Warhound startup engineers robotic war dogs
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The gist
Warhound, a Texas defense startup from Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, launched with $200 million in funding.
It plans to clone and gene-edit military working dogs, a supply the Pentagon now largely buys from Europe.
Background
Warhound is a Texas-based defense tech startup founded with Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of the Dallas de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences, and Palmer Luckey, founder of defense company Anduril Industries. Its CEO is David Spirk, a former Marine and the Pentagon's former chief data officer. The company says more than 80% of the U.S. military's working dogs come from Europe and fewer than half are fit for service, and that many fail training because of genetic dispositions such as poor eyesight, cancer risk, hip dysplasia or muscle atrophy. Warhound aims to use Colossal's gene-editing and cloning tools, plus Anduril gear worn on the dogs, to produce healthier, hardier animals.
How it unfolded
- Apr 2025Colossal Biosciences announced it had brought back the dire wolf, producing three pups by editing about 20 sites across 14 genes in gray wolf cells and cloning them.
- Oct 22, 2026Warhound emerged from stealth with $200 million in funding from investors including In-Q-Tel, Sequoia and 8VC, valuing the company at $1.2 billion.
- Oct 22, 2026Fortune exclusively reported the seed round; the company is based in Texas and David Spirk is CEO.
- recentlyLamm said the first batch of dogs is about to be cloned and incubated, with births expected early next year and service ideally within two years.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- Warhound says more than 80% of U.S. military working dogs come from Europe and fewer than half are fit for service, and it hopes to engineer dogs with characteristics suited to demanding missions.
- Support
- Lamm argues that making the dog safer, healthier and better-performing will make it perform better in the line of duty, calling a dog "the oldest autonomous system there is."
- Caution
- Lamm says the dogs are not a step toward robot dogs nor a hedge against them, since "no machine today matches a dog's nose or its judgment in complex environments."
Still unverified
Warhound has no signed customers yet, according to Lamm, and the startup does not yet know how much it will charge per dog.