By Will Knight
Publication Date: 2026-02-18 19:47:00
Like many Silicon Valley companies, Scout AI now trains large AI models and agents to automate tasks. The big difference is that rather than writing code, answering emails, or buying things online, Scout AI’s agents are designed to use exploding drones to search for and destroy things in the physical world.
In a recent demonstration held at an undisclosed military base in central California, Scout AI technology was tasked with controlling a self-driving off-road vehicle and two deadly drones. The agents used these systems to find a truck hidden in the area and then blow it into pieces with an explosive charge.
“We need to bring next-generation AI to the military,” Colby Adcock, CEO of Scout AI, told me in a recent interview. (Adcock’s brother Brett Adcock is CEO of Figure AI, a startup working on humanoid robots.) “We take a hyperscaler foundation model and train it to go from a general chatbot or agent assistant to a warfighter.”
Adcocks…
