More than $12.5 million in seed funding, led by Lockheed Martin Ventures and other prominent defense VCs, will enable Firestorm Labs to scale its team and production.
SAN DIEGO—Firestorm Labs, a California-based manufacturer of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and a semi-automated expeditionary manufacturing cell, reported that it raised $12.5 million in seed investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures and prominent defense investors. The new capital is expected to “enable Firestorm to scale its team and production to meet growing demands for its products,” the company said in a release.
Firestorm’s xCell line manufacturing cell is reported to bring best-in-class engineering capabilities from the commercial advanced manufacturing space. The xCell line makes it possible for Firestorm’s proprietary 3D-printed, interconnected, and interchangeable airframe component technology to be manufactured at the edge. This approach “will fundamentally change the nature of warfare for the United States, its partners, and its allies,” the company said in the release.
“Firestorm is excited to announce this latest round of funding that will propel the company forward to shape the rapidly evolving needs of a UAS-dominated battlefield and a defense industrial base ripe for revolutionary manufacturing models,” said Firestorm CEO Dan Magy, in a statement. ”Our investors understand the pressing need for delivering technologies quickly and with the interoperability that today’s warfighters demand, and we are thrilled to welcome Lockheed Martin Ventures partnership in this mission.”
Lockheed Martin, Decisive Point, Silent Ventures, 645 Ventures, Overmatch VC, BVVC, Marquee Ventures, Cubit Capital, IronGate, Backswing Ventures, The Veteran Fund, Feld Ventures, Beyond Capital, and RedCat are among the company’s investors, Firestorm said in the release.
“We are a new approach to an emerging global challenge,” said Chad McCoy, co-founder and chief strategy officer for Firestorm, in the release. “There is a clear need within the defense technology sector to build faster and less costly systems, and simply throwing money at the issue won’t change the outcome. We found that coalescing a deep operational understanding of warfighter needs, combined with aerospace pragmatism and a new rapid manufacturing model, allows us to stand out in a very crowded market. The goal is to create a completely new category that shakes up legacy timelines and cost.”
Firestorm said it has won a range of U.S. Department of Defense contracts for its modular UAS and the xCell manufacturing product line.