“I’m a warlord now, bitch!” Steven Simoni, wearing a $4,000 Celine track suit unzipped to reveal a bare chest and a silver chain, was holding court at a recent film premiere in the East Village of Manhattan, joking with a reporter about his latest venture. The tech entrepreneur was in town to see “Match in a Haystack,” a documentary he funded about a dance troupe that defeats the odds to put on a show in war-torn Ukraine.
A little more than a year ago the 39-year-old was a typical Silicon Valley success story having sold a payments company to DoorDash for $125 million in 2022. But now he is the co-founder of a different kind of startup, Allen Control Systems, which makes a product far removed from menu QR-codes: an AI-powered autonomous machine gun called the “Bullfrog” designed to shoot drones out of the sky. “The future is Skynet, basically,” Simoni said, referring to the fictional AI system from the “Terminator” films that becomes self-aware and turns on humanity. “I want to supply those products to the government so they can use them.”
Just a few years ago, the idea that this “Star Wars” nerd and one-time national champion of “A Game of Thrones: The Card Game,” would become a brash defense contractor might have seemed absurd. But Simoni is well on his way, with $40 million in funding – most recently raised in a round led by Craft Ventures, the firm cofounded by President Donald Trump’s AI czar David Sacks – and prototype contracts with the U.S. Army and Special Operations Forces.

Full report : A look at Allen Control Systems, the maker of AI-powered gun turrets for shooting down drones, co-founded by Steven Simoni, who sold Bbot to DoorDash for $125 million.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Allen Control Systems.