DefenseTech startup SalesPatriot based in San Francisco, CA (USA) & Warsaw, Poland secures €4.3M Seed funding.
👯 Founder(s): Nelson Ray (CEO), Benjamin Rhodes-Kropf (CTO), Maciej Szymczyk (Co-founder)
📅 Founding year: 2024
🏭 Industry: Defense
💥 Problem: Legacy procurement systems for defence and aerospace components are outdated, slow, manual and fragmented (government portals, ERPs, spreadsheets, unstructured email).
📣 Solution: An AI-driven procurement platform that ingests and structures disparate data sources and automates quote processing & order management, enabling much faster throughput.
👥 Customers: Distributors and manufacturers in the defence & aerospace supply chain (e.g., parts distributors servicing the U.S. Pentagon)
🎳 Team size: 10 employees currently across engineering & business development, with plans to grow to 12-15 by end 2025.
🌱 Stage: Seed funding
💰 Investment amount: $5 million (≈ €4.3 million)
🚀 Funded by: Led by CRV; participation from Pear VC, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Liquid2 Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures and strategic angels including Paul Graham, Rich Miner, Mark Pincus, Steve Blank, and Mati Staniszewski.
👁️🗨️ Investor’s perspective:
“The ability to build, source, and produce, efficiently and domestically, is what sustains American competitiveness,” says Caitlin Bolnick Rellas, GP at CRV. “SalesPatriot understands that, and they’re building the modern procurement engine for the next generation of defense manufacturers. We couldn’t be prouder to be in business with this team.”
💡 It will be spent on… expanding operations (including growth into Europe, Asia and commercial aviation sector) and hiring full-stack development & scaling commercial operations.
💬 In their own words:
“Wars today are won with logistics and supply chains as much as with new platforms. We’re building the infrastructure to make sure the West is ready.” — Nelson Ray, CEO
💪 Their specialty… A purpose-built platform for defence procurement that integrates AI, structured + unstructured data (email, ERP, portals), and legacy systems, enabling clients to process orders up to 7× faster.
🌡️ Traction: Alongside its U.S. operations, SalesPatriot has opened the SalesPatriot House in Warsaw to tap into Poland’s engineering talent and build a launchpad for international growth.
📈 Funding so far: ≈ €5.4 million
