infiniDome – a leading provider of anti-jamming solutions – announced it has secured $9 million in Series A funding led by Hanwha Aerospace, which is one of the largest conglomerates in South Korea along with Honeywell Ventures, and Next Gear Ventures.
infiniDome develops GPS protection and resilient navigation solutions tailored to defend UAVs and vehicles from jamming attacks. And today they’re disrupting GPS protection for UAVs for defense/HLS and will do the same for delivery drone protection tomorrow.
infiniDome’s team has recently grown to 26 employees, pushing the limits in the fields of GNSS, RF, EW and UAV technologies. infiniDome’s founders include Omer Sharar (CEO), Moshe Kaplan (CTO), and Ehud Sharar (President and VP Manufacturing). More recently, the company was recognized by AUVSI as finalists for the AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards in the Technology category for their new GPSdome2 – providing high-end protection for small to medium platforms.
The company’s advanced solutions for protecting GPS systems in manned and unmanned critical applications, ensure accurate and continuous positioning and navigation data, even in heavily challenged GNSS environments. And together with their strategic partners, infiniDome is creating solutions that fuse data from multiple sensors including anti-jamming modules, INS, radar technologies, GPS integrity and attack monitoring tools, and others to create a full navigation resiliency solution for their customers both in defense and commercial.
GPS signals orbit at 20,000 km above the earth’s surface making them extremely weak and vulnerable to jamming. And this poses a potential threat to various industries, which would be left dead in the water (or in the air) without GPS.
Manned ground vehicles, and unmanned vehicles like UAV, UGV, and USV all rely heavily on GPS for tracking friendly forces (identification of friend or foe) and navigation and autonomous flight, making them extremely vulnerable to GPS jamming attacks exposing them to significant risk to operation, and safety.
With GPS jammers readily available online for as little as $30, GPS jamming has been becoming increasingly prevalent worldwide. The integration of anti-jamming solutions could easily enable GPS-reliant platforms to safely operate in GPS-challenged, or even denied environments. Plus infiniDome leads the market with anti-jamming solutions that meet stringent C-SWaP (Cost, Size, Weight, and Power) limitations for mobile assets like UAS/UAV where size, weight, and power are critical, offering a real advantage over large, heavy, and very expensive traditional anti-jamming systems.
Aside from this funding round, infiniDome has raised a total of $7 million to date, on top of $1.5 million from the Israel Innovation Authority. And the additional funds and support of investors, which also include VentureIsrael, Kyto, Aston Partners, and Pointman I in this round, will not only enable infiniDome to deploy GPSdome2, but also design resilient navigation solutions tailored to meet future AAM (Advanced Aerial Mobility) requirements and play a crucial role in driving commercial regulations and enhancing the safety and security of critical operations around the world.
What the funding will be used for: This funding round will be used to support the deployment of infiniDome’s much sought-after GPSdome2 to major defense forces including US DoD, Israeli Defense prime, South Korean Army (ROK armed forces), and Indian armed forces. This funding round is Honeywell Ventures’ third time investing in infiniDome while Next Gear Ventures has continuously supported them since their Seed round. Going forward, infiniDome plans to continue its partnership with its strategic investors through the joint development of dedicated solutions and global commercial agreements.
KEY QUOTES:
“We see the great value of Hanwha’s investment and partnership with infiniDome. The synergy of Hanwha’s vast network and leadership in APAC and worldwide, combined with infiniDome’s innovative breakthrough and critical technology and IP, ensures a strong long term strategic relationship. Korea Israel Innovation Center (KIIC) is honored to be able to provide its members with tailored tech scouting and access to Israel’s innovative technologies. The synergies and partnership were immediately clear to both sides and the process was short and efficient. We look forward to continuing creating value to our members.”
- Jasmine Topor, Founder of the Korea Israel Innovation Center
“This strategic investment serves as a meaningful step to support our customers in leveraging emerging technologies across a wide spectrum of platforms, including commercial and military drones. We look forward to building advanced capabilities that will keep our customers ahead of new threats and challenges.”
- Kwangjin Kim, Senior Vice President, Navigation System Business Group at Hanwha Aerospace
“Honeywell congratulates infiniDome on successfully closing its recent series A funding round. Honeywell has been an early investor in infiniDome and we have developed a strong partnership through our co-development of resilient Navigation solutions. These products enable UAV operators to accomplish their missions when GNSS is unavailable and we look forward to expanding this partnership to enable GNSS resiliency across a broader set of use cases.”
- Matt Picchetti, vice president, Navigation and Sensors, Honeywell Aerospace
“Although the defense market had been executing BVLOS and even autonomous UAV missions for quite some time, we see the demand for smaller, light, cheaper UAVs increase from year to year. Together with our partners Honeywell and now with Hanwha as well, we plan to disrupt this $4B anti-jamming market, by providing solutions tailored to answer the growing demand in its largest and fastest growing segments – Class 1-3 UAVs and massive vehicles fleets.” Omer concludes by mentioning that the biggest pain point today is in defense – executing GPS-dependent missions – but the rapidly growing commercial UAV market (estimated at $30B by 2030) is waiting around the corner and will require at least the same level of protection, mainly to enable safe integration in the civilian ecosystem.”
- Omer Sharar
