Mara raises USD $7 million for Spike counter-drone

Mara has raised USD $7 million in a pre-seed funding round to support development of its Spike counter-drone system.

Khosla Ventures led the round, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Night Capital, Palmdrive, Protagonist, Freedom Fund and Indicator Fund, alongside angel investors.

The San Francisco defence hardware startup is targeting a problem that has become more acute in modern conflict: the use of small first-person-view drones that can be bought for hundreds of dollars and used to strike vehicles, infrastructure and personnel. Mara argues that many existing counter-drone systems were built to deal with larger aircraft flying on more predictable paths, rather than multiple low-cost drones approaching from several directions at once.

Spike is designed as an automated counter-UAS platform for those smaller threats. It combines a targeting unit called Spotter with a kinetic interceptor called Seeker.

Spotter uses visual, acoustic and optional radar sensors to detect and track drones in different conditions. Seeker is a tube-launched interceptor drone weighing 250g that can fly at 200kmh and engage a target using onboard intelligence.

The system can pass launch orders from Spotter to Seeker autonomously, while leaving a human operator responsible for rules of engagement and able to abort launches. Mara describes the setup as modular, with components that can work alone or together depending on the mission.

Combat focus

The fundraising comes against a sharp rise in the battlefield role of FPV drones, which have been used in Ukraine and elsewhere for attacks on armour, logistics and fixed sites. According to Mara, such drones remain the leading cause of combat casualties globally, and swarm, ambush and pincer tactics can overwhelm conventional defences that engage one threat at a time.

Spike is intended to provide distributed, autonomous and omnidirectional defence. The system uses stationary targeting sensors and a magazine of small interceptors to provide 360-degree hemispherical coverage in a portable package.

That design is aimed at a range of deployments. A rucksack-portable version could protect a dismounted squad, vehicle-mounted versions could cover a convoy, and larger installations could form multi-kilometre perimeters around military bases, front lines, ports, sporting events or power plants.

Daniel Kofman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, outlined the company's view of the market gap.

"Small drones changed the battlefield because they distributed the cost and capability of precise attack," said Daniel Kofman, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mara. "Most defenses still concentrate both replacement cost and line of fire. Spike instead creates a distributed mesh of small, cheap nodes that can each aim and shoot in multiple directions at once."

Mara says the system is designed to be attritable across both sensors and interceptors, with an overall cost below the value of the asset being protected. That point is central to the economics of short-range drone defence, where defenders can face repeated attacks from cheap platforms.

Field testing

The company was founded in October 2024 by Kofman and Sriram Raghu, who met in high school and later worked together on drone projects. Their earlier work included tactical FPV prototypes for a US Department of Homeland Security programme assembled from college dorm rooms.

The pair also co-founded Optivolt alongside its current Chief Executive Officer. Mara says that company shipped smart solar panels to Anduril, the US Air Force and Ukraine.

In recent months, Spike components have been used in a series of field exercises. Seeker completed intercepts cued through US Army software during an exercise in Texas, while Spotter operated hands-free on an armoured vehicle in a separate Army exercise in Europe and fed detection data into Army command software.

The company also said it demonstrated end-to-end engagement in field testing with a US special operations unit, where Spotter detected a target and cued Seeker to launch without operator input. In a further test, Mara said Ukrainian forces operated Spotter 40km from the front line, where it tracked multiple FPV drones.

Outside military settings, Spike is being deployed in a civilian pilot at a South Korean port. Mara also has cooperative research and testing agreements with three US defence organisations and has been in early-stage engagement with military partners in the UK, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

Nicole Fraenkel, Partner at Khosla Ventures, pointed to the pace of development and the company's cost claims.

"Mara has moved rapidly from proof-of-concept to user testing for an autonomous system," said Nicole Fraenkel, Partner at Khosla Ventures. "What caught my eye is that they're building counter-drone autonomy with a system cost that's orders of magnitude lower than anything else we've seen."

Mara's immediate focus is deploying Spike to key customers for ground-mounted use by the end of 2026, before introducing vehicle-mounted and man-portable versions as production expands in 2027.