Large uncrewed aerial vehicle manufacturer to accelerate development and deployment of aircraft and enabling swarm software

OXNARD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Swarm Aero (Swarm), a developer of large uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, today announced its $35 million Series A financing led by Two Sigma Ventures and Silent Ventures with participation from Swarm seed investors Khosla Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Friends & Family Capital, Construct Capital, Coatue, Founders Fund, Alumni Ventures, and MaC Venture Capital. The funding news follows the company’s recent ribbon cutting at a new 80,000 square foot Advanced Manufacturing Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas at Drake Field. Swarm, headquartered in Oxnard, California, is using its total capital raised of $59 million to accelerate the development and deployment of the company’s large UAV and the swarm software that enables drones to be controlled at scale.

Swarm’s large, multimission UAV introduces a new category of aircraft that includes both sense and strike capabilities, and is designed to take off in relative safety and cross long distances to get to the fight.Share

“Aircraft are the plurality of defense purchases and large UAVs are the future of air power. When paired with our command and control software, Swarm’s large UAVs can achieve major combat objectives by cooperating with superhuman dexterity while being several times cheaper than traditional aircraft. This is one of the most consequential developments in modern conflict and we have built an exceptionally talented engineering team to bring this vision to life,” said Danny Goodman, CEO and Co-Founder, Swarm Aero. “This new round of funding will allow us to significantly grow our team and bring the largest swarming aircraft ever built to market.”

Historically, manned combat aircraft were optimized for survivability in part to ensure pilots—a limited, expensive resource—were as protected as possible. That prioritization, coupled with rapidly emerging technological threats, drove compounding costs; each new generation of fighter aircraft costs ~3x the prior generation. The advent of drone warfare opens up the opportunity to reverse this trend and manufacture the required vehicles at the highest rate since World War II. Drones, however, are not one-size-fits-all as smaller drones with shorter range require assistance just to get to the fight. By contrast, Swarm’s large, multimission UAV introduces a new category of aircraft that includes both sense and strike capabilities, and is designed to take off in relative safety and cross long distances to get to the fight. Large UAVs also have capacity that small drones lack, enabling them to defeat exquisite, high value targets and have an asymmetric impact. Swarm has developed and pioneered an approach to produce carbon composites at a high rate for unprecedented airframe throughput.

“Swarm is redefining American air power through mass produced aircraft and coordinated air capabilities aligned with the U.S. military’s shift toward deterrence through scale and adaptability. It is a mission grounded in protecting the nation and the people who defend it, and from our first meeting we believed that no other team had the technical depth, government experience, and mission focus required to take this on,” said Colin Beirne, Partner, Two Sigma Ventures. “That conviction was reinforced by Swarm’s rare ability to combine low-cost volume production of a large UAV with software and a data and AI approach that enables many-to-one operator control, and early operational momentum with discerning DOD customers.”

Deploying swarms of uncrewed vehicles requires a new approach to command and control that can enable teams to control 1,000s of vehicles at a time. The current, remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA) approach pairs up to four humans with a single UAV, which isn’t scalable. Swarm’s command and control software, Legion, solves this problem by allowing operators to express mission objectives and have Legion translate those into commands for large numbers of robotic systems in the air, on the ground or at sea. Legion has already enabled a single operator to control dozens of live assets in complex operations. DIU previously announced that Swarm was selected from 132 companies to write software for DIU’s Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program, supporting DOW efforts to scale operation of 1,000s of drones.

“Autonomous affordable mass is at the heart of conventional conflicts. From air superiority to ground support and contested logistics, intelligent aerial systems have emerged as mission critical solutions purpose-built for current and future battlefields. While many are focused on Group 1 drones, Swarm is developing larger, high-performance UAVs manufactured at scale in America — without the absurd cost structure and lead times that plague legacy programs,” said Jackson Moses, Managing Partner, Silent Ventures. “We co-led Swarm’s pre-seed raise because we knew Danny and team would rapidly define this category in favor of our warfighters. Silent Ventures is humbled to co-lead this Series A as Swarm begins mass production and deployment of its American-made air power.”

Founded in 2022, Swarm is led by a team that has designed and built over 30 novel aircraft, deployed software with a combined 4.6 billion active users worldwide, served in special ops and TOPGUN, closed billions of dollars in defense deals, led materials and processes for the highest production rate general aircraft of the century, broken four of seven Absolute Aviation records recognized by the FAI, and served as part of the Collier trophy and X-Prize winning SpaceShipOne team. In addition to the investors listed above, additional seed and pre-seed participants include Champion Hill Ventures, Firebolt Ventures, Humba Ventures, Quiet Capital, Xander Oltmann, Sargeant Solutions, LLC (Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Sargeant, USAF (Ret.) CEO), and Saturn Ventures.

Swarm intends to double its aircraft team in 2026 and is actively hiring across the organization. To learn more and apply to open roles, please visit: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/swarmaero

About Swarm

Swarm Aero was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in Oxnard, CA with locations in Spokane, WA, Fayetteville, AR, and Washington D.C.. The team has extraordinary experience working with the Department of War to fulfill critical needs and requirements as well as decades of aerospace accomplishments across Scaled Composites, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Airbus, Archer, and others. The team has previously completed billions of dollars in contracts involving DOW, has built software platforms supporting billions of users, and employed cutting-edge AI in critical applications. Swarm is backed by leading venture firms including Two Sigma Ventures, Silent Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, Coatue, MaC Venture Capital, a16z, and Founders Fund. To learn more please visit: https://www.swarm.aero/

Contacts

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Kate Gundry
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