The AI targeting layer that turns a soldier's rifle into a drone-defeating precision system.
ZeroMark, Inc. - New York, NY. The company's counter-drone fire control system has been demonstrated on a US Marine Corps M27 rifle. Image: ZeroMark.
On a modern battlefield, the cheapest thing in the sky is often the deadliest. A commercial drone that costs a few hundred dollars can find, follow and strike a soldier who has no easy way to shoot it down. ZeroMark, a New York defense-technology company founded in 2022, is built around a blunt premise: the problem is not the weapon a soldier already carries - it is the aim.
ZeroMark makes a fire control system that clamps onto a standard infantry rifle and quietly does the hard part of hitting a small, fast, erratic target. Electro-optical cameras and LiDAR track the drone, machine-vision software runs the ballistics, and a motorized buttstock nudges the rifle's aim in real time. The pitch from founder Joel Anderson is deliberately plain: point in the general direction of the drone, and the system does the rest.
The company calls the result a "handheld Iron Dome" - a phrase that reframes a nation-scale missile-defense idea as something a single person can sling over a shoulder. Whether or not the nickname sticks, the framing captures ZeroMark's bet: that the next layer of air defense belongs not on a distant turret but in the hands of the infantry standing directly under the threat.
ZeroMark's edge is not a new gun. It is a fast-attach module that turns an ordinary rifle into a sensor-guided one. Here is the loop, in four steps.
Electro-optical cameras and LiDAR spot and lock a low-altitude drone as the operator raises the weapon.
Machine vision models the drone's movement and runs the ballistic math a human never could in the moment.
A motorized buttstock makes fine angular adjustments to the aim - without the soldier moving their arms.
The operator fires. ZeroMark says the assist can make a 200-yard drone about as easy to hit as a 60-foot circle.
Rather than sell a single device, ZeroMark is building a modular family that layers AI targeting across the force - from an individual's shoulder to a mounted turret to the command interface tying them together.
The flagship. A shoulder/rifle-mounted, software-defined fire control system that attaches in about 30 seconds and physically corrects a soldier's aim against drones in real time.
Extends the same targeting intelligence to turret-mounted platforms, bringing ZeroMark's precision to mounted and vehicle-based systems.
A command-and-control integration layer that stitches ZeroMark's targeting systems into broader defense command interfaces.
ZeroMark aims at the people most exposed to small drones and least equipped to counter them.
Cheap drones have outrun the tools meant to stop them.
The counter-drone market is crowded with jammers, radar-cued gun systems and directed-energy weapons from large primes and specialist firms. Most of them add a separate box, vehicle or emplacement to the battlefield. ZeroMark's wager runs the other way: keep the rifle, keep the soldier, and put the intelligence in the mount.
That choice carries real advantages - minimal training, rapid attachment, and a capability that travels with every rifleman rather than a handful of specialists. It also defines the competitive line. Where alternatives centralize counter-drone power in fewer, bigger systems, ZeroMark pushes it out to the edge, one operator at a time. Investors have summed up the thesis as a move "from centralised mass to decentralised precision."
ZeroMark's origin runs through an unusual resume. Founder and CEO Joel Anderson enlisted in the US Navy out of high school, then moved into technology, serving as MongoDB's first chief information security officer and chief information officer before founding ZeroMark in 2022. That mix - military experience plus enterprise-software rigor - shapes a company that treats a rifle attachment like a product to be shipped, tested and iterated.
The business model follows the defense playbook: sell modular hardware and integration software to military and force-protection customers through contracts, system sales and support. The strategic wedge is upgrading weapons already in service rather than asking anyone to replace them - a lower-friction path into fielded units.
Joel Anderson starts the company in New York to close the dismounted counter-drone gap.
ZeroMark announces roughly $7M in seed funding led by Ground Up Ventures and a16z for its "handheld Iron Dome."
The 3rd Marine Division live-fires an M27 IAR equipped with the ZeroMark fire control system at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
ZeroMark broadens from Apex to add Vanguard (turret) and Nexus (C2 software).
A round led by Beaten Zone Venture Partners funds production scale-up after defense contract wins.
~$7M, led by Ground Up Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.
Follow-on round to scale production after contract wins.
Funding figures are drawn from public reporting and company announcements; the 2025 round amount was not disclosed. Details are approximate where sources vary.
An AI-assisted fire control system that bolts onto infantry weapons and physically adjusts a soldier's aim in real time to hit drones. Its flagship product is Apex.
It combines electro-optical cameras, LiDAR and machine-vision ballistics to track a drone, then uses a motorized buttstock to correct the rifle's aim - the shooter points in the general direction and the system compensates.
Joel Anderson, a former US Navy servicemember and ex-MongoDB CISO/CIO, founded ZeroMark in 2022. He is Founder & CEO.
About $7M in seed funding (2024) led by Ground Up Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, followed by a 2025 strategic round led by Beaten Zone Venture Partners.
US and allied military forces - it has demonstrated its system with the US Marine Corps - along with private security firms and defense agencies evaluating counter-drone capability.
This profile aggregates publicly reported information. Figures and dates are approximate where public sources differ. Video link points to a YouTube search, as no single official demo channel was confirmed.