From CES Las Vegas to Andreessen Horowitz, and now a one-way ticket to San Francisco, Vijay Pathak is moving fast, and pulling Europe’s defence tech ambitions along with him.
While many 23-year-olds are still polishing their CVs, the Luxembourgish founder is preparing to relocate to the Bay Area. In just ten days, Pathak will move to San Francisco after securing a pre-seed investment from Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Speedrun fund, one of Silicon Valley’s most selective accelerators.
His startup, Coalition Systems, is building what he describes as “the Slack for military and government collaboration.”
A wake-up call that came from a group chat
Coalition Systems didn’t emerge from a lab or a hackathon, but from a scandal.
In 2025, reports surfaced that senior US defence officials had discussed imminent military strikes inside a Signal group chat, accidentally including a journalist. For Pathak, who has spent years studying national security at Yale and Oxford, the incident was shocking.
“It was insane to me,” he says. “We spend billions on nuclear deterrence, but some of the most sensitive coordination still happens on consumer messaging apps.”
What followed was months of investigation, through academic research, exposure to NATO, and candid conversations with people inside defence institutions. The conclusion was uncomfortable but clear: high-stakes military and government collaboration still relies heavily on legacy tools, ad-hoc systems, spreadsheets and unsecured chat apps.
Not another defence startup, a coalition one
Most defence tech startups pursue national advantage: faster weapons, smarter drones, better surveillance. Pathak is intentionally taking a different path.
“Most good things never happen because one country works alone,” he says. “Yet there’s a vacuum of software designed specifically for countries to work together.”
Coalition Systems is building closed-loop, military-grade collaboration software designed for alliances, not just individual states, a distinctly European perspective, shaped in part by Luxembourg’s multinational DNA.
The ambition is straightforward but bold: a secure, purpose-built platform where governments and militaries can coordinate without leaks.
From Oxford research to Silicon Valley backing
Pathak’s trajectory is anything but conventional. After studying Ethics, Politics and Economics at Yale, with a focus on transatlantic security, he moved to Oxford to pursue a PhD in AI engineering, specialising in language models and machine learning.
Coalition Systems began in parallel. The PhD, he admits, is now officially “on pause.”
In late 2025, he brought on his first hire: co-founder and CTO Frederick Wollen, a mechanical engineer, and former boarding school roommate.
Then came the hardest step: fundraising. After hundreds of pitches and applications, Pathak secured a place in a16z Speedrun, where Andreessen Horowitz invested in the pre-seed round and brings founders to San Francisco for three months of intensive company-building.
The numbers are rarely public, but Pathak confirms a six-figure pre-seed, with another tranche planned for the seed round.
“They don’t just invest,” he says. “They give you what they call an unfair advantage.”
So far, very few European startups, and no Luxembourgish ones, have gone through the Speedrun programme.
Dual-use by design
While defence is the core focus, Coalition Systems is built with dual-use applications in mind. Pathak points to sectors where information security is just as existential: finance, healthcare and investigative journalism.
The common thread is the same: high-stakes decisions, catastrophic consequences if data leaks, and tools that were never designed for that reality.
Satellite infrastructure may come later. For now, the priority is simpler and harder.
“Make leaks impossible.”
Luxembourg roots, global ambition
Coalition Systems is currently registered in the United States, with European legal structures in progress. Pathak is clear that the company will retain a distinctly European, and Luxembourgish identity, particularly as EU and NATO cooperation becomes more urgent.
In the short term, the goal is to secure letters of intent and pilot agreements with NATO member states and large civilian organisations.
The long-term ambition?
“We want to build Luxembourg and Europe’s next unicorn.”
CES, Speedrun, and a one-way flight
We spoke to Pathak from CES Las Vegas, where he was speaking on AI and next-generation digital consumption, attending Lenovo’s keynotes, and networking relentlessly. The pace feels fitting.
Geopolitical tensions are rising. Defence tech is no longer a niche sector. And a 23-year-old Luxembourger is stepping straight into the middle of it, armed not with hardware, but with software designed to keep alliances intact.
This piece includes AI-generated text, reviewed and edited by Jess Bauldry
