Penten and Amiosec merge to form PentenAmio following AUKUS innovation success

Canberra-based Penten and UK company Amiosec have completed their merger, launching PentenAmio, a leading British-Australian provider of secure mobile communications as well as AI-enabled cyber defence and electronic deception technologies.

The two business were awarded contracts after last year’s AUKUS Innovation Challenge which focussed on one of the six AUKUS Pillar II technology priorities, Electronic Warfare (EW). The combined business will generate more than $125 million (£58 million) in annual revenue, with high growth rates and strong gross profit and EBITDA margins. This positions PentenAmio to invest further in R&D, talent, and global reach, the company says, and to take a sustained leadership role in global security innovation.

The newly formed company has approximately 300 security-cleared professionals, sovereign facilities in both Australia and the UK, and a growing customer base across Allied nations, PentenAmio says. This makes the new company one of the largest and most advanced teams globally dedicated to secure classified mobile communications and AI-enabled defence for government and military organisations.

The two companies merged after winning last year’s AUKUS Innovation Challenge. In September last year Penten announced it had signed contracts with the Australian Department of Defence to deliver next-generation Electronic Deception technology.

This same technology also won the UK component of the same AUKUS challenge: the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) selected Penten’s partner Amiosec to deliver an electronic deception capability powered by a common technology core. Penten and Amiosec said they would work together to deliver these solutions using the combined engineering expertise of both organisations.

Dr Nathan Johnson, Penten’s Product Leader for Electronic Warfare, said, “The ASCA [Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator] contract award builds on several years of work and close partnerships with Defence behind the scenes.

“Penten’s Electronic Deception capability provides hyper-realistic emulations of a range of battlefield capabilities which can be used by military commanders to generate asymmetric effects without the need for large numbers of specialist operators,” he added. “The ASCA work will extend our existing solutions to create a full-spectrum ED platform, further unlocking rapid and cost-effective deployments across modern battlefield environments.”

Penten’s then-CEO Greg Barsby said “Electronic Deception represents a perfect fusion of our proprietary Artificial Intelligence, RF communications and electronics engineering capability to deliver solutions that protect our combat personnel whenever they are in harm’s way.”

“This merger will help us provide our customers with the agility and innovation which they need, wherever they are in the world,” said Adrian Cunningham, Executive Co-Chair of PentenAmio. “By joining forces we give ourselves, our nations and their allies access to an unrivalled breadth and depth of expertise across secure communications and beyond.”

He will serve alongside Matthew Wilson as Executive Co-Chairs of the merged business – they are among the founders of Penten and Amiosec respectively. Sarah Bailey, previously CFO at Penten, has been appointed CEO of PentenAmio Australia, and Matt Thomas has been appointed CEO of PentenAmio UK, joining the team from NCC Group.

PentenAmio is the developer and owner of other cutting-edge, proprietary technology IP that provides customers with an asymmetric advantage in national security, the company points out. Its scalable encryption and deception solutions are trusted, sovereign-certified, and actively deployed in classified environments by more than 20 national security and defence organisations across the UK, Australia, and Canada. The company is also expanding its reach into NATO-aligned jurisdictions.

PentenAmio’s AltoCrypt mobility platform enables secure, sovereign mobile access to classified networks across multiple devices, while its AI-powered deception suite, including TrapRadio, provides realism and adversary confusion for defence operations and training.

Recent incidents highlighting the risks of consumer messaging apps in government settings have underscored the urgent need for sovereign, secure-by-design platforms, the company says. “We’ve built our technologies not just on convenience, but on control, assurance, and mission readiness,” said Matthew Wilson, co-chair of PentenAmio.

As defence investment rises across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and beyond, governments are seeking local partners who can deliver trusted, certified and rapidly deployable capabilities.