Advanced Navigation: Accurate positioning, even when GPS fails
Co-Founder and CEO of Advanced Navigation – Chris Shaw
It’s a privilege to back Chris Shaw and the Advanced Navigation team as they build navigation the world can rely on. It’s rare to find a hardware business at Advanced Navigation’s scale whose growth is still accelerating. That, combined with the company’s ambition, is why we’ve invested in its US$110m Series C round, led by Airtree Ventures alongside KKR, Quadrant, Main Sequence and Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation. Movac is pleased to have invested alongside such a high-calibre cohort of investors from Australia and beyond.
The story of Advanced Navigation
Advanced Navigation was co-founded in 2012 by CEO Chris Shaw and Xavier Orr, who saw how heavily autonomous systems relied on GPS and recognised a growing need for navigational resilience.
GPS relies on satellite signals that are easily blocked, jammed or spoofed, leaving users in what is known as a GPS-denied environment. Jamming and spoofing are now routine along shipping and flight routes and in contested military zones, and GPS doesn’t reach subsea or underground at all.
The solution
Advanced Navigation provides alternative Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems that pair high-precision inertial hardware and proprietary sensing methods with AdNav Intelligence, AI-based software that combines and cross-checks data from multiple sensors in real time. It has supplied over 100,000 systems to customers across mining, marine, defence, aerospace and autonomous systems sectors.
The investment case
Hardware companies often stall as they scale because inventory and working capital tie up cash. Advanced Navigation has broken that pattern: growth is strong, margins are improving and the business is beginning to generate free cash flow.
Defence customers need navigation that works when GPS is contested, and autonomous systems in mining, maritime and space need it to work everywhere. With most revenue already coming from the US and Europe, this is the profile we set out to back with Growth Fund 7: a clear technical edge and the go-to-market engine to take it global.
The Series C was raised primarily to support Advanced Navigation’s global expansion, including new PNT centres of excellence in the US and Europe and the scaling of manufacturing and R&D in Australia, alongside strategic acquisitions in emerging sensing technologies such as photonics, vision, AI and quantum sensing.
Chris leads an executive team with deep hardware and customer knowledge, recently strengthened by senior hires and new regional leaders in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The board is chaired by former Australian Prime Minister The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC, and Movac has joined as an observer.
Final thoughts
Advanced Navigation’s growth shows customers are choosing its systems for some of the sector’s most demanding applications. We look forward to working with Chris and the team as they build a global leader in GPS-denied navigation. Thank you to Chris and the Advanced Navigation team for their openness and patience through the investment process, and to Kell Reilly and the Airtree team for welcoming us into the round.
Written by:
Fiona Foster, Partner