Octostar, an Irish-headquartered startup providing AI software for national security, law enforcement, and financial institutions, has announced the extension of its Seed round, bringing total funding to €6.1 million.
Existing strategic and VC investors extended the round, joined by Milan-based venture capital firm The Techshop and new national institutional investors.
“Nations are re-evaluating their technology supply chains for intelligence and security, while they’re in extreme need for AI that can be utilised ASAP. The question is no longer whether sovereign alternatives are needed, but how quickly they can be deployed. We are scaling delivery faster than we ever anticipated to meet that demand,” said Giovanni Tummarello, CEO and Chief Product Officer of Octostar.
Founded in 2023 by Dr Giovanni Tummarello, Robert Fuller, Simone Scarduzio, and Varun Sharma, Octostar seeks to empower investigators with the world’s most advanced and adaptable intelligence platform.
According to the company, its platform is designed to combine analytical capabilities with full data control and use-case sovereignty. It can operate entirely in No Cloud/No Internet (air-gapped) environments, supporting intelligence-grade ABAC/RBAC access controls, and is built for “use-case sovereignty“. This enables clients to customise it to their own workflows, data sources, and compliance requirements without vendor intervention.
The company has also launched Octobox, a purpose-built tactical appliance that ships as a pre-configured “cluster in a box” requiring no cloud connectivity and no external data exposure. It is ready to deploy and use.
Octostar provides link analysis, communications intelligence, document intelligence, and GenAI-powered agents within a fully sovereign, extensible architecture.
It helps law enforcement investigations by providing data extraction, AI assistance, and analytics for crime-solving. It also enables intelligence agencies to extract critical intelligence from intercepted signals, uncover hidden connections, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of national security. The company’s features, like data extraction, AI analysis, and real-time visualisations, help organisations detect and prevent fraud, safeguarding financial integrity.
Gianluca D’Agostino, co-founder and Managing Partner of The Techshop, said, “Giovanni and his talent-dense team represent a rare combination of deep domain expertise, which stems from spending over a decade building software for investigative intelligence, coupled with hunger for disruption. The need for sovereign AI-native intelligence platforms is accelerating fast and Octostar is one of the very few teams delivering on such demand. We are excited to support the company’s next phase of international growth.”
In Q1 2026 alone, Octostar reported completing three new deployments within EU national law enforcement and judicial bodies, with over 15 expected by the end of the year. The company has also delivered national security deployments across the Middle East and Asia-Pacific and announced joint work with BAE Systems.
Octostar Research SRL, the company’s R&D centre, is based in Bergamo, Italy, and has recently opened a sales office in London.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/irelands-octostar-closes-seed-extension-round-at-e6-1-million-for-its-sovereign-ai-native-intelligence-platform/
