Saab buys British artificial intelligence specialist BlueBear

LONDON – Saab has increased its presence in the artificial intelligence sector with the acquisition of British specialists BlueBear Systems.

The British company is a leading provider of autonomous swarm systems and AI-enabled command and control systems.

Financial details of the acquisition have not been released.

BlueBear had a turnover of £8 million, or $10 million, last year and employs 65 people at a site near Bedford in southern England.

Micael Johansson, Saab’s chairman and chief executive officer, said the acquisition is another step to ensure the company maintains its competitive position in key international markets.

“BlueBear, as the world’s leading provider of AI-enabled autonomous swarm systems for complex defense and security applications, is a good fit with our focus of leveraging emerging technologies in the fields of autonomous systems and AI,” Johansson said in a statement. announcing taking control.

As part of Saab’s artificial intelligence effort, BlueBear will become a center for rapid concept development, providing expertise and scaling up innovation, according to the Saab statement.

A typical example of BlueBear’s work in the rapidly changing AI sector is the announcement on July 11 that the company, along with SeeByte, a developer of naval drone software, had won a contract from the UK Ministry of Defense to research and build a secure architecture for mixed multi-multiplication applications. domain swarms of robotic autonomous systems.

Saab already has some experience with AI-related technology through its 9LV naval combat management system, especially in its Swedish and Australian business units that support local navies implementing that system on their ships, Dean Rosenfield said, Managing Director of the Saab Group in the UK. “This is an important technology area for Saab and we will continue to expand our international reach in that regard, but we will also work with others on AI as partnerships are very much the way Saab works.”

The BlueBear acquisition comes as Saab continues a period of organic and non-organic expansion, taking the company’s UK staff footprint from just over 100 in 2022 to 400 now, Rosenfield added.

saab occupies rank 33 in this year’s Defense News tabulation of the world’s top 100 largest defense companies, recording defense sector revenues of $3.7 billion in 2022.