DULUTH, Minn. (Northern News Now) – Most Americans have heard that Artificial Intelligence is changing the world.
Many Americans are saying they’ll believe it when they see it.
Well, there are two companies that just arrived in Duluth that will have Northlanders seeing it very soon in the sky, on the ground and in the water.
Northern News Now’s Dan Wolfe recently got an exclusive first look inside those companies that are poised to transform portions of Duluth, Lake Superior and the Iron Range into testing grounds for military and commercial autonomous aircraft, vehicles and vessels.
Right off Michigan Street sits the warehouse for Anno AI and Spear AI.
The two companies are partnering to use evolving technologies to boost our national security and private industry.
Anno AI CEO Steven Witt provided a tour of part of the company’s warehouse.
“These are drones that have been used on that battlefield with Ukraine over the last several years,” said Witt, showing off downed surveillance drones recovered and now in possession of Anno and Spear.
The idea for Anno came about during the war in Ukraine. Thousands of drones are used on the battlefield daily for both combat and surveillance. America’s unmanned aircraft haven’t performed well there.
“A lot of our systems at the beginning of the war failed, and failed miserably,” said Witt.
Witt is a Minnesotan and former CIA officer, putting to use his knowledge of the military and his home state.
“We trained our AI models to work in desert environments in the summer, and then winter happened in Ukraine and they hadn’t seen snow before and the AI model didn’t know what to do,” said Witt.
Enter Minnesota. Instead of continuing to gather data to train our AI in places like Nevada and Texas, Witt decided a year-and-a-half ago to get to work in Duluth.
Our area has four seasons, farms, forests, urban areas and a whole lot of water.
The water is what brings us to Spear AI.
“This is the Spear AI and Anno AI buoy system we call Sentinel,” said Spear Co-Founder John McGunnigle, showing off the gear inside the warehouse.
Spear AI is using state-of-the-art buoys to gather data out on Lake Superior.
“Lake Superior provides us with every environmental condition from the Caribbean to the Arctic,” said McGunnigle.
McGunnigle spent 31 years in the Navy, many of them as a submarine captain. His company’s delivered maritime artificial intelligence since 2021. He says Lake Superior’s wide range of temperatures and weather make it ideal for data collection, but so does its location.
“Our adversaries are out there watching us and taking our stuff,” said McGunnigle. “It’s a lot harder to do that on Lake Superior. It’s a lot harder for our adversaries to set up in Duluth and not be noticed, unlike off the coast of Miami or San Diego.”
Meantime, Anno is working to create what’s called the Lake Superior Test Range. It will be specific areas around Duluth, Lake Superior and even abandoned mines on the Iron Range, where companies and the military can come in and test autonomous vehicles, aircraft and vessels, equipped with the new AI models.
“We’ll be giving them the data so that they can train their own AI systems and assess how well they’re working in their own conditions,” said Witt.
Anno, with assistance from UMD, the Minnesota Sea Grant and Large Lakes Observatory, will help companies achieve regulatory clearance to test autonomous aircraft, vehicles and vessels.
They will also help lay the physical infrastructure to help facilitate the practice flights and voyages.
That includes upgrades to the Port of Duluth to help get larger vessels on the water, fiber optic cabling in the lake bed to help test new sensor technologies and the building of new radars.
“We’ll have specialized small regional sites for different purposes,” said Witt.
While it might not seem real yet, the leaders of Spear and Anno say the impact to our region will be.
“Companies will be coming here to build things, build new sensors to study data coming off the test ranges,” said Witt. “You’re looking at thousands of jobs.”
Spear AI and Anno AI have a $17.5 million contract with the Navy.
They say they’ve already invested $10 million in private capital.
“The future’s now, it’s already arrived and we have the unique benefit of helping shape what it will look like for the entire world because we’re sitting in a unique ecosystem with a unique infrastructure.”
The companies have made ten hires in Duluth since arriving in August and plan to double or triple their head count within a year.
They’ve received bipartisan support from the likes of MN 8th District Republican Congressman Pete Stauber and Democratic MN Congresswoman Betty McCollum.
In a recent interview with Northern News Now, Stauber said in part, “We have the technology, we have the workforce and we have the greatest freshwater lake in the world to do these testings on. Anno AI and Spear are going to be the first of many, but they are exceptional organizations and exceptional leadership at both.”
In a statement to Northern News Now, Rep. McCollum, who is the top Democrat on the House Defense Subcommittee, said, “Minnesota companies are providing innovative solutions that are advancing both our national security and our economic security. That includes companies developing emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and unmanned systems, as well as helping to grow Minnesota’s workforce. The significant geopolitical challenges facing our country require that every state in our nation play a role in our national defense, and the North Star State is helping to lead the way.”
Spear AI is also sharing its data with UMD, the Minnesota Sea Grant and Large Lakes Observatory to enhance their research efforts. Data from Spear’s buoys are helping shape the work each is doing.
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