Tagged: counter-uas
14 results
Allen Control Systems
Allen Control Systems (ACS) is an Austin-based defense technology company building Bullfrog, an AI-powered autonomous robotic weapon station designed to detect, track and shoot down hostile drones. Founded in 2022 by three engineer-entrepreneurs, ACS uses passive machine vision and custom fire-control software to turn standard machine guns into precision counter-drone turrets, aiming to cut the cost-per-kill of a drone from expensive missiles down to a few dollars of ammunition. The company raised a $200M Series B in 2026 at a $2.2B valuation to scale manufacturing for the U.S. military and allied forces.
ZeroMark, Inc.
ZeroMark is a New York-based defense technology company building an AI targeting layer that turns ordinary infantry weapons into precision counter-drone systems. Its flagship Apex is a rifle-mounted, software-defined fire control system that uses electro-optical cameras, LiDAR and machine-vision ballistics to physically adjust a soldier's aim in real time, letting a dismounted operator hit small, fast-moving drones without specialist training. Founded in 2022 by former U.S. Navy servicemember and ex-MongoDB executive Joel Anderson, ZeroMark has raised roughly $7M in seed funding led by Ground Up Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, followed by a 2025 strategic round, and has demonstrated its system in a U.S. Marine Corps live-fire exercise.
Joel Anderson
Joel Anderson is the founder and CEO of ZeroMark, a New York defense-technology startup building an AI-and-robotics fire control system that turns ordinary infantry rifles into auto-aiming counter-drone weapons. A U.S. Navy veteran who went on to help scale MongoDB from a small team to a public company as a senior technical and security leader, Anderson founded ZeroMark in 2022 after an 'epiphany' driving his Tesla to a shooting range: consumer machines could aim and track better than a soldier could. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism fund and Ground Up Ventures, ZeroMark markets what it calls a 'handheld Iron Dome' - a motorized buttstock and sensor pod that make hitting a small drone at 200 yards, in Anderson's words, 'as easy as hitting a 60-foot-diameter circle.'
Mike Wior
Mike Wior is the CEO and co-founder of Allen Control Systems, an Austin-based defense company building Bullfrog, an autonomous AI-powered gun turret designed to shoot down small drones with rifle rounds instead of missiles. He previously founded Omnivore, a restaurant POS transaction network acquired by Olo in 2022, then took over the top job at ACS from co-founder Steve Simoni, and in mid-2026 closed a $200 million Series B at a $2.2 billion valuation.
Aurelius Systems
Aurelius Systems is a San Francisco defense-technology startup building Archimedes, an autonomous, high-powered laser turret that detects, tracks and neutralizes drones in seconds for roughly the cost of electricity. Founded in 2024 by photonics veterans Michael LaFramboise and John Marmaduke, the company fuses commercial off-the-shelf hardware, advanced optics and AI-guided targeting into a compact, low-cost counter-UAS platform aimed at protecting soldiers and critical infrastructure from cheap, swarming aerial threats.
Guardian RF
Guardian RF builds low-cost, passive radiofrequency sensors that make low-altitude airspace observable in real time. Founded in 2024 by three Georgetown physics majors, the company deploys palm-sized 'Scout' sensors that detect the control signals drones and their operators emit, triangulating both across a mesh network. Its systems have been battle-tested on the front lines in Ukraine and are now fielded at Vandenberg Space Force Base and across U.S. airports and event venues, turning drone detections into structured, shareable intelligence.
Thor Dynamics
Thor Dynamics is a Palo Alto-based defense-tech startup building Laser Armor, an AI-powered directed-energy system that detects, tracks, and neutralizes hostile drones and drone swarms with a high-energy laser. Founded in 2024 by a team of MIT- and Wharton-trained operators and former U.S. Navy leadership, the company pairs up-to-20-kilowatt laser output with reinforcement-learning targeting and NVIDIA edge compute to deliver affordable, scalable counter-drone defense for critical infrastructure and the military.
Keith Brendley
Keith Brendley is the founder, president and CEO of Artis, LLC, a Herndon, Virginia defense-technology firm he started in 1999. A former RAND Corporation senior analyst and co-author of the influential military doctrine 'Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance,' Brendley is one of America's leading authorities on active protection systems. His signature invention, the Iron Curtain, uses radar, optical sensors and downward-firing countermeasures to neutralize incoming rocket-propelled grenades within centimeters of an armored vehicle. His newer Sentinel system extends that protection to drones and first-person-view loitering munitions.
Lucas Raskin
Lucas Raskin is the co-founder and CEO of Guardian RF, a defense technology company building passive radiofrequency sensors that detect and track drones. A Georgetown physics major, he turned a 24-hour hackathon project into a Y Combinator-backed company, spent six months embedded with Ukrainian ground troops refining the technology in real combat, and landed on the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Transportation and Aerospace. Guardian RF's palm-sized Scout sensors and Mosaic mesh network now protect critical infrastructure, defense assets and frontline soldiers from cheap, lethal drones.
Michael LaFramboise
Michael LaFramboise is the CEO and co-founder of Aurelius Systems, a San Francisco defense startup building autonomous, AI-guided laser turrets that detect and destroy drones at the speed of light for roughly pennies per shot. A Case Western engineer, Navy veteran, and ex-Coherent and Amazon Devices operator, he dropped out of a Columbia PhD in nano optical systems to build Archimedes, a low-cost directed-energy weapon. Aurelius raised a $10 million seed co-led by General Catalyst and Draper Associates in September 2025 and opened a U.S. manufacturing line for high-power fiber lasers in 2026, aiming to become America's domestic one-stop laser shop.
CX2
CX2 (CX2 Industries) is an El Segundo, California defense-technology startup building AI-enabled hardware and software for the electromagnetic spectrum. Its systems detect, classify, geolocate, and disrupt hostile RF emitters in jammed and GPS-denied environments, aiming to give allied forces an edge in electronic warfare at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems. Founded in 2024 by a team including Nathan Mintz, Porter Smith, Lee Thompson, and Mark Trefgarne, CX2 has raised about $46M, led by a $31M Series A from Point72 Ventures, and launched its Wraith airborne EW platform in December 2025.
Nathan Mintz
Nathan Mintz is the co-founder and CEO of CX2, an El Segundo defense-tech startup building AI-enabled hardware and software to detect, disrupt, and destroy threats in the electromagnetic spectrum. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer who spent 14 years designing radar and electronic-warfare systems at Raytheon and Boeing, he went on to co-found directed-energy unicorn Epirus and automotive-radar company Spartan Radar before launching CX2 in 2024. He argues modern warfare has reached 'consumer scale,' where multimillion-dollar missiles are wasted on cheap drones, and that control of the spectrum now matters as much as supply lines did in the 20th century. CX2 raised a $31M Series A led by Point72 Ventures in May 2025, part of $46M total funding.
Artis
Artis, LLC (Advanced Real-Time Information Systems) is a Herndon, Virginia defense and technology developer that builds systems for problems measured in microseconds. Founded in 1999 by Keith Brendley, the company is best known for active protection systems for military vehicles - Iron Curtain and its third-generation successor, Sentinel - that detect and defeat incoming rockets, missiles and drone-borne threats in fractions of a second. Beyond defense, Artis applies its high-speed sensing and parallel-processing work to highway worker safety, 3D imaging and pedestrian monitoring.
CHAOS Industries
CHAOS Industries is a Los Angeles defense technology company building Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN), software-defined sensing systems that detect aerial and missile threats faster and cheaper than traditional radar. Founded in 2022, it makes distributed radar products like Vanquish and Astria for counter-drone, border, and homeland defense. By late 2025 the company had raised over $1 billion and reached a roughly $4.5 billion valuation.