[Photo caption: Skapion’s founding team (from right): Gal Goren, Yaron Karp, Pini Yungman, Zafrir Yoeli and Ido Bar-On. Photo: Nicholas Pfosi]
By Yohai Schwiger
Israeli defense technology startup Skapion has raised $36 million in seed funding to develop a new defense system designed specifically to counter autonomous drone swarms. The round was led by UP.Partners and Khosla Ventures—an early investor in OpenAI—with participation from Fusion VC, Stratos Ventures, TBD VC, and q Fund.
Beyond the size of the investment, the announcement offers insight into the company’s strategy—from the operational problem it aims to solve and the backgrounds of its founders to an organizational structure that suggests the U.S. defense market is already its primary commercial target.
Founded only in late 2025, Skapion’s $36 million seed round stands out even within the rapidly expanding defense technology sector. The financing reflects growing investor confidence in technologies addressing one of the fastest-evolving challenges in modern warfare: defending against coordinated drone swarms.
The company said the proceeds will be used to expand its engineering teams, accelerate product development, conduct system integration and testing, and support engagements with defense and government organizations in Israel, the United States and additional international markets.
Built by Air Defense Veterans
Skapion’s founding team provides an early indication of the company’s ambitions.
Chief Architect Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Pini Yungman previously led Rafael’s Air and Missile Defense Systems Division and played a central role in the development of major Israeli air defense programs, including Iron Dome and David’s Sling.
CEO Ido Bar-On joined the company from Israeli drone developer XTEND, where he led business activities with defense and government customers worldwide.
The founding team also includes CTO Gal Goren, Zafrir Yoeli, a co-founder of Enlight Renewable Energy, and Yaron Karp. The combination of senior air defense experts, deep-tech entrepreneurs and experienced business executives suggests that Skapion is building a complete operational platform rather than a single enabling technology.
Designed for Swarms, Not Individual Drones
One phrase appears repeatedly throughout Skapion’s announcement and corporate messaging: “Native Counter-Swarm System.” It also represents the company’s primary point of differentiation.
While most existing Counter-UAS systems were originally developed to detect and defeat individual drones or relatively small numbers of aerial threats, Skapion says its platform is being designed from the ground up to handle coordinated attacks involving dozens—or even hundreds—of unmanned aircraft operating simultaneously.
Since the war in Ukraine and the growing use of one-way attack drones across the Middle East, countering drone swarms has become one of the most urgent challenges facing modern air defense forces. The problem is not only operational but economic: using expensive interceptors against large numbers of inexpensive drones can rapidly exhaust defensive resources.
According to the company, its system is built around three core objectives: engaging many threats simultaneously, significantly lowering the cost per interception, and maintaining autonomous operation even in communications-denied environments.
At this stage, however, Skapion has disclosed very little about the underlying technology. The company has not revealed whether the system relies on directed energy, electronic warfare, interceptor drones, kinetic interceptors or a combination of multiple approaches, nor has it published performance specifications or demonstration results.
Israeli Engineering, Washington Headquarters
Skapion’s corporate structure also provides clues about its long-term strategy.
While the company’s R&D center is based in Ramat Gan, Israel, its headquarters are located in Washington, D.C.
The decision suggests that Skapion is positioning itself from the outset to serve the U.S. defense establishment, widely regarded as the world’s largest market for advanced counter-drone technologies.
The company currently employs more than 20 people in Israel and is continuing to recruit engineers across electronics, software, robotics, autonomous systems and aerospace engineering as it accelerates development of its platform.