A defence technology startup chaired by Canada’s former defence minister is raising funds while the country rapidly rearms, and launched its first product aimed at Arctic security.

Vancouver-based Juno Industries Inc. hopes to close a Series A round of about $10 million by mid-April, chief executive Hunter Scharfe said. The startup “will probably be doing another round quite quickly after that” to fund testing, hiring and facilities, he said.

Scharfe’s co-founder and executive chairman is

Harjit Sajjan

, who was Canada’s defense minister from 2015 to 2021, and before that served as an officer in the

Canadian Armed Forces.

Juno, founded last April, will announce on Friday it’s developing a hub for communications, drones and sensors in Arctic environments called Polar Nexus, which Scharfe said will be “the first of many sensor nodes and deploy platforms” from the company. It will be made in partnership with Critical Infrastructure Technologies Ltd.

Juno’s ambition is to be a “neo-prime,” a term used for fast-growth startups like Anduril Industries Inc. that are racing with the traditional “prime” defence contractors like

Lockheed Martin Corp.

to deliver new security technology.

Juno is in talks with the armed forces, Sajjan said. A former commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Michael Hood, is an adviser to to the company.

“Autonomous systems are going to become the forefront of defense investment,” and “those systems are very powerful and have a lot of different data capabilities,” Scharfe said. But the issue, he said, is what platform will be trusted to trawl through the data, interpret it, and provide officials options for action.

“Juno absolutely wants to be that platform,” Scharfe said.

The company has about 20 employees today and Scharfe said it may double over the coming weeks. He has looked in part to the rapid growth of companies like Anduril, as well as

Palantir Technologies Inc.

, citing the latter’s Maven

artificial intelligence

system, which as been embraced by the Pentagon. Juno also describes its mission as reestablishing “Canadian dynamism,” which echoes the name of the “American Dynamism” team at U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which funds so-called “national interest” projects.

Juno is positioning itself to benefit from a wave of money headed for Canadian defense businesses. On Thursday,

Prime Minister Mark Carney

said the government hit its North American Treaty Organization target to spend two per cent of gross domestic product on defence, and he has pledged to buy more military gear in Canada and less from U.S. suppliers. He has committed with the rest of NATO to increase the spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, with another 1.5 per cent on related infrastructure, by 2035.

A major part of that spending will go toward defending Canada’s far north, as polar ice melts and the region becomes more contested.

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Juno is named after the codename for the beach where Canadian troops landed on D-Day in the Second World War — “a seminal moment of Canadian identity and sovereignty,” and “a reminder of great Canadian ambition and fearlessness,” said Scharfe, who was previously an adviser to quantum firm BTQ Technologies Corp.

Juno is not the only startup vying to serve a fast-militarizing Canada: In January, a Toronto-based rival called Dominion Dynamics Inc. raised $21 million, backed by Canadian tech leaders.

Bloomberg.com