting the complex requirements of national security. Accordingly, Vannevar Labs develops purpose-built defense products that are field-tested and refined through operational feedback.
Investment and Funding
Since its founding, Vannevar Labs has received backing from several venture capital firms, including Felicis Ventures, DFJ Growth, Point72 Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and General Catalyst. In 2021, it secured $12 million in Series A funding, and by 2025, its total funding exceeded $90 million.
Infrastructure and Use of Technology
The company’s technical infrastructure is built on cloud and container technologies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Docker. Its machine learning framework utilizes open-source tools including Ray, Kubernetes, Karpenter, and Istio. Optimization strategies introduced in 2024 led to a 45% reduction in machine learning inference costs.
Vannevar Labs also employs Ray Serve for scalable model deployment, Karpenter for dynamic cloud resource allocation, and customized Docker images for efficient container boot times. Monitoring tools include Prometheus, Grafana, and Sentry.
Integration with Defense Operations
As of 2025, the company’s solutions are deployed in 65 active environments within the U.S. Department of Defense and other public agencies. More than 1,200 users have access to the products, which process intelligence data from 191 countries and support instant translation across 79 languages. The software is used in missions including misinformation countermeasures, maritime surveillance, and non-traditional intelligence gathering.
Future Outlook
Vannevar Labs plans to expand its product portfolio for the defense sector. One of its long-term goals is to achieve “program of record” status for products like Decrypt, meaning permanent integration into defense procurement budgets with regular acquisition cycles. The company also aims to develop parallel product lines to scale its growth in the coming years.
