Nick Blair in simpler times, during his father Tony's 1997 campaign to be prime minister.Tom Stoddart/Hulton Archive/Getty
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, pushed the United Kingdom into a needless war in Iraq in a wild-goose chase for weapons of mass destruction. Then, he helped British companies make money from that war. Now, his son Nick is carrying on the family legacy.
Nick Blair, a 40-year-old former football agent, is seeking funding for a military technology startup called Pyra to the tune of $200 million. It’s not clear what, exactly, Pyra needs all that money to do: Its website says only, “Deploying Summer 2026…Stand By.” Blair is at the moment the only active officer of the company, according to UK government filings. In an article published this week, an unnamed source told the Financial Times, vaguely, that Pyra “is developing technology that will allow users to integrate different systems into a single source.”
During his time as prime minister, Blair’s father helped UK companies cash in on the Iraq War. After he was forced to leave the country’s government amid growing discontent over the war, he built a dizzyingly massive global business empire. And he’s making moves that could allow him to profit from the reconstruction of war-torn places: in January, he was appointed to President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace, charged with overseeing international efforts in Gaza.
Blair the younger, meanwhile, is now founding his second military tech company. His first, Skyral, is a war-games simulator. Its co-CEO, Naomi Hulme, recently described its work as “Fortnite on steroids.” The company won a $2.7 billion contract to train the British military, which is betting big on AI. Pyra, meanwhile, does not yet have a product—but hopes to raise a great deal of funding nonetheless.
