Skapion, an Israeli-American counter-drone startup building what it calls the “Iron Dome for drone swarms,” emerged from stealth on July 9 with a $36 million seed round co-led by Khosla Ventures and UP.Partners. Existing backers Fusion VC, Stratos Ventures, TBD VC and Q Fund also participated. The company is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with R&D based in Ramat Gan, Israel.
Team built the original Iron Dome
Skapion’s founding team is led by Brig. Gen. (res.) Pini Yungman, the former general manager of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Air and Missile Defense Systems division, where he helped build Iron Dome and David’s Sling. He is joined by the former head of drone company XTEND’s defense business. “I think one of our first slides was, ‘This is the team that built the Iron Dome,’” Stephen Rodriguez, an early backer and head of DCVC’s defense investing practice, told Tectonic Defense. “Like, what more do you want?”
A mobile launcher for hundreds of interceptors
The company is building a small-scale kinetic launcher that fires numerous drone interceptors and is platform-agnostic, so it can be mounted on a vehicle or operate from a fixed site. The end-to-end system is designed to detect, engage and neutralize hundreds of FPV and fiber-optic drones in denied environments, and can also engage Group 2 and above drones. The interceptor economics are aimed squarely at the mismatch that has made drone swarms so effective: a several-hundred-dollar quadcopter should not cost a several-hundred-thousand-dollar missile to shoot down.
A response to the FPV threat that is killing soldiers
Israel’s existing air defenses — including Iron Dome-class interceptors and Western equivalents like Anduril’s Roadrunner — were built to defeat rockets and missiles, not swarms of $500 FPV drones. According to the IDF, small FPV and fiber-optic drones have caused seven of the 11 Israeli soldier deaths since the not-so-ceasefire with Lebanon took effect in April. The same threat has spread across Ukraine’s front line and driven NATO’s recent $40 billion Drone Edge counter-drone initiative. Rodriguez said Skapion’s system is already operational and “definitely proven,” though he declined to comment on active contracts.
A U.S. company, not a U.S. outpost
Skapion has deliberately structured itself as a U.S. company from day one — headquartered in D.C., with an R&D center in Israel. That contrasts with the more common model in which an Israeli startup runs a token U.S. presence. The seed capital will be used to expand hiring, complete system validation and deepen engagement with government and defense customers in Israel, the United States and allied countries. As defense-tech funding hits record highs, Skapion is one of a growing cohort of counter-drone startups betting that the drone-swarm problem is now big enough — and expensive enough — to demand a dedicated interceptor category.
Reporting based on coverage from Tectonic Defense, sUAS News, CTech and Ynet.