An analysis conducted by Empower in partnership with the Business and Human Rights Centre, Open MIC and the Heartland Initiative, identifies 32 privately held companies developing generative AI systems being deployed or marketed for military applications, and the venture capital companies and asset managers backing them.
It also reveals how more than 180 pension funds around the world, which invest in the name of teachers, hospital staff and public servants, have invested in companies developing high-risk AI systems.
Our findings reflect a broader trend of tech companies moving into the defence space. Some, such as Google, Meta and OpenAI, are quietly removing pre-existing commitments to not use their AI for warfare. In the past year, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Salesforce, Meta and xAI have all announced AI-related defence contracts — with some going so far as to embed executives within the ranks of the US military.
