London’s Labrys gets €17.5M from Plural and others to fix broken tools in crisis zones

London-based Labrys, a company building a secure workforce management platform, has raised $20M (approximately €17.5M) in funding led by Plural.

Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. 

Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, says, “A lot of defense and resilience innovation focuses on hardware assets. Yet, there’s been a gap around secure, reliable systems for human coordination when it matters most – until now. August and Luke’s experience on the literal front lines means they know exactly the challenges experienced on the ground and are building Labrys to solve these challenges once and for all. This is exactly the kind of mission we want to support at Plural, and I look forward to working with them to grow Labrys.” 

AlbionVC and Superangel also participated, alongside previous investors Project A, MDOne, Expeditions Fund and Marque Ventures.

The funding brings the total raised to $25.5M (approximately €22M).

Fund utilisation

The company will use the funds to grow its engineering and operations teams and add advanced AI features to provide reliable tools as global crises increase.

Labrys also plans to double down on its stablecoin integrations to enable customers to access reliable, programmable payments in fragile, disconnected, or sanctioned environments where traditional financial rails fall short.

Since raising its seed round in 2023, Labrys has secured seven-figure annual revenues, including contracts with government clients and customers across logistics and humanitarian disaster response, including in Ukraine.

What does Labrys solve?

Humanitarian organisations, defense forces, crisis response teams, and logistics providers are working in some very unstable areas around the world.

Unfortunately, many of them lack proper tools for managing their teams and rely on insecure methods like emails, spreadsheets, and messaging apps.

This risky approach can result in serious problems, such as misplacing millions in aid or directing large security forces through WhatsApp.

Here’s where Labrys comes into play!

Labrys: Building a workforce management platform 

Founded by Royal Marine veteran August Lersten and former Army Officer Luke Wattam, Labrys was born out of their frontline experience.

The duo built the world’s first military-grade, end-to-end command and control platform.

Dubbed as Axiom, this platform combines HR and task-management tools, with encrypted communications and global payment tools.

It uses biometric identity checks to verify that people are who they say they are, with geo-tagged tasks and built-in audits to track missions, tasks, and teams.

Axiom’s stablecoin disbursement system allows payments in cryptocurrency worldwide, which is vital for regions with limited banking options.

It is fully auditable and programmable, removing middlemen, reducing delays, and minimizing compliance risks while maintaining control.

Axiom helps teams save up to $3M in costs by providing secure and verifiable operations on a single platform.

August Lersten, co-founder and CEO of Labrys, says, “Being unable to verify if a person can be trusted, if a task has been completed, or how to pay them has been preventing successful humanitarian, aid, and military missions for too long. Yet, solving the issues has historically been considered too complex and too difficult, leaving organisations stuck using disparate and insecure platforms. We created Labrys to solve these tough workforce and team coordination problems in logistics, risk, and humanitarian crisis response, and we’ve built a talented team to tackle the hardest technical problems in this space. We’re delighted to be backed by investors who understand this mission and want to build the future of trusted infrastructure right alongside us.”