Skapion, a defence technology company developing a mobile counter-swarm defence system for large-scale drone attacks, has raised $36 million in seed funding.
The round was co-led by UP. Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors TBD VC, qFund and Fusion VC, as well as new investor Stratos Ventures and additional investors.
The company said the raise comes as defence organisations increase efforts to field scalable counter-uncrewed aerial systems (counter-UAS) and counter-swarm capabilities, amid wider use of mass drone attacks in current conflicts.
Skapion said it is building an end-to-end system intended to detect, engage and neutralise large-scale drone attacks. The company said the system is being developed to support hundreds of simultaneous engagements and to reduce interception costs compared with conventional air defence solutions.
The company said the system is intended to operate alongside manoeuvring forces and be deployed at forward operating bases, critical infrastructure and fixed air-defence assets, including in communication-denied environments and challenging weather conditions.
Skapion said the funding will be used to accelerate engineering development, system validation and expansion of technical capabilities, and to support engagement with defence organisations and strategic partners in Israel, the United States and allied markets.
The company said its founding team includes Brig. Gen. (Res.) Pini Yungman, former general manager of Rafael’s Air and Missile Defense Systems division; Ido Bar-On, former defence executive at XTEND and retired Israel Defense Forces special operations officer; Gal Goren, co-founder and CTO; Zafrir Yoeli; and Yaron Karp.
Skapion is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with an R&D centre in Ramat Gan, Israel.
“Drone swarms require a fundamentally different approach to air defense,” co-founder and CEO Ido Bar-On said. “Our system is designed from the ground up to address the scale, speed and operational demands of coordinated drone attacks.”
