Firestorm Labs – a California-based Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) manufacturer leader that is manufacturing expeditionary additive manufacturing – announced it raised $12.5 million in seed investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures and prominent defense investors.
Along with Lockheed Martin, Firestorm’s investors include 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.
Bringing sophisticated engineering capabilities from the commercial advanced manufacturing space, Firestorm’s xCell line enables its proprietary 3D-printed, interconnected, and interchangeable airframe component technology to be built at the edge—an approach that changes the nature of warfare for the US, its partners, and its allies.
Firestorm has won a range of U.S. Department of Defense contracts for its modular UAS and the xCell manufacturing product line. This new capital will enable Firestorm to scale its team and production to meet growing product demands.
KEY QUOTES:
“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. 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.”
– CEO Dan Magy
“We are a new approach to an emerging global challenge. 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.”
– Chad McCoy, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
