Code Metal lands $80 million Pentagon deal to modernize military wargaming

Preston Fore here.

Landing a defense contract has historically meant navigating layers of government bureaucracy, with proposals often taking years to turn into cash.

But software unicorn Code Metal is getting something new defense contractors rarely get from the Pentagon: speed.

The Boston-based firm just landed an $80 million contract to modernize and AI-enable WarMatrix, the Department of War’s wargaming simulation environment, Fortune learned exclusively.

The process only took less than 12 months.

“I have never seen them move this fast, and that’s been really exciting,” CEO Peter Morales told Fortune , adding that after securing $17 million for the initial operating capability—the minimum version of the system that can be usefully deployed—they received the full funding as an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement.

Code Metal—which builds AI-powered software to translate code across programming languages and verify that it works on different types of hardware—was valued at $1.25 billion in February, when it secured its $125 million Series B, led by Salesforce Ventures.

The deal comes as venture-backed companies race to turn investors’ enthusiasm for defense technology into actual government business.

It also reflects a broader push to bring the Pentagon’s vast, decades-old software infrastructure into the AI era.

WarMatrix is designed to help military planners run sophisticated wargaming and analysis, and Code Metal’s work is expected to allow analyses that once took months to be completed in days.

“We’re not replacing decades of validated code,” Morales said.

“We’re really making it reachable to the warfighter and to AI.” Morales spent roughly a decade working at the intersection of hardware and software, including at British defense contractor BAE Systems , MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and Microsoft .

At BAE, he worked on software and real-time systems for the controversial but vital F-35 fighter jet, where he said he learned how quickly military technology can fall behind the commercial world.

That has created an opportunity for startups like Code Metal to help the Pentagon preserve decades of validated technology by building a software layer that makes existing infrastructure compatible with newer tools—including AI.