Autonomous drone intercept startup Mara raises $7M to secure the modern battlefield
Defense technology startup Mara Inc. said today it has closed on a $7 million pre-seed round of funding led by Khosla Ventures to speed up the development and production of its low-cost, autonomous counter-unmanned aircraft system, Spike.
Other backers included a16z Speedrun, Night Capital, Palmdrive, Protagonist, Freedom Fund and Indicator Fund, as well as a number of angel investors. The startup said it will use the funding to move from field testing to real-world deployments and start countering the threat of first-person-view drones on the battlefield and at key infrastructure facilities around the world.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forever changed the face of war. Small FPV drones that cost only a few hundred dollars to build have become the single deadliest threat on the modern battlefield. These cheap, extremely fast and nimble unmanned aerial systems are capable of destroying armored vehicles and disabling key infrastructure that costs many millions of dollars. They’re also the leading cause of combat casualties globally.
Moreover, they’re becoming more sophisticated by the day. For example, recent events have shown that small UAS that use fiber-optic links or onboard artificial intelligence systems have been able to bypass the standard electronic jamming devices used to prevent their attacks. This means they can strike targets thousands of kilometers behind front lines.
